Ever heard of Dhyan Chand, Leander Paes, Milkha Singh, Kunjurani Devi, Vishwanathan Anand, P T Usha, Michael Ferrera, Zafar Iqbal, Merwyn D'Souza, Shiny Abraham etc.
Give them and others one tenth of the support that cricket gets, they will give back stupendous returns.
Cricket thrives because as a nation we get a rallying point to beat our neighbours. It is played as a nation. It is always India vs. Pakistan or India vs. Australia. Football could not thrive simply because Pakistan never had a football team. But hockey had. And hockey lost out because of giant idiots at the helm of its affairs who thought they could revive hockey through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while what the team wanted was full scale nutrition.
And is it not curious that we never did well in squash while Pakistan had World champions.
India, on the other hand, did "relatively" well in athletics, but unfortunately athletics does not stir our "patriotic" , or to be more accurate "jingoistic" zeal. After all, eight athletes in eight different lanes is hardly a "war". Win or lose, how does it matter. Oh, polite clapping will always be there. Remember the reception V Anand - received after he became the World Champion. contrast that with the welcome the Indian T20 got after their World Cup win.
Truly, we do not know how to respect our valiant achievers. Whether it be in sports or in war. Simple.
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