India’s historic Thomas Cup triumph rules as IPL becomes sideshow-Opinion News , Firstpost

For a few hours, badminton became the national sport. The names of Lakshya Sen, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, Chirag Shetty and Kidambi Srikanth became the names to chant, in a splash of enthusiasm that conquered everything, including the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022. AP

It is not often that cricket is side-tracked on the Indian sporting stage. It takes something of massive proportions on the other sporting platforms for cricket to be made a sideshow. We are of course talking about international or franchise cricket. 15 May, 2022, will go down as one such day. It was the day when the Indian men’s badminton team stepped beyond the horizons of excellence ever achieved in that format, as they knocked out Indonesia, the eternal giants of world badminton, in straight matches to claim the first-ever Thomas Cup title, becoming only the 6^th nation in the world to lift the coveted trophy.

For a few hours, badminton became the national sport. The names of Lakshya Sen, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, Chirag Shetty and Kidambi Srikanth became the names to chant, in a splash of enthusiasm that conquered everything, including the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022.

Quite a feat this, by the Indian lads. Indonesia had won the title 14 times and the other who had their hands on it included the titans of the shuttling sport in China, Malaysia, Japan and Denmark.

India’s performance was phenomenal in the fact that they stopped Malaysia in the quarter-final, followed by Denmark in the semis and then simply waded over Indonesia, once Lakshya Sen had overcome initial hiccups in the first singles and Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy too overcame a first-game loss to overpower their top-ranked rivals, and then Kidambi Srikanth was all class.

As is expected of every success in India, the social media exploded. Tweets and posts ranging from the celebration dance of the Indian squad in Bangkok to the congratulatory tweets from everyone ranging from Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli to Saina Nehwal and Mirabai Chanu were liked and retweeted en masse.

Names like Sunil Chhetri, Viren Rasquinha, Ravi Shastri and Harbhajan Singh in the sporting fraternity to Amitabh Bachchan from showbiz, everyone was ecstatic and kept the handles buzzing. Neeraj Chopra was on Twitter too, as were Achantha Sharath Kamal, Dinesh Karthik, P.T. Usha, Pulella Gopichand and Tapsee Pannu, just to name a few.

Amidst all of this, the IPL continued in Mumbai, approaching the business end as tension among the teams still in the race was rising.

The evening saw a critical game with Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), on second position on the IPL 2022 points table ahead of the match, took on hopefuls Rajasthan Royals (RR).

This was indeed a high-voltage contest, with both the side close to qualifying for the knockout stage and both having suffered losses earlier in the week.

So, needless to say, the stakes were high. But even as the two teams faced off, much of the attention was still being bestowed on the Tomas Cup win.

The times difference between Thailand (where the Thomas Cup was held) and India helped drag some attention back towards the game at hand in the IPL but even there, the distraction was evident.

While the commentators from Australia or New Zealand weren’t quite clued into the magnitude of what was going on in the badminton circles, the Indians, including Sunil Gavaskar (who plays some decent badminton himself) were not short of sharing their exuberance on commentary.

Outside of the IPL too, accolades came thick and fast. The top political leaders congratulated the team, as did the people of the nation.

The badminton squad wasn’t short on celebrating on the social media either. Chirag Shetty had a cheeky query to Air-India’s congratulatory message, while Srikanth was wide awake as sleep eluded him, and he too took to Twitter to share his adrenaline-filled sleepless night.

Events like this are rare. It would take something to the magnitude to Neeraj Chopra’s Olympic gold or PV Sindhu’s silver to make it an event that would take everything away from cricket.

Everything on Sunday was about badminton, even from those who wouldn’t know the dimensions of a badminton court. But then, like all hypes in India, this too will die down.

Or maybe not. Maybe Indian sports will rise time and again and keep this distraction alive, so that all sports get as much attention and respect as cricket does. It is an uphill battle, but not an unworthy one, since even the cricketers themselves don’t grudge their brethren from other events such successes, and we, the ordinary sprots-loving public, will love to be applauding them all.

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