As if Maria Sharapova’s utter ignorance of a sport or, in fact, of a sport-person who plies his trade in a sport not played in her nation, wasn’t enough, the blissful lack of comprehension of a British Airways “bot” who, already facing the wrath of “God” (read customer – Sachin) for misplacing his luggage, was shamelessly slaughtered on the virtual platform by many of His followers just because he asked his name, among other necessary details, for DM.

The religion that is Cricket, which grips the entire nation in its fangs, crosses all borders of fanaticism each time anybody messes with the God, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Blasphemy becomes an understatement as millions annihilate a poor ignorant soul terming him/her/it as a heretic.

And still, as much as the drubbing of the “unenlightened” is hilarious to watch and read for the neutrals, the fact that the eye of the storm raised on something as big and powerful as social media is something as trivial as a sportsperson’s name – albeit a great one, probably even the greatest one – reveals a blatantly uncivil and hypocritical nature of us Indians in general.

India is the second most populous nation in the world. Despite this fact, countries 1/10th the size of us and 1/100th the population of our nation, embarrassingly beat us in more than half the legit sports which are featured in the Olympics. And cricket isn’t one of them. And in sports which we actually are better than the most, we Indians quite sportingly, “remember” all the names of our own athletes or sports-men/women.

What if a foreigner asks us whether we know who is IM Vijayan, or Amjyot Singh, or Vijay Kumar? Do we have an answer to them?

EssentiallySports brings to you names of 12 such ambassadors of Indian Sports, among countless others, who have made us and the country proud, time and again and still haven’t got the spotlight they deserve.