Birmingham has a very special place for Revsportz. I travelled to Birmingham three times between May and July 2022. The first trip, at the end of May, was to do a recce and record a few build-up shows for the Commonwealth Games. The second was in late June for the one-off Test match between England and India, and the third a fortnight or so later for the Commonwealth Games, which began on July 28. The work we did in Birmingham was the motivation I needed to get back into the zone after the unfair ban was imposed on me in April 2022. There was sporadic abuse on social media, but by June, I had become almost immune to it.
With the political class led by the Prime Minister taking an active interest in the CWG, there was a lot of buzz around the games. It was also the first occasion where fans were allowed in the stands after the Covid-19 pandemic. As a storyteller, who uses sport as a prism to make sense of life, the Commonwealth Games was a great opportunity. India would be watching, and my background and understanding of Olympic sport gave me a head-start. If I was to rediscover my mojo, it would be during that fortnight.
I covered the Commonwealth Games without media accreditation. The process was on between February and April 2022, and with my life almost out of my control at the time, it had slipped my mind. While this was a disadvantage, it was also an opportunity to see if my network was intact, and whether I would able to do stories of the kind I had done in the past. That’s what brings me to P.V. Sindhu in Birmingham. Without access to the mixed zone, I had not met or spoken to her during the event.
An hour and a half after her gold-medal match, she had finished all her routine mixed-zone interactions and also gone through doping control. Most of the journalists had left the badminton hall and moved on to something else. Trisha and I were in the café just outside the venue when Sindhu walked in. She was alone and looking relaxed after winning the final. Seeing me there, she seemed surprised. ‘I could see you in the gallery for all my games, and could hear you shout, but then I did not see you in the mixed zone,’ she said with a smile. ‘You don’t want to interview me?’ she joked. I told her why I had not been in the mixed zone. She heard me out patiently, and said: ‘So, why don’t we do something now?’
Sindhu could sense I was taken aback. She smiled and said something that I remember quite vividly. ‘If we could stay up till 3:10 am in Tokyo to do an interview, and if I could give you my Olympic-medal jersey, I hope you know I will always do whatever I can to help,’ she said.
‘Now, let’s do it immediately, have to attend a number of things soon.’
We recorded the interview with her on the phone, and she was excellent as always. The Commonwealth Games coverage was a massive success and Revsportz was back. So was I. And it was all in Birmingham.
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