Hyderabad: The London 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Saina Nehwal claimed that Indian cricketer Jasprit Bumrah won’t be able to handle her smash. She also lamented the fact that other sports apart from cricket should be given importance as well.
A few days back Kolkata Knight Riders’ Angkrish Raghuvanshi had mocked Saina. He came under heavy scrutiny for his now-deleted tweet. In an indirect response to Raghvanshi's comments, the 34-year-old jokingly said that Bumrah won’t be able to handle her smash.
"How will you become Virat at that level? How will you become Rohit Sharma? So many players have to become like them. They can't. Only a few of them are like that. But I just feel that it's more of a skill-based sport. And bowlers, I agree. I won't die there. Why would I face Jasprit Bumrah anyway? If I had been playing for 8 years, maybe I would have answered Jasprit Bumrah," Nehwal commented on Shubhankar Mishra's podcast.
She also added that there shouldn’t be any fight around these things in the country.
"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. 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," the 2012 London Olympics bronze medallist added.
Saina had earlier triggered a discussion on social media when she claimed that sports like badminton and tennis are physically tougher than cricket. "If you see, badminton, basketball, tennis, and of course other sports are so tough physically. You don't even have time to pick up the shuttle serve, you're like 20 seconds of running, and you're just breathing so hard. A game like cricket gets the kind of attention where I think personal skills are more important than stamina or agility. That game (cricket) gets so much attention and why not other sports?" Saina said on the Nikhil Simha podcast.
"The other sports are so tough. Imagine players getting injured every second day, then performing. You don't know Satwik (Rankireddy), and Chirag (Shetty), who won the Thailand Open, every day they have issues here and there, putting tapes and playing and winning for the country. These kinds of athletes should be celebrated like the cricketers as well," she added.
