Olympics 2024: Prakash Padukone and Sunil Gavaksar© Twitter
The Indian badminton contingent did not win a single medal at the Paris Olympics 2024 with Lakshya Sen coming close but failing to win his men's singles bronze medal match against Lee Zii Jia. Badminton legend Prakash Padukone, who was the coach and mentor of the badminton team at the Paris Olympics, was extremely disappointed with the showing and after Lakshya's loss, he said that it was "high time the players step up and win as expected". The comments resulted in quite a bit of criticism for Padukone with Ashwini Ponnappa coming up with a fiery reply. However, former Indian cricket team batter Sunil Gavaskar has come to Padukone's defence. In his column for Sportstar, Gavaskar said that "making excuses" has become a habit of the country and that resulted in the criticism of a legend like Padukone.
"Making excuses is where our country will win gold medals every single time, so the debate around his assessment was more about that than looking without tinted glasses at what he said," Gavaskar wrote.
Gavaskar further added that the players have a lot of support from the government at present and he agrees with Padukone's statement that players should take responsibility for the defeats.
"And what did he say? He said that the players today get all the backing and facilities from their Federations and the government too. Therefore, they should take responsibility for their performances too. It was a point well-made and well-articulated too, without pointing fingers at anybody."
"Yet as it invariably happens in our country, which again is a champion at reading between so-called lines and imagining unintended poisoned arrows, we were quick to jump on him and denounce his comments rather than take the time to digest them and then come out with our comparatively uninformed views."
"If a player is not going to take responsibility for his performance, then who is? So what wrong did he say? Some say the timing was wrong, but it's always better to say that when a player is searching for excuses and support rather than later. Yes, he could have said that privately in the changing room, but believe me, nothing has more impact on a player than a public rebuke."
"If he has the heart of a champion, then he will want to make the person who rebuked him eat his words. Otherwise, he will continue to flatter only to deceive," the former Indian cricket team skipper added.