Mumbai: Batting legend Sachin Tendulkar gifting BMW cars to Olympic stars PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik, Dipa Karmakar and Pullela needs a slight alteration. It’s not Tendulkar who actually gifted. In fact, as a BMW brand amabasador he just handed over the keys of the cars to four recipients at a function at Gopichand Badminton Academy, Hyderabad.
The maestro did it on behalf of his friend and cricket administrator and president of the Hyderabad Badminton Association, V Chamundeswaranath. It may be recalled that Chamundeswaranath had earlier sponsored a car for the ace shuttler Saina Nehwal on winning a bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, which too presented by Tendulkar, according to news reports in a section of media.
Columnist Shobhaa De though went ahead to take social media platform by storm by tweeting whether Tendulkar had actually paid for the cars. It’s also strange that Tendulkar himself hasn’t clarified on the matter despite media reports suggesting the cars were given by Tendulkars himself.
Under Gopichand’s coaching, PV Sindhu won the silver medal in the Women’s Badminton finals. While Sakshi Malik won a bronze in the Women’s Freestyle 58kg category. Dipa Karmakar missed out on the bronze by a whisker in the Women’s Vault event, were the obvious choice for the felicitation candidates for the year 2016.
Even though it’s not the first instance where the batting legend has felicitated an Olympic medallist, the event was hyped beyond measure as the masses thought the cars were bought by Tendulkar- the brand ambassador of BMW, himself. Whereas in reality, he was merely congratulating the athletes by presenting the keys.