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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.

Elite Impunity

The Epstein files test whether Donald Trump will confront the machinery of power or quietly manage it.

Jeffrey Epstein’s afterlife is being managed with care. The latest disclosure in form of 19 photographs from Epstein’s estate with faces blacked out and meaning suspended, serves as a reminder that the real test lies ahead, when the state must decide how much of the truth it is prepared to tolerate.


What matters is not whether Americans will once again gawp at images of presidents, princes and plutocrats orbiting a disgraced financier. It is whether America will finally show that power does not still buy silence.


For President Donald Trump, the Epstein files arrive as a moral and institutional reckoning that exposes the limits of his populist claim to be a scourge of elites. The president has long insisted that Epstein’s scandal proves how a decadent liberal establishment protects its own.


Epstein’s notoriety never rested on secrecy. Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Larry Summers and a parade of tycoons, academics and political fixers have long been associated with him. Most deny wrongdoing; some have suffered reputational damage; a few have been formally disgraced. Yet the central mystery has endured since Epstein secured his astonishingly lenient plea deal in 2008: how did a man accused of trafficking underage girls operate for decades while the institutions meant to restrain him repeatedly failed?


The forthcoming release of the so-called Epstein files, compelled by Congress and reluctantly accepted by the Trump administration, promises answers. It may expose prosecutorial hesitation, investigative blind spots and the internal correspondence that explains why leads went cold. Survivors are hoping for recognition, but hopes of a neat reckoning are misplaced. Bureaucratic truth rarely arrives with drama.


That is precisely the risk. Transparency laws can be obeyed while being hollowed out. The Justice Department retains wide latitude to redact material in the name of victim protection, ongoing investigations or national security. These limits are also the traditional refuge of embarrassment disguised as caution.


The politics surrounding the disclosure are tawdry. Republicans once cast Epstein as proof that liberal elites were shielded by a corrupt establishment. Democrats now deploy selective releases to pressure a Republican administration that initially dismissed the affair as a partisan hoax. President Trump’s own oscillation - from derision to reluctant compliance - underscores the problem. When transparency becomes a weapon rather than a principle, justice becomes collateral damage.


The photographs themselves symbolise this confusion. Devoid of captions or chronology, they invite insinuation without explanation. They satisfy public appetite for spectacle while postponing understanding. Publishing them may bruise reputations, but it does little to answer the harder questions: who enabled Epstein financially, who smoothed his path with prosecutors, and why federal agencies failed to connect evidence already in their possession?


The deeper scandal is structural. Epstein thrived not merely because he was rich, but because he understood access. He connected donors to politicians, academics to patrons, social climbers to gatekeepers.


His death in custody in 2019, ruled a suicide amid extraordinary security failures, removed the central defendant while intensifying public mistrust. It ensured that the reckoning would shift from criminal guilt to institutional failure. If the forthcoming disclosures merely confirm that mistakes were made and procedures misunderstood, they will entrench the belief that justice bends towards status.


For Trump, the danger is not legal exposure but moral contradiction. He rose by railing against elite impunity, promising to smash closed systems. Yet as President, he now presides over the management of disclosure, deciding how much sunlight the public is allowed. Heavy redactions will be read as proof that the system remains intact and that Trump chose to administer it rather than dismantle it.


In the long view, the Epstein files will mark a revealing moment in Trump’s presidency. They will be remembered less for what they uncovered than for what remained obscured. Epstein’s empire flourished on silence, ambiguity and institutional reluctance. Whether those habits finally end or are merely refined will define not just this scandal, but the credibility of power itself.


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