Narain Karthikeyan vs. Sania Mirza

This post is dedicated to one issue which I believe should be discussed in many forums in concern to its importance. Yesterday I was looking at Times of India where I read that Sania Mirza has been signed by Deutsche Bank as the Brand Ambassador for promoting its retail banking product since Deutsche Bank was operating in India only in the Corporate Banking space. Daily if one watches the television you can spot number of ads featuring Sania Mirza but is there a single ad which features Narain Karthikeyan. Leave alone ads. Think about other recognition.

Sania Mirza recently got the Padmashree.If we look at the statistics Rahul Dravid even after being in the Indian Cricket Team for more than 7-8 Years got the Padmashree only in the year 2004. We all know what has been the contibution of Rahul Dravid to the Indian Cricket and what he is to the Indian Cricket team.

Now look at one sport which is not very popular in India. Formula 1. This sport considered to be the hobby of only the elite class and was till a few years back not even seen widely on television is now a raging sport amongst the youth of the country. Infact Chandra Babu Naidu ex chiefminister of AP had a proposal to come out with the Formula 1 Track in Hyderabad. Our only image in Formula 1 amongst 1 billion people considering the past and the present records is Narain Karthikeyan. Till date he is the only driver from our subcontinent to break into the elite league of Formula 1 considered to be one of the costliest sport in the world. But no one not even media bothered to cover it in a very proper manner. The way hype has been created about Sania I believe not even 10 % of the hype was created for Narain. We all know how important is media for the growth of anything in this world. If media publishes wrong information about any company or some kind of news than the company's stock price will go for a toss. Similar is the case with the sports person also. Any news however small if hyped considerably can really make a person god within few hours thanks to the ever increasing influence of media in our life.

Does the fete of Narain Karthikeyan any less than the fete accomplished by Sania Mirza or is it that people do not want to recognize some sports as Cricket gets a lot more priority over any other sport in the country. Very recently Narain Karthikeyan was also signed up by William the team of stalwarts like Montoya and Ralf once upon a time as a reserve driver. This is not a small feat.

I think its high time the media recognizes the importance of every sport and does not brush away any sport which does not spot glamour in it. We also need to remember that with formula 1 we have one of the biggest corporate house's TATA's name associated.