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What's the story?
In a recent development that has brought the spotlight back on the sad state of affairs of Indian sports, professional squash player Kush Kumar took to Twitter to appeal to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for help as he claims he currently has no support to play for the state and the country.
In the tweet, Kumar also presented his credentials as the 2014 Asian Games and 2015 South Asian Federation gold medalist.
In case you didn't know...
Kush Kumar, who started out as a swimmer before taking up the racquet, was hailed as an emerging talent from India in the squash circuit till only two years ago when he had breached into the top 100 PSA rankings before lack of proper facilities brought it down to a lowly 150.
He even bagged bronze at 2014 Men's World Junior Squash Championships, showing signs of a great future. In July 2015, Kumar won the first career PSA World Tour title at the City of Devonport Tasmanian Open.
Things, however, started going downhill for him there on.
The heart of the matter
Kumar's Twitter appeal revealed the state of sports in India where only some of the games and people playing it are prospering while individuals with humongous amounts of talent and potential fall by the side due to lack of proper support and facilities.
In fact, this is not the first such instance within squash fraternity where a talented sportsperson had to plead to authorities for support.
Hailing from Kumar's city Dhampur, former Asian Junior Champion, Ravi Dixit created headlines in 2016 when he wanted to auction his kidney, in order to play the Asian Senior Championship that year.
Talking about what led him to take such a drastic decision, Dixit had then revealed to a Sportskeeda correspondent about the expensive nature of the sport where he revealed it took him around Rs 10-12 lakhs to attend tournaments in a year. For a tournament in Asia, about Rs 60,00 – Rs 70,000, for a tournament in Europe, more than Rs 1 lakh and in the USA, about two lakhs.
What's next?
The onus is now on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister's Office to take note of the plea and come out in support of Kush Kumar and save the 21-year old's career from getting nipped in the bud.
Author's Take
We quite often see such stories come out, players who give their all for the nation and win medals are neglected to such an extent that they can't even fund their participation in state level tournaments.
The government should take necessary steps to ensure that players' present and future remain secure and they don't have to make their plea public.
