T20 World Cup

As we all know, the young tigers of India have won the inaugural T20 World Cup held in South Africa. Truly, it was a remarkable victory for the Generation X of India. The fact that this win was without the likes of Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly and Zaheer, made it more memorable as we can’t imagine an Indian side without them in the present scenario. Kudos to the youth of India. But it was the post-match happenings that discharged some of my spirit.
I’m an ardent fan of cricket. I remember the days when I used to get up around 4AM to catch up the Ashes. I never got up so early even for my engineering exams. But, I’m one of those people who mourn the demise of other sports and who believe that their extinction is because of cricket. As soon as India reached finals of the T20 World Cup, BCCI announced $ 1 million award to the team. And our team won so unconvincingly at the end. The fact that we threw away the match in the final overs will be agreed by everyone. But a win is definitely a win. And promptly BCCI increased the award to $ 3 million. Accolades started to pore over from the entire nation and so are the cash awards. Each state announced cash awards for their respective members of the cricket team. By the time I’m writing this article each cricketer got around Rs 80 lakhs(something around $ 200,000), not to forget Yuvraj Singh who alone got more than Rs 1.5 crores(around $ 375,000).
All this might be to encourage the team but what about the other sports? Are the people who are playing those sports not representing our country? Where are all these accolades when the Indian Hockey team won the Asia cup for the first time not less than 2 months back? And they won the trophy quite convincingly breaking many world records on the way. The news that our hockey team won 20-0 against Sri Lanka was aired on every TV channel for a day. This was a record in recent times but quickly forgotten both by the people and the government. But where are the accolades and rewards for them?????? Which parent is encouraging his child to play kabaddi or kho-kho? People might have thronged to see the matinee of “Chak De, India” but how many people are going to watch a hockey match in reality? Why does a country like India, which stands second in population, not able to win even a single Olympic medal? Is it because there’s no cricket in Olympics? If the behaviour of the rulers and the people remains the same, then many of the great old sports will extinct in a matter of a few years.
And I would like to end this article with a funny news. There’s a regional party in my state, Andhra Pradesh, called TRS for which the leader is K Chandrasekhar Rao otherwise known as KCR. He always shouts on the government saying that his region, Telangana, is ignored by the government and that they need a separate state which they’ll develop themselves. He says almost every day that his people are in bitter poverty. I heard that even he gave cash rewards of Rs 1.16 lakhs each to 3 of the players of the Indian Cricket Team. Now the billion dollar question is “What happened to the poverty of the people in his region?” Has it gone with the win(d)????????????????????????