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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.

The Status Quo Is a Competitor, Not a Baseline

“You’re not competing with other ideas. You’re competing with “leave me alone”.

You’ve seen this happen. You call a meeting. You explain the logic. People nod. Some even say, “Yes, correct.” And then… nothing changes. Not a fight. Not a refusal. Not drama. Just a slow, polite slide back to the old way. Most leaders call this laziness. I don’t. I think it’s something more precise: The status quo is doing its job.


Quick recap if you’re joining mid-series

Week 1: You inherited an equilibrium, not a business.

Week 2: People don’t oppose improvement; they oppose loss disguised as improvement.

Now Week 3: even if you reduce the fear of loss, there’s another force sitting quietly

behind it: “Do nothing” is not neutral. It’s a protected strategy.


Which seat are you stepping into?

Inherited seat: People will smile and wait for your “phase” to pass.

Hired seat: People will test whether you can enforce, or whether you’ll get tired.

Promoted seat: People may agree publicly and revert privately because habits don’t ask permission.


Different entry doors. Same default: do nothing.


Shortcut Route

Every industrial area has that one shortcut road. It’s narrow, broken, sometimes risky. But it avoids signals and saves a turn. So, everyone keeps taking it even when a better road exists. That’s how organizations behave. Your “new process” might be cleaner and smarter. But the old route is familiar. And familiarity feels like safety.


Researchers call this status quo bias where we stick with what’s already in place even when a better option exists (Samuelson and Zeckhauser wrote about it decades ago). But you don’t need a paper to believe it. You just need to watch what happens after your first improvement announcement.


Do Nothing

Incoming leaders often treat the current way of working like a baseline: “Okay, this is where we are. Now we improve.” But inside the system, the status quo is not baseline. It’s a competitor. It protects people in very specific ways:

It keeps accountability soft: everything stays “situational”.

It preserves informal power: who can “manage”, who has access, who gets heard.

It avoids hard data, which avoids hard blame.

It keeps old loyalties intact.

It keeps flexibility for firefighting even if that firefighting is the problem.

So, when you introduce a new system, you’re not offering a better idea. You’re threatening a survival arrangement.

That’s why resistance here is rarely loud. It’s quiet. Continuous. Patient. The real competition is friction


Practical Truth

People don’t choose the best option. They choose the easiest option. This is where the idea of defaults matters. Thaler and Sunstein popularised it in Nudge: if you make something the default path, most people follow it … not because they love it, but because opting out takes effort.


In MSMEs, effort is expensive. Not because people are incapable—because they’re overloaded. Understaffed. Running on memory, calls, WhatsApp, and urgency. So “small extra steps” are not small. They become the place where change goes to die.

If your new system adds friction, the status quo wins.


New Behavior

Use these four rules:

1. Remove one step, don’t add one.

If your change adds steps, it will lose. Kill one existing step immediately (a duplicate approval, a manual register, a second reporting format).

2. Attach it to an existing moment.

Don’t create a new ritual. Piggyback on something that already happens (dispatch call, purchase huddle, daily production chat). Change travels on existing rails.

3. Make it visible and usable.

If the new behavior produces something people need (a live queue, a simple list, a shared status board), it becomes real. If it produces a report nobody reads, it becomes theater.

4. Create a soft gate.


Not punishment. A gate. Example: “Only logged quotations will be discussed in the pricing huddle.” Calm rule, consistently applied. No drama, no exceptions-by-loudness. If you do only this much, you’ll notice something powerful: adoption starts rising without motivation speeches. Because you stopped trying to win by persuasion and started winning by design.


(The writer is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He writes about the human mechanics of growth where systems evolve, and emotions learn to keep up. Views personal. Write to rahul@ppsconsulting.biz)

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