Social media has empowered us to become critiques and opinion builders on anything and everything happening around us. We applaud, we condemn, we criticise everything. But then again, we all restrict ourselves to the internet. We find comfort in being the keyboard warriors. We never consider ourselves as the one who can change the ground reality.

We Indians have complaints that sports can never thrive in the country beyond the prowess of cricket. Even though there are several sports that the country is gaining momentum in, we don’t know about them. And yet, we don’t think twice before we mock our athletes and sportspersons for any defeat they might face. We always blame the authorities. But, have we ever tried making an effort to help our sports revive?

Kabbadi, Football, Swimming, Wrestling, Archery, Ice Hockey, there are numerous sports India plays. But how much do we care about them? How much do we know about the players? How many of us actually follow these games in the same way we follow cricket or European football? Even if we do talk about it, it is only when the team reaches the final of some competition, without any of our support.

Do we, then, have the right to criticise our players for not winning on global platforms like the Olympics when we don’t support them?

Let us stop criticising our players and instead be the pre-activists who bring a positive change for Indian sports. Let us support our athletes from the beginning so that they know the whole country is by their side. Let us invest our time to follow these sports to have a better understanding of the game and create awareness about the different sports so that more people are encouraged to pursue them. It is only then that we can earn the reputation of a major sporting nation going beyond being just a “cricketing” nation.

This short video by Tata Tea urges us to #JaagoRe and be the voice of the sportspersons and make their victory our victory and their loss our loss.