Shooting to fame

So the jinx is broken at last! Abhinav Bindra now has a good shot at being a national celebrity albeit for a few months till he bags a distinguished sportsperson award. And then everybody can pleasantly forget all about him or what he has done. In a year’s time his relevance would only be to ten year olds mugging up names for their GK test, and a few more seasons down the line someone would be saying: “Abhinav Bindra…aha, sounds familiar. Lemme guess…isn’t he that new cricketing talent coming up from Punjab? Or is he?” So Abhinav, you would be darned not to make use of these sunny days of glory. Bask in it, bathe in it, make some hay if you wish to but do it all on TV – that’s my wise piece of counsel for you. You will probably make an appearance with a bottle of chavanprash in one hand and a rifle in the other between every two overs through one (but not more) Test series, and be cursed by the avid cricket fan whose multitude in this country is same as the populace; but not to grab this chance would be like shooting yourself in the foot.

Around the eighth century BC in the first ever Olympic Games to have been chronicled in history it was Coroebus, a naked runner who won the stade, a short run and the only competition held that time, becoming the very first Olympic champion. India’s startling image in the history of the Games is reminiscent of Coroebus, surely not in the greatness of his achievement but in the peculiarity of his apparel. For years we have been praying and waiting for some godsend to do the unimaginable and cover our shame. At long last we have found Abhinav. Winning the first ever individual gold for a country of over a billion he in the right sense is the reincarnation of Coroebus for us.

Is there any hope of this being a rule rather than an exception one day? Even the eternal optimist would be hard-pressed to say yes. Once the initial euphoria of Abhinav’s feat dies its natural death nothing will change really. India will continue to be an embarrassment in sports. A wide variety of reasons are put forward as to why. Some say it’s the general apathy towards sports and parents' infatuation with engineering and medical degrees while some others blame the lack of funds and infrastructure. The gloom merchants however trace it to our gene pool. They think we as a race have neither the strength of the Europeans, stamina of the Africans or swift reflexes of the East Asians and are thus no-hopers by birth.

The patriotic types who cannot come to terms with the dismal stature of their great country in the medals tally find solace in playing an imaginary role of the President of the Olympics organization. If it were left up to them all the useless running, throwing, diving and sissy stuff like synchronized swimming would be immediately scrapped. They would instead rebuild the Olympics with special focus on more manly games like cricket, kabaddi, hide-and-seek and gilli-danda which form the pedigree of Indian sports.

As a matter of fact they have reasons to rejoice now. The shortest version of cricket Twenty-20 is in the shortlist of new inclusions for the 2020 Olympics - no pun intended!