Last week India was defeated by Pakistan, rather convincingly, in the finals of cricket Champion’s Trophy held in England. The whole country was embarrassed and depressed. It’s amazing how one match could pull the morale down of a whole nation of 1.25 billion people. Thousands of stories were made and articles written, the media space and the social media was cluttered, and so was the mind space, with what I call the autopsy of the match.

Apart from this significant loss, this day was rather a good one for Indian sports. The India hockey team demolished Pakistan, 7-1, in the Hockey World League Semi-Finals in London around the same time, not very far from the Oval cricket ground where the Champion’s Trophy finals took place. The lionhearted that evening weren’t the Dhonis or the Virat Kohlis but—to many Indians these names won’t even ring a bell—were Akashdeep Singh, Harmanpreet Singh and Talwinder Singh.

And not to forget Kidambi Srikanth, the ace shuttler, who won the Indonesia Open humbling the Japanese Kazumasa Sakai in straight games.

But these glorious achievements were relegated to inner pages of the newspapers or made a passing reference to by the news channels because media was rather convinced and consumed to lead the nation to mourn loss of a cricket match to Pakistan. It had become an issue of pride and hurt nationalistic sentiments. When politics enters into sports arena, it always is a bad news.

India is fascinated by the game of cricket, is played in every park, street or backyard of this country. And this is not new or peculiar to India. The Europeans for instance are rather paranoid about football. The money and adulation—cult following—footballers have in Europe and rest of the world will humble the Virat Kholis and the Tendulkars of cricket.

But the point that needs to be made here is simple. European fascination with football hasn’t given a dead blow to other sports. Adulation for a sport has not been at the cost of other sports. And that’s why European countries are leaders in various disciplines of sports, not just  football , but also hockey, tennis to name a few.

For instance, in 2016 Rio Olympics the European Union (EU) as a whole won 81 gold medals, 76 silver medals and 76 bronze medals nearly 2.5 times of what US had won and four times higher than China.

Also, to bring things in perspective, the population of EU is 743 million and India is 1250 million, and the latter won a silver medal and a bronze medal in the Rio Olympics.

Apart from few prodigies and individual cases of exceptional talent, India’s claim to fame in the world of sports is fairly limited. Some accuse us for celebrating mediocrity. India’s overt fascination for a particular sport—cricket—has not only been at the cost of other sports. But it also acts as a cover to hide slackness, corruption, mismanagement and overt politicization of sports.

We at STAIRS are committed to talent scout at the nursery, at the grassroots, hidden away in the heat and dust of this great nation of exceptional talent and skills, hone it enough to do justice to their inherent potential. And as they say, rest will follow. The ‘rest’ definitely includes Olympic medals.