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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same...

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same narrative unfolded on a cricket field, the reaction would have been dramatically different. In cricket, even defeat often becomes a story of heroism. A hard-fought loss by the Indian team can dominate television debates, fill newspaper columns and trend across social media for days. A player who narrowly misses a milestone is still hailed for his fighting spirit. The nation rallies around its cricketers not only in victory but also in defeat. The narrative quickly shifts from the result to the effort -- the resilience shown, the fight put up, the promise of future triumph. This emotional investment is one of the reasons cricket enjoys unparalleled popularity in India. It has built a culture where players become household names and their performances, good or bad, become part of the national conversation. Badminton Fights Contrast that with what happens in sports like badminton. Reaching the final of the All England Championships is a monumental achievement. The tournament is widely considered badminton’s equivalent of Wimbledon in prestige and tradition. Only the very best players manage to reach its final stages, and doing it twice speaks volumes about Lakshya Sen’s ability and consistency. Yet the reaction in India remained largely subdued. There were congratulatory posts, some headlines acknowledging the effort and brief discussions among badminton enthusiasts. But the level of national engagement never quite matched the magnitude of the achievement. In a cricketing context, reaching such a stage would have triggered days of celebration and analysis. In badminton, it often becomes just another sports update. Long Wait India’s wait for an All England champion continues. The last Indian to win the title was Pullela Gopichand in 2001. Before him, Prakash Padukone had scripted history in 1980. These victories remain among the most significant milestones in Indian badminton. And yet, unlike cricketing triumphs that are frequently revisited and celebrated, such achievements rarely stay in the mainstream sporting conversation for long. Lakshya Sen’s journey to the final should ideally have been viewed as a continuation of that legacy, a reminder that India still possesses the talent to challenge the world’s best in badminton. Instead, it risks fading quickly from public memory. Visibility Gap The difference ultimately comes down to visibility and cultural investment. Cricket in India is not merely a sport; it is an ecosystem built over decades through media attention, sponsorship, and mass emotional attachment. Individual sports, on the other hand, often rely on momentary bursts of recognition, usually during Olympic years or when a medal is won. But consistent performers like Lakshya Sen rarely receive the sustained spotlight that their achievements deserve. This disparity can also influence the next generation. Young athletes are naturally drawn to sports where success brings recognition, financial stability and national fame. When one sport monopolises the spotlight, others struggle to build similar appeal. Beyond Result Lakshya Sen may have finished runner-up again, but his performance at the All England Championship is a reminder that India continues to produce world-class athletes in disciplines beyond cricket. The real issue is not that cricket receives immense attention -- it deserves the admiration it gets. The concern is that athletes from other sports often do not receive comparable appreciation for achievements that are equally significant in their own arenas. If India aspires to become a truly global sporting nation, its applause must grow broader. Sporting pride cannot remain confined to one field. Because somewhere on a badminton court, an athlete like Lakshya Sen is fighting just as hard for the country’s colours as any cricketer on a packed stadium pitch. The only difference is how loudly the nation chooses to cheer.

Desperate Depths

Pakistan’s reckless airstrikes in Afghanistan betray its growing insecurity as India’s quiet courtship of the Taliban exposes the bankruptcy of Islamabad’s old Afghan policy.

 

For decades, Pakistan fancied itself as the gatekeeper of Afghanistan - a self-styled ‘strategic depth’ against India and an indispensable interlocutor for the West. But as Pakistani jets thundered over Kabul on Thursday night, targeting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), it was not strength but desperation that echoed in the skies. The timing of the assault coincided with Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s maiden visit to India. It revealed how thoroughly Pakistan’s Afghan policy has unravelled, leaving Islamabad encircled by the very monsters it once midwifed.

 

Reports suggest the strikes were aimed at killing Noor Wali Mehsud, the TTP chief who has led the group since 2018. Mehsud, who cast Pakistan’s post-9/11 alliance with America as an act of apostasy, has since become Islamabad’s most implacable foe. The TTP’s relentless attacks, like the ambush on October 8 that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, have transformed Pakistan’s western frontier into a bleeding wound. For years, Islamabad sheltered the Afghan Taliban even as it hunted the Pakistani version of the same movement. That schizophrenic policy has come home to roost.

 

Dangerous escalation

The airstrikes mark a dangerous escalation in what has become an undeclared border war. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, long regarded as Pakistan’s ideological protégés, now accuse their former patrons of violating sovereignty and aiding the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), a mutual enemy.

 

Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Asif, thundered in parliament that Islamabad was “paying the price of sixty years of hospitality to six million Afghan refugees with our blood.” The rhetoric conveniently omits who invited the serpent into the tent. Since the 1980s, Pakistan’s generals have used Islamist militancy as a tool of foreign policy. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) cultivated the mujahideen to fight the Soviets, later midwifed the Taliban, and turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda fugitives. It also engineered jihadist outfits against India, from Lashkar-e-Taiba to Jaish-e-Mohammed. The state became so entangled in the jihadist web that it could neither dismantle it nor escape from it.

 

The Taliban’s victory in 2021 briefly seemed to vindicate Pakistan’s long game. As American troops withdrew in disarray, Islamabad celebrated the return of its clients to Kabul. But the rejoicing was short-lived. The Taliban, now masters of their own house, proved unwilling to act as Pakistan’s proxies. They refused to curb the TTP or hand over its leaders. Instead, they asserted Afghan independence in rhetoric and diplomacy, most notably by courting India. That is the deeper sting in Islamabad’s latest tantrum.

 

Strategic overture

Muttaqi’s visit to New Delhi this week, where he met Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, marks the highest-level contact between India and the Taliban since 2021. India, which lost billions in infrastructure projects after the fall of the previous Afghan government, has moved cautiously by offering humanitarian aid, reopening a technical mission in Kabul and quietly exploring security cooperation. The Taliban’s condemnation of a recent terror attack in Pahalgam, which killed 26 people, further signals a pragmatic recalibration. In this new diplomatic choreography, Pakistan is the odd man out.

 

Islamabad’s strategic paranoia is understandable but self-inflicted. For years, it viewed Afghanistan not as a neighbour but as a backyard to be controlled through pliant rulers and extremist proxies. That imperial delusion is now collapsing under its own contradictions.

 

Domestically, Pakistan is in disarray as its economy teeters on bankruptcy and its frontier regions seethe with insurgency.

 

The fallout of the airstrikes bombing will not be contained by borders. Afghanistan may retaliate through proxies or by loosening restraints on the TTP. That could drag both countries deeper into a cycle of insurgency and reprisal, with civilians as the inevitable victims.

 

The irony is bitter but deserved. For decades, Pakistan believed it could manipulate jihadists, control Afghanistan and outmanoeuvre India. Today it is reaping the whirlwind of its own duplicity.

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