TheSportsCampus

Marking an important occasion for sports, Sports Journalists Association of Mumbai and Vicks came together to launch India's first sports anthem titled Cheer for Champions. The anthem was formally released by senior sports journalists Mr. Ayaz Memon and Mr. Chandrashekar Sant.

This first of its kind sports anthem, has been put together with Vicks reaching out across India to collect cheers and lyrics for India's First Sports anthem. Around 1 crore cheers have been collected through various means. The mission was to unite India and its people to cheer across sports with the mantra "One India, One Voice, One Cheer". In keeping with the concept of being an anthem by the people, it will incorporate visual interpretations which will be another first of its kind. Contributors can put their versions online and the best videos will be picked by the votes received online.

Speaking on this Vicks Spokesperson - Mr. Varun Sharma said, "Vicks is proud to support the launch of India's first sports anthem that will unify Indians throughout our country, across various sporting events. We took the creation of the anthem to the people to come up with lyrics that bind the cheering crowd together, the first for any anthem in the world. We would want the youth and sports lovers in India to create their own visuals and videos for the anthem".

The idea for the anthem stemmed from a research conducted by Tenvic, entitled TenVicks Report: Measuring India's Cheer Quotient amongst sportspersons which broadly indicated that though India is a supportive nation, it lags way behind other nations like Australia and England who are more appreciative and encouraging irrespective of whether the team is winning or losing. Only 14% of the study respondents think that Indians cheer for the team in all situations. The study was commissioned by Vicks and released by a panel of eminent sportspeople Dilip Vengsarkar, Dhanraj Pillay, I.M. Vijayan, Anjum Chopra and Ashwini Ponnappa who came together in a mission to generate crowd support as One India, One Voice, One Cheer.

The anthem has been composed by renowned music composer Ranjit Barot, and sung by Javed Ali (famed for his songs "Nagaada Nagaada" from Jab We Met, "Jashn-E-Bahaara" from Jodhaa Akbar, "Guzarish" from Ghajini, "Arziyan" from Delhi-6). Even our icons from the badminton world feel strongly about the need for a cheer.

Prakash Padukone, India's leading badminton international has quoted, "We need to develop a common anthem across all sporting teams." Former skipper, Anil Kumble has also said, "It is interesting how sometimes we as a team try to push the crowd to kick off some action, in test matches when there isn't much happening. Soon after the crowd comes to life, something inevitably ends up happening. We used to build pressure on opposing teams by driving crowd support actively."

With Cheer for Champions, it will be a dream to hear stadiums come alive and sing in one voice "Dum ko laga India, jam ke laga India"