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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.

Sweet revenge for hero Sadanand Date

Mumbai: A year after Sadanand V. Date – a highly decorated IPS officer and 26/11 hero - took over as the Director-General of National Investigation Agency (NIA), it was time to ‘get even’ with one of the country’s most wanted fugitive criminals, Pakistani-Canadian national Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who was extradited to India from the USA, today.


It marks a fulfilling moment for Date - who toiled for months with Indian and US agencies and waded through the legal tangles to ensure his ‘date with Rana’ – as the terror plotter landed along with a NIA team in New Delhi.


After all legal escape doors were slammed on his face in the US, Rana will face trial in the Mumbai terror strikes of Nov. 26-29, 2008 – the 60 hours when 10 heavily armed Pakistani extremists laid siege to the country’s commercial capital – while the world watched with stunned horror the mini-war unfolding live on billions of television screens.


Official sources reveal that after he took over the post of DG-NIA in March 2024, Date pursued the Rana - an associate of David Coleman Headley - proceedings single-mindedly and ensured it fructified in a year.


Himself one of the ‘warriors’ against the 10 Pakistani terrorists and was injured in the gun-battles with them during the 26/11 mayhem, Date’s stints as the DG-Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad, Central Bureau of Investigation and other key positions in his 35-years’ service, helped accomplish ‘Mission Rana’.


However, behind his glamorous success lies a long story of quiet struggles, tears and sacrifices since his birth in an ordinary family in Pune, losing his father at the age of 15, while his mother worked as a cook to feed her own kids.

The bright young Date, hungry for education, chipped in by working as a newspaper delivery boy from 1977 for nearly 10 years, to part-finance his studies in school-college, plus help lessen his mom’s burden.

Subsequently, he completed his B. Com, M.Com., became a Cost Accountant (ICAI), and also earned a PhD in Commerce from the Savitribai Phule Pune University, but was attracted to public service, so also cracked his UPSC exams (1999), to become an IPS officer.


While with the CBI, Date was sent on a Humphrey Fellowship (2005-2006) to the University of Minnesota where he studied the scourge of ‘white-collar and organized crimes in the USA’, plus the theoretical and practical aspects of dealing with it.


Armed with the expertise, after returning to Mumbai, he was appointed the Additional Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing), later headed the elite ‘Force One’ in Maharashtra, built on the lines of the National Security Guards, plus other important posts.


During the 26/11 terror hits, sporting the Mumbai Police’s modest weapons and courageous cops, Date literally chased the Pakistan terrorists, particularly the trigger-happy duo - Ajmal Kasab (nabbed alive) and the equally houndish Abu Ismail Khan – near the Cama and Albless Hospital – where more than 500 women, children, doctors and nurses trembled, awaiting help.


Date and Co. valiantly battled Kasab-Khan, seen lurking around like a cat in the dark around the hospital campus, firing indiscriminately at the police, before moving ahead to create bedlam at another location.


First, the duo hijacked a police jeep, abandoned it; then overpowered a private car driver, sped off in his car towards Chowpatty Beach at the dead of the night, where after a gun-battle, Khan was killed while Kasab was nabbed alive and virtually unharmed.


In the hospital shootout, though many lives of innocents were saved, Date and his men sustained bullet injuries.


At one point early that morning, Date was even speculated to be dead in sections of the media, but he not only survived, recovered fully and bounced back to his passion of policing, grabbing accolades and honours over the past 17 years.


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