Be a sport

As I was browsing through the events of the year just gone by, in the sports section I chanced upon the line
“Dola Banerjee won a gold at the archery World Cup, Jhulan Goswami emerged as the world’s fastest woman bowler.”

Much to my chagrin, neither had I heard of any of the two names nor did know that there was a world cup in archery. This being the IT age the very obvious option available was to Google it out.
Dola Banerjee claimed the gold medal in the women's individual recurve competition at the archery World Cup finals in Dubai in Nov 2007. This was the first time an Indian claimed the coveted title. The 27 year old woman also happens to be the first Indian woman archer to qualify for the Olympics, has won the 18th Golden Arrow Grand Prix tournament at Antalya, gold in 2006 SAF Games. The government of India has honored her with Arjuna Award for 2005.

Jhulan Goswami, 23 years old is a member of the Indian women cricket team and now the fastest female bowler in the world, bowling at 120kph. She bagged the ICC Women's Player of the Year at the awards ceremony in Johannesburg on Sep 10 2007.
Again I was left with loads of unanswered questions … Is Dola Banerjee who won the archery World Cup any less deserving than the Indian cricket team who one the T20 world cup. Does Jhulan Goswami not deserve accolades for her feat? What have we done to cognize their effort and accomplishment that has brought glory to the country?

There was little or no coverage on them in the print media or tele media. When the media goes ga ga over the dhonis and sachins and yuvrajs, why are the Jhulans and Dolas forgotten. We are a biased set of people and so engrossed with team India (as the men’s cricket team is affectingly called), that we completely overlook other sports. The government also showers its goodies only on one set of favored players. This is what creates discontented and demotivated sports persons. Every time after an Olympics or an Asian games after the Indian contingent has fared badly, there is much insight into this. Many articles are written, speeches are made. But nothing more happens. Other sports continue to be in the same dire situation with no sponsors and no support.

Can we the people of India do something about it?