16 yr old Indian girl defeats Malaysia and Japan to become Asia’s Champion

We often mourn the bad conditions of Indian sports. We get upset when Indian athletes fail to fetch medals from the Olympics. In the summer Olympics 2016, India clinched barely 2 medals while neighboring China 70. Our country stood at 67th position on the medal table.

16 year old Muskan holding Gold Medal (Photo: Facebook)

The question is why does our nation display poor performances at International level? Are our athletes not good enough to compete at global level? Do they lack ability in grabbing medals in big events abroad?

We first need to understand that India has no dearth of talent? In every nook and corner of the nation, there are hidden natural talents? They have the unparalleled capacity to compete with all global counterparts anywhere in the world. But unfortunately they lack in two major aspects-

  1. A platform where they can showcase their skill
  2. Support from us local people.

If the two are provided to our sportspersons, they will always get the upper hand everywhere they go. Let us now focus on a 16-year-old brilliant girl, who has made the whole country proud by clinching a Gold Medal in Asia Cup Archery in Thailand. Her name is Muskan Kirar and she hails from Jabalpur- an eastern district of Madhya Pradesh.

Her father works at a shop and barely manages to make ends meet. When the news of her becoming Asia’s Champion flew in, he was just working at the store as usual, he jumped up in excitement. He was super happy to know that his daughter had dominated whole Asia, by defeating Japan and Malaysia in the tightly contested semis and the final respectively.

This is indeed a big achievement for the nation. However, because archery is no cricket, Indian media is not paying enough attention to her feat. Not just cricket, We need to support all sports equally in India and then it will flourish.

Mrityunjay Chaubey is the editor in chief at The Youth. He hails from Indore. Before The Youth, He worked for Indian Defence News as a columnist and was a reporter at two other sports portals.