Thursday, April 05, 2007

Applaud him...

There was a passing mention of this news in the papers
There were no big, half page photos of him in national dailies.
Even on the NDTV site there is a smallest ever article regarding his achievement.

I was about to write another post on cricket yesterday but Fleiger’s post prompted me to pay attention to other good happening in Indian Sports.
Oh! Those of you who have still not guessed what I am talking about – it’s not your fault. As I said, the achievement of Viswanathan Anand becoming the 1st Indian to become No. 1 Chess Player in the world hardly got the attention of Indian Media which has been so busy finding out why India crashed out of WC.
If Dhoni making it to the Top 10 ODI batsman can make a headline on Sports Page, then Anand’s life long efforts, commitment, hard work to reach where no Indian has, surely deserves much more!
It’s strange. We feel so proud of achievers who have roots in India but are actually foreigners now but we forget the true Indians.
When Monty Panesar wrecks Australia, we proudly call him India’s Son. Bob Woolmer dies and we have prayers for him in Kanpur (where he was born). Bull Shit!!

For me, even if India wins all cricket matches of this year the fact that Anand became world no. 1 in chess will be a bigger news. But sadly, it will not be so for the Great Indian Media.

4 comments:

Tarun said...

Completely agree.. I have been folowing the news about Anand for last 3 days. I thought may be today there will be a big article or I was expecting some "Tej Khabar" at so called "Sabse Tej" news channels.

It's high time media give attention to other sporting heroes rather than cricketing failures.

Chetan said...

Thats true Bedi, it is irony that sports means Cricket in India. Lot of hype is given to cricket heros(zeros currently) and others are neglected. Better performers in other sports like Vishy, Leander, Bhupathi, Sania, Pankaj Advani, Geet Sethi and Jaspal Rana never get their share in the newsprint.

KT said...

well so it confirms that retirement from cricket is for real ... stil some anguish for cricket....

waise anyways seriously this news deserved more mention than it had... all we are debating all the time is Sachin, Greg, Dravid.

I think even a small cricket editor would be much more celebrated than Anand Vishwanathan.

Alesea said...

Well its all about media's responsibility to set the agenda in the right way...since tv sets the agenda the coverage in the papers is also accordingly which again points a finger at dumbing down of media...well we are looking at the condition of hockey also...but truly i wasnt aware of this news uptill now....