Boria Majumdar in Dubai
As we wrap our heads around what finally happened in the Asia Cup, the RevSportz journey continues unabated. India start their campaign in the women’s World Cup today and Trisha Ghosal and Snehasis Mukherjee are in Guwahati to bring us every detail of the competition. It is a massive event for the sport and deserves proper coverage.
Is there no break then? Can’t people recharge? Shouldn’t people get days off to recalibrate? The answers to all of these questions is YES. As the Dubai team reached India and got time to settle back in, others will now take control. Shamik Chakrabarty will lead the Test match coverage from Ahmedabad and make sure the intensity doesn’t drop. As I have already said, the women’s World Cup is massive for us and we will be there every game, documenting India’s journey.
The World Para Championships in Delhi is already underway and we will have a very strong ground presence with Rohan Chowdhury and Gargi Raut leading the coverage.
It is not an imposition. Never was and never can be. Every organisation will have their compulsions on what sport to cover. Why? Budgets are always an issue and I am conscious of it. But then, there is also the issue of responsibility. We, the sports media fraternity of the country, are the collective voice of sport. Unless we cover all events and do that well, how will the ecosystem grow? And that’s where RevSportz is committed to making a difference.
Coming back to the Asia Cup, I don’t think I have ever covered anything like it before. This was as much political as it was sport. Yet again it proved beyond doubt that sports and politics are bedfellows. You can’t separate the two and that is the reality. From disrespectful celebrations to the president of the Asian Cricket Council putting out multiple tweets forgetting the dignity of the chair, the Asia Cup had it all. But then, none of us could foresee the end. None of us could ever imagine that a tournament would end without the trophy being given! In fact, when I was called in the middle of the live show and told that Mohsin Naqvi and his men had left with the trophy, I couldn’t believe it. What would he achieve by doing so? Is this going to hurt India or hurt himself? Were his actions justified? Was he playing only and only to his domestic constituency?
We still don’t know what’s happening with the trophy. Will it stay with the ACC or will it be sent to India? How will the ICC handle the whole situation and will things degenerate further into an all out diplomatic war in the next month or so?
As I spend my last two days here, it is time for a break. It is my father’s 25th death anniversary and it is time to switch off for a couple of days. With Sharmistha and Aisha here in Dubai, it is the best way to spend some quiet downtime. But that doesn’t mean I will not be working. The story doesn’t break depending on anyone’s availability and for a sports media person, you do need to break the story downtime or not.
We have chosen this profession, each one of us, and we will live by it. The profession deserves respect and unlike Mohsin Naqvi, we know how to conduct ourselves and what we need to do. For the moment, though, someone should do a book on this Asia Cup. The twists, intrigue, political machinations, plain clownery and more. No one can match this script and it was real and not reel. Sport keeps teaching us lessons and this was yet another example of that.
Follow Revsportz for latest sports news