The moment of my life occured when I was out for a duck in the interschool cricket match finals. Then I started brooding over my selection of dream but not on the mistake that I did in batting.
More than the pain of failure or the fact that all my hardwork was in vain I started wondering about a point "If this is the amount of hardwork required to play amongst 10 nations roughly then imagine the level of hardwork to be done to be best among 211 nations".This point bought me a million dollar question mark of my life, which now turned into a question mark for millions of Indians and this made me turn into a national footballer from an ordinary cricketer, as my love for the game made me work harder but the irony is I've been still riduculously questioned "Does Indian football team exist?",
This dilemma among the people who are non sports followers or yeah, immense cricket addicts whom I've noticed asking this question got a sure shot answer that became a trend recently. After our football team captain Sunil Chettri pleaded our football fans to support them and fill the stands of the stadium in Mumbai for the intercontinental cup and the irony is he is the worlds second top scorer after Christiano Ronaldo in international matches after surpassing Lionel Messi. But why majority of the people aren't aware of it , why?? Ok let it be. As it comes under the part of an individual stats Indian football team has extended their unbeaten streak to 13 thus maintaining their number one position in the list of most number of consecutive days spent without losing a match in international football. This record is for active unbeaten streaks only. Incidentally, India is ahead of Germany and Belgium in terms of most number of days that they have spent with this unbeaten record but only 30% of the population are aware of it ???And the bitter truth is half of these 13 matches weren't live . We are just ready to answer how politicians looting our money through their scams, but why are we not answerable to the each and every rupee spent on Indian football or any other sport. Isn't it worthy enough having these proofs ,will this not be a scam??
Now comes the most important thing the battle on the bridge."The media and people",sadly I've been through many people who show their love for football and can just tell in one flow the squads of clubs like Real Madrid,Barcelona,Manchester United but if I would ask them who is Gurupreet Singh Sandhu they give a question mark grimace because we aren't aware of our country's stars but I'm happy about these people because of their love towards the sport, because an Indian fan of football should forgo a good night sleep to watch these matches. This definitely means alot of love for the sport!!!
The media now will telecast the breaking news of the cricket player's rumoured affair at a stretch but why not a football legend who've struggled hard for his team which used to be in the 164th place to 97th place according to the fifa rankings announced on the same day? And ofcourse you may use the age old phrase that media reports what people want to see but I would want to ask is that what journalism is all about?
So inorder to become a trend irrespective of the person whom he is,should plead for the support and the people who are die hard indian football fans like me should be always prooving that Indian football team exists??
In the country of football history of more than 50 hundred year old clubs and commercial leagues like ISL organized by the reliance foundation is still struggling to make awareness among the people??Then how long does it take for India to reach the world cup.
Now the word "trend" made me write this article because the support for the Indian Football Team has emerged through this word in the social media. But yes apart from all the negatives it is not late to extend our support because we've set a platform which is eligible to give support as the team is really improving day by day .
But the most important thing is publicity or trend are just like rocks of support but awareness is like a sculpture of support.
To all those who think Indians will not ever love football as much as cricket Indian football fans broke the record in the history of under 17 football world cup attendance by filling out the stands in the football maniac city ,kolkata , salt lake stadium having a capacity of one lakh spectators, the tickets are well sold out in advance but on the match day they were sold four times the actual rate of the ticket as the base price and they were sold out like hot cakes!!Beware the days when we'll watch our country playing in the world cup will be approaching very soon.
By Harsha Pavan
Bio:
Position: Goalkeeper
1.Represented anits college in the AU inter college tournament and reached finals for the first time in the history of anits.
2. Represented Andhra University at the south zone inter university tournament twice.
3.Represented Visakhapatnam Port Trust at the All India Major Ports tournament and Visakhapatnam District Football league
