Sports India

Whom do you root for? A sports personality or a person from tinsel town. A rather debatable subject. To feel the pulse of those who support either of them and at a time when cricketers’ popularity rivals that of cine stars. The Mylapore Club, as part of its centenary year celebrations, conducted a Pattimandram at Narada Gana Sabha in Chennai yesterday.

The theme of the debate was ‘ Whom do people support - Sportspersons or Cine Stars’. The team which spoke for sportspersons had K Srikkanth and L Sivaramakrishnan, cricketers, and Nirmal Shekhar, a scribe.

The strange fact was that the club couldn’t find any sportsperson other than cricketers to represent the team. But in a country which rates Indian cricket team’s victory over Bangladesh higher than a Olympic silver medal performance by Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, the club cannot be blamed for its act.

Though the club has been conducting various sports events apart from cricket, when it comes to seeking public attention they have played safe, by bringing in cricketers.

The show was full of enthusiasm with drama artiste Y Gee Mahendran, who spoke for the cine stars, making humorous remarks on cricketers which enthralled the audience. L Sivaramakrishanan pointed out that Brylcreem advertisement was first modeled by Farooq Engineer, former wicketkeeper, and added that he was preferred over other cine stars even in those days. Baski said Amitabh, even at this age was able to attract fans which many cricketers couldn’t. Srikkanth mentioned that there are no possibilities of retakes in cricket as in cinema and that makes the game tougher. Mahendran countered it well with an answer ‘ There are no such retakes in stage dramas’.

Mohan V Raman said women, who form a major part of the TV audience, prefer serials to cricket matches. Nirmal Shekar argued that Sachin Tendulkar could sell a product throughout India whereas a Tamil film star cannot.

A R S, the judge for the Pattimandram concluded the debate on expected lines, stating that both cine stars and sportspersons are equally popular.

The function also drew a good number of audience despite the fact that it was a Sunday morning.

A lucky dip was also held and C K Nagesh, veteran actor, gave away the prizes.

From the entertainment point of view, the show was a perfect treat for all those present. But realistically let us take more initiatives in developing or in other words promoting sports apart from cricket.

Sania Mirza, Narain Karthikeyan and Vishwananthan Anand were the few lucky ones on whom the panelists showed some interest apart from cricketers. The fact that none of the panelists cared to talk about hockey, our national sport was highly- disappointing.