India Will Win Gold At Making Excuses: Sunil Gavaskar Backs Prakash Padukone Amid Paris Olympics Row
Sunil Gavaskar has backed under-fire Prakash Padukone amid the Paris Olympics 2024 row
After India's badminton contingent ended their campaign at the Paris Olympics 2024 without making an addition to the country's medal tally, Prakash Padukone, former India badminton player, who had been part of the India side's support staff as coach and mentor, stated that the Indian athletes neeed to take up responsibility. His remark came after Lakshya Sen lost the bronze medal match to Malaysia's Lee Zii Jia, an opponent against whom he had a better head-to-head record heading into the fixture.
While not many were pleased with Padukone's criticism with Ashwini Ponnappa even responding by saying that the coach should have taken the blame as well, India's cricket great Sunil Gavaskar has backed underfire badminton legend.
Who Else Is Going To Take Responsibility For The Players' Performance?
"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 in his column for Sportstar.
"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," he added.
"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."
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"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."
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