Dubai: P.V.Sindhu, the reigning women’s world badminton champion from India, will have to wait to convert her Olympics silver medal from Rio Olympics to gold for more than a year after the postponement of Tokyo 2020 - but she has taken it in her stride well. She plays a leading role in a video campaign by as many as 20 leading and young sportspersons of the country for joining hands together and staying positive to beat the coronavirus pandemic, which has now made inroads in India.
Titled ‘Ummeed se Zindagi’ (loosely faith in life), the peppy song features the sportspersons - cutting across sports from cricket to billiards to Olympics disciplines like badminton, shooting and boxing - first humming the lines and then sends the message of hope and need to stay united in the big fight. Conceived by Baseline Ventures, a Delhi-based sports marketing company which handles their portfolios, the song’s lyrics are by Bollywood playback singer Palak Muchhal while it’s sung by Palak and her younger brother Palash Muchhal.
‘‘It (the pandemic) is a test for humanity. We are in it together and we will beat it together,’’ says the Hyderabad-based Sindhu in the video. After returning from All England in Birmingham earlier this month, Sindhu has self quarantined herself at home - staying away from her usual demanding routine of an early morning start for physical training and practice at the Gopichand Academy - which has also been shut during the lockdown of India.
Trying to do her bit, Sindhu has donated Rs 500,000 each to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund for both states of Telegana and Andhra Pradesh. In a tweet in her mother tongue Telegu for the people of her state, the champion asked everyone to take the lockdown seriously and to follow the thumbrule of sanitising and maintaining social distancing as a way of life.
The other sportspersons who are a part of the campaign are: Kidambi Srikanth (badminton), Bhubaneswar Kumar, Prithvi Shaw, Rahul Chahar, Smriti Mandhana, Jemima Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Radha Yadav (cricket), Sardar Singh (hockey), Apurvi Chandela, Saurabh Chaudhary (shooter), Deepika Kumari, Atanu Das (archer), Saurav Ghoshal (squash), Pankaj Advani (billiards & snooker), Arjun Maini (motorsport), G.Sathiyan (table tennis), Amit Panghal and Nikhat Zareen (boxing).
