Who writes your script?

"Who writes your script?", Graham Gooch had asked about Ian Botham, way back in 1986.

Fast forward to 2009, and the eternal scriptwriter sitting up there has written another improbable one.

Two countries, torn by internal conflicts and ethnic strife. One country facing a virtual seige by other cricket playing countries due to safety reasons, the other country empathising and agreeing to undertake a tour, and mid-way through the tour, their team bus gets attacked by terrorists!

Months later, these countries playing in a World Cup final!

How much more poetic can you get?

Congratulations, Younus Khan and Kumara Sangakkara, for the lovely game of cricket and for the spirit in which it was played considering the recent history.

A lot of us (myself included, I must confess) had not counted on Pakistan and Sri Lanka contesting the finals. But then, were we wrong? In the short history of this format of the game, these are the two best countries. After all, a 77% W/L record for Pakistan and a 70% W/L record for SL is not something to be sneezed at, is it?

Compare that to India. Notwithstanding our last championship win, we just have a 56% W/L record, and are 5th in the placings. (Count that 4th, because Netherlands with 3 wins out of 5 are statistically above us).

And yet; we eat, drink, sleep and dream only cricket.

An indication of this - on the day when the T20 World Cup final took place, another momentous event in Indian sport unfolded on the other side of the world. Saina Nehwal won the Indonesian Open Super Series badminton title beating the World No.3 in the final. Saina herself is ranked 8, and aims to be in the top 5 by the end of this year.

Here’s a little analysis of the coverage given to each event by 3 major English broadsheet dailies in Mumbai.

Look at that – an Indian winning a major sport played across the world had much lesser coverage than a sport played by a handful of countries, and where India was already out.

I wish I could do a comparison of TV channels too, simply because I flipped through news channels for about 45 minutes this morning, and could find news coverage, scrollers etc. repeating T20 ad nauseum, but not a single mention of Saina Nehwal’s victory.

We keep mentioning about how we need to promote sports other than cricket, but when it comes to practicing what one preaches, it is obvious that TV channels and mainstream English dailies (with the exception of DNA) are way behind.

Apart from a Paes, Bhupathi, Sania and Anand, it is rare to see a mention of any sportsperson other than a cricketer. And that was also after they became too big to be ignored.

We write in salacious details about Dhoni’s and Yuvraj’s love lives, but we are mum when it comes to the sporting achievements of champions in other sports. Net result – most people would not even know the names of sportsmen who have brought laurels to the country in their sports.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a test. I am mentioning the names of 29 Indian sportspersons who are champions at their respective sports. Let’s see how many can you guess?

Abhinav Bindra, Akhil Kumar, Al Lakra, Anjali Bhagwat, Anju Bobby George, Anwar Sultan, Armaan Ebrahim, Dinesh Kumar, Jaspal Rana, Jayanta Talukdar, Jitender Kumar, Karan Malik, Koneru Humpy, Limba Ram (he lives in a garage today), Mahesh Chandran Panchanathan, Manavjit Singh, Mangal Singh Champia, Mansher Singh, Mary Kom, P Harikrishna, Parimarjan Negi, Parthiva Sureshwaren, Rahul Banerjee, Ravi Dixit, Sandipan Chanda, Saurav Ghosal, Suranjoy Singh, Tania Sachdev, Vijender Singh

I rest my case. Thank You.