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What’s the story?
Earlier today, Saina Nehwal took on World No. 1 Tai Tzu Ying in the final of the Indonesian Masters. While the Indian ace could not win the match, many sitting at home in front of their TV sets were left ruing as none of the networks broadcasted the match.
Indian shuttler HS Prannoy, who too was hoping to catch the action on TV, took to Twitter to express his anger regarding the situation.
In case you didn’t know…
Saina Nehwal displayed terrific form in the recently concluded Indonesian Masters, making it to the final. It was her first final match of any tournament in over one year. On the way, she had overcome the challenges of fellow compatriot PV Sindhu in the quarters and World No. 4 Ratchanok Intanon in the semi-finals. However, she lost to Tai Tzu Ying, 9-21, 13-21, in the final.
The heart of the matter
Many people on Twitter praised the Saina for her exploits in Indonesia. However, Prannoy was not too happy with the fact that the match was not being telecasted on TV.
At first, he asked his followers if the match was being shown on any channel and where he could follow it.
On being informed that none of the channels was showing the match and cricket was being telecasted in most of the channels, he vented his ire on the social networking platform, using the hashtag, ‘#onlycricket’.
Generally, the Star Sports Network broadcasts the badminton tournaments around the world, especially when the likes of Saina, PV Sindhu or Kidambi Srikanth are in action. However, as was confirmed by a source earlier this week, none of the networks had acquired the rights and hence there was no broadcast.
What’s next?
The India Open is scheduled to be held from next week in New Delhi. It remains to be seen if any of the channels take the initiative of acquiring the rights of the tournament.
Author’s take
It was indeed shocking that none of the channels broadcasted such an important tournament. The popularity of badminton, as a spectator sport, has been on the rise in the country ever since Sindhu’s brilliant performance at the Rio Olympics back in 2016. The various TV networks should do a better job at telecasting the sport instead of telecasting the IPL Auctions of four different channels.
