‘Jasprit Bumrah won’t be able to take my 300kmph smash’: Saina Nehwal’s fiery reply days after KKR youth’s deleted tweet
A month ago, Kolkata Knight Riders’ rising sensation, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, took a brutal dig at the ace shuttler Saina Nehwal with a “Jasprit Bumrah” tweet, which he later deleted amid backlash. Albeit not in direct response to that social media reaction, Nehwal came up with a similar and fiery response when asked in a recent interview about how risky the game of cricket is. Nehwal’s response came in the wake of a rather heartbreaking performance at the Paris Olympics, where India won six medals—one silver and five bronze—amid six fourth-place finishes, and the 2012 bronze medallist in badminton called for more support and facilities for non-cricket sports.
Speaking on the Nikhil Simha podcast in July, Nehwal went on a rant against the popularity of cricket in the country, despite it being a far less challenging sport than badminton, basketball, and tennis, among others. Sharing a clip of that remark, Raghuvanshi tweeted, “Let’s see how she goes when Bumrah bowls 150k’s bumpers at her head.” Although he did delete the post shortly after, the screenshots of that tweet had gone viral on social media.
On Saturday, during an interaction on Shubhankar Mishra’s podcast, the anchor made a remark saying, “cricket is a risky sport unlike badminton,” but Nehwal contradicted the notion saying that no one picks up a sport depending on how dangerous it is. She then explained that just like she won’t be able to face Bumrah without proper training, the cricketer would also not be able to take on a 300kmph smash from her in a game of badminton.
“Why would I face Jasprit Bumrah anyways? If I had been playing for 8 years maybe I would have answered Jasprit Bumrah,” Nehwal said
“If Jasprit Bumrah plays badminton with me maybe he won’t be able to take my smash. We should not fight with ourselves in our own country for these things. That’s what I want to say (earlier). Every sport is best in its place. But I want to say, give value to other sports as well. Otherwise, where will we get sporting culture from? And cricket, Bollywood will always be our focus,” she added.
Nehwal said that if every other sport was given the same support and facilities as cricket, athletes would excel at the global level and win more medals in the Olympics.
“How many badminton academies do we have? (And then) think about how many in cricket…If that many academies are there (for badminton), best facilities, why won’t we get quality players,” she said.
