Saina Nehwal, being second best won't cut it for India
August 16, 2015 had to be a red-letter day for sports in India. The day after the country celebrated its 69th Independence Day with much fanfare, all attention was fixated on the final of the World Badminton Championships, with our very own Saina Nehwal on the cusp of a rare achievement - winning gold at the showpiece event. She had already scripted history by being the first Indian shuttler to reach the final of the World Championships, but could she cross that last hurdle was the million dollar question. Her legion of fans hoped she could, and so did every sports lover in the country.
As it turned out, Saina could not, going down to world number one Carolina Marin. Saina came second best to her Spanish competitor again, after her defeat in the final of the prestigious All England Championships, earlier this year. Her loss on Sunday notwithstanding, she is being hailed for her performance at the World Championships. Winning silver at such a high profile tournament, featuring the best in the business, is no mean feat, people have averred. So what if she has been settling for less than the best? For a nation where sporting glories are few and far between, a silver medal in the World Badminton Championships, more so when it had not been achieved before, is a cause for unbridled joy.
Some of us thought Saina was a winner whatever happened at the World Championships final. She perhaps is. Indeed, after Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand, Saina is without a doubt, the best shuttler India has produced and has been a symbol of what our daughters are capable of.
Also, sports is perhaps not always about winning matches, but about winning hearts. I am immediately reminded here of the legendary Brazilian football team in the World Cup of 1982 that earned a firm place in the hearts of the football connoisseur, even though it didn't win the tournament. Winning and losing matches only matter to the statistician, and the ultimate goal of every sportsperson is to entertain, some would say. True, this argument has some merit, but to say winning does not matter at all is a bit naive.
Hence, it was important for Saina to win on Sunday. If she's that good, she must start winning some major tournaments now, otherwise what good is all her hard work? However, as much as Saina deserved plaudits for her efforts, how easily we were satisfied was a bit surprising. Are we, as a country, happy with being less than the best? When Saina won bronze at the Olympics in 2012, we celebrated as if she had won gold; for us it didn't matter that she couldn't be the "best" at the All England Championships or the World Championships, it was good enough that she came second in both tournaments. It is the choice between "best" and "good enough" that a community has to make, and that decides if it is successful or not.
Indeed, nothing worthwhile can be achieved without ambition and if we start to be satisfied easily, we can never be the best. How long will we pat ourselves meekly after every defeat, and say, "tough luck, the opponent was better on the day"? Some of the congratulatory messages for Saina on Twitter after the World Championships final, were precisely on these lines, one of them being by the legendary former Indian cricketer Anil Kumble.
Displaying sportsman spirit and giving credit to the opposition is fine, but why can't we be the better player/team on a given day? There was a phase in the history of Indian cricket when we used to proudly announce that we were second best to Australia, as if it was the greatest title we could ever have. We were more than happy to be the best of the rest, even if we were eons away from being the best that there was. So when India was beaten black and blue by Australia in the World Cup final in 2003, we were sad, but "understood" we were never quite in the same league as our opponents. We were just happy that we made the final of the World Cup, having notched up some good wins on the way. Rahul Dravid, who played that match, still maintains that we lost to a better team and that there is no shame in that. For all the respect I have for Dravid, his words are akin to paying obeisance to your rivals. No match can be won with such a pusillanimous attitude.
What Dravid should have rather acknowledged was a lack of application by the Indian bowlers that cost us the match that day. The Australians were not intrinsically superior; it was just that they did the simple things better - nothing that was beyond the capability of the Indians. The same thing happened in the World Cup of 2015, and fans and experts sang paeans to the Indian team that won seven matches on-the-trot (that included those against lesser teams like Zimbabwe, Ireland, UAE and Bangladesh), and their hammering at the hands of Australia in the semi-final was forgiven and forgotten, not once conceding that the wayward bowling by Umesh Yadav and company let the Australians run away with the match.
The Indian cricketers need to realise, as does Saina Nehwal, that after a point of time, it is no good being the second best. When you see the Chinese and the Americans winning truckloads of, not just medals, but gold medals in major sports events like the Olympics, you wonder how they manage to do so, while the Indians keep banging their heads in vain, and you realise that it is, to a large extent, about the mindset. It is this mindset of being satisfied with crumbs that has been the bane for Indians, and this needs to change. For the time being, I would not go overboard with joy at the performance of Saina Nehwal at the World Championships.