India's top woman shuttler Aparna Popat blasted criticsprojecting badminton in a negative light and said this tendency, along with lackof sufficient media coverage, would ruin the game in the country.
The national champion said more media coverage andpublicity was needed to attract more youngsters into the game "which leadsto finding more talent and one can build it from there". She warned thegame would "fall apart and die very soon" if one did not cut down onprojecting the sport in a negative light.
"First of all, the way the game is handled is veryimportant. It's the people who project the game in such a negative light",the only Indian shuttler to get direct entry to the Athens Olympics said whenasked what needed to be done to give a boost to the game.
Advertisement
"It is not so bad. Badminton isn't performing sobadly as has been projected in the last one-and-half years. If we can paint apositive picture about the game, more sponsors will come and players willbenefit".
Slamming critics who said India's top shuttlers havenot played to their potential in international tournaments in the lastone-and-half years, Aparna said such comments were not only unwarranted but alsomade without taking the entire picture into account.
"I think that's a very unfair comment to make.Unless one sees the entire picture, it's extremely unfair to the players. Yes,you can say that we are going for exposure trips (playing matches abroad). Buthow do you explain my world ranking of 23? How do you explain six or sevenIndian players being in the top 100 in the world?
Advertisement
"You play 15 tournaments in a year. You don't have time to prepare. You runinto top players in the first round... sometimes conditions are not favourable.This (criticism) is something that puts the players down," Aparna said.
"Comments like these are unwarranted. Instead ofencouraging players, you can't put them down. If you are doing that, you aregoing to hamper the motivation of players, and it's going to be worse."
Asked if cricket was "killing" other games inIndia, she said "Cricket is extremely popular in India. I would not like tocompare it with other sports because there is no comparison. But probably Iwould like to congratulate people who handle the game (cricket). The packagingis so excellent".
Even badmintion players, instead of getting angry atcricketers bagging lucrative sponsorship deals, sit and watch cricket, she said.
"Like us (badminton players) who should be angrywith cricket and saying you (cricketers) are taking away all this.... even wesit and watch cricket. I for one love to watch cricket. So, who do we have toblame and who should we be pointing fingers at?," Aparna asked.
PTI
