Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan*
The jokes doing the rounds in social media include, “Be it marriage or Olympics, India always relies on its women to fetch the gold.” After the proverbial single swallow we hit in the form of a Silver medal in weight lifting, the drought still continues to persist and anticipation is the only word we have to assuage our emotions.
Ironically, there are times when some caustic remark pouring in about our Olympic contingent from cynical observers gets proved wrong, and India does put up a good show at the four-yearly event. However, this time around that is yet to happen and maybe it’s like an action-reaction syndrome that is waiting to happen. There is an instance from the first T-20 World Cup that reminds me of a similar action-reaction phenomenon. India was facing England in the World Cup and Stuart Broad had some heated exchange with Yuvraj Singh who was slated to face the penultimate over of the Indian innings. Post the exchange, Yuvi hit six out of six balls into the stands well over the heads of all the fielders.
Also read:
- India in Tokyo: The halfway heartbreaks
- Sunday Snippets: An auspicious beginning for India in Tokyo Olympics
- Shuttler PV Sindhu becomes the first Indian woman to win two Olympic medals
I am putting this in perspective to make an observation. It does take some impetus or say some sort of provocation be it in sports or any other field before we manage to get good results. It’s reminiscent of former Pakistani cricket captain and current Prime Minister Imran Khan once talking about how he would shower a player in his team with a very humiliating abuse that will stir him up to get into the act and perform.
Though no scientific evidence or logic is there to support this theory, it seems to be working all the time. You may recall it, when India miserably failed to perform in the 2007 World Cup bringing out jokes like: “Who’s responsible for India losing to Bangladesh in the World Cup fixture? It’s late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.” When a team of young Turks went to play the World T-20 fixtures in the first tournament of this format, expectations were low and people were doubtful. Hepresto! Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his young team walked off with the Cup.
You may feel I am drawing too many instances from cricket. Unfortunately, that happens to be the only sport Indians have successfully popularized. However, our national hockey team pulled off a similar act in the Asia cup a decade and odd ago, after Indian hockey having hit the nadir in the world scene. Reverting back to our fortunes in the Olympics, talks were doing the rounds that our fortunes would get enhanced once our national sport Kabaddi gets included in the list of Olympic events. This team event did get included in the Commonwealth games in recent years. However, it would also be worthy to note, that this is not like a LIC insurance scheme people can rely on for Gold.
It may be recalled that Indian hockey dominated the Olympic tournament right throughout from pre-independence era into the early 1960s before petering out into tame and inept performances once the Western nations like Germany, UK and Australia became strong contenders de-seating both rival teams India and Pakistan. Let’s hope for better performances, more athletes and more boxers getting into the fray for the current.
