Unsporting media

India's future in sport lies in indoor games such as badminton or table tennis

Before the current crop of big achievers came in, badminton did not get wide publicity in the media. One exceptional phase, of course, was when Prakash Padukone won the All England Championship in 1980 and a string of other major victories, including at the Commonwealth Games in the late 1970s. For this burst of stupendous success, Sunil Gavaskar called him India’s “greatest sports personality ever”. Then we had to wait more than 20 years for our next big success in the game to happen — P Gopichand in 2001, again All England — and now we get to hear a