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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.

Who is the real victim?

Victimhood narratives risk eclipsing the shared struggle of building a family, whose quiet cost is shared by both women and men.

Women empowerment or feminism has always been a favourite topic of Indians over a cup of tea or informal social get togethers. Predictably, films, advertisements, and streaming content have often waded into this terrain, exploring the manifold challenges women face. Movies like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Pad Man, Queen and Thappad, along with numerous workplace-themed ad campaigns, have addressed issues ranging from domestic violence and sanitation woes to the quiet indignities faced by housewives and the relentless need for spousal approval.


By and large, Indian media has done an admirable job in shining a light on the overlooked intricacies of womanhood. Yet, of late, a noticeable pattern has emerged, particularly in Hindi films and television serials: a singular, almost obsessive focus on how marriage extinguishes a woman's dreams. This narrative of ambition sacrificed at the altar of family has become a trope, if not a trope du jour.


One wonders whether this focus on post-marital female sacrifice becoming overwrought? And why is there so little attention paid to the dreams men relinquish when they step into the labyrinth of family life? Bollywood's market calculus is clear: women make up a major share of the audience, and stories centered on female victimhood are a proven draw. Consider Sukhee (2023), directed by Sonal Joshi and starring Shilpa Shetty, or the daily soap Anupamaa, or Mrs. (2024), a Hindi adaptation of The Great Indian Kitchen. Each pivots around a woman who, having lived a spirited, independent life pre-marriage, finds herself gradually subsumed into the thankless role of family caretaker. Their hobbies and passions wither on the vine, while the male protagonists for not doing enough for the women in the house to be able to pursue their careers or forgotten goals.


It is indeed a tricky situation. Are we getting habitual in conveniently forgetting that regardless of gender, both men and women have dreams they put aside when they struggle for an independent existence without any support with parenthood in tow? Dreams are fragile things, easily bruised by the demands of survival, and parenthood is no less demanding for fathers than it is for mothers. Men, too, forgo ambitions, sublimate hobbies and sacrifice parts of themselves to keep the machinery of family life running smoothly. They may stop singing, painting, even dreaming aloud, but seldom does their silent surrender find its way to the silver screen.


Hobbies do take a back seat, especially the ones that add no value to the upbringing of the children or to the overall ‘betterment’ of the family. Do men not sing? Do they not dance or do they not paint? Are they born to work hard and earn money like robots? This wave of portraying women as the only victims in Indian marriages is getting to be a bit biased when it comes to the argument of who has made more sacrifices.


Raising children, ironically, is no child’s game. For a flawless and efficient execution of daily tasks involved in the process of raising children, either the father or the mother is compelled to take a back seat. It has to be a mutual decision that has no scope for any miscommunication or sour feeling. This is the most practical and viable approach. However, the question remains, who will take a backseat? We are conveniently used to assuming the fact that the women in the family will take a back seat. We do take a back seat, and after reaching a point of saturation, we feel we are the victims. Especially when other women in our social circles are going head in head in their respective careers, we feel even worse. To add to the trauma, Indian films, with their penchant for simplified emotional storytelling, often swoop in to validate that festering sense of injustice, portraying women as inevitable victims of marriage and motherhood. But what if the roles were suddenly reversed - if Indian men volunteered to become house-husbands - how many women, in a society still riddled with notions of male primacy, would readily accept it?


Victimhood, when justified, can be a source of solidarity and strength. But when it becomes a narrative crutch, endlessly replayed, it risks overshadowing the shared humanity, and shared sacrifices, that bind families together. True empowerment lies not in creating new myths of suffering, but in acknowledging the quiet, unglamorous heroism that all caregivers embody, regardless of gender.

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