The Indian Premier League has ushered in the GenNext Cricket, combining entertainment with a compressed form of cricket. The emergence of film stars, liquor kings and newspaper groups as owners of a cricket team has introduced glamour, beer and bias into the game. We sit glued to our TV screens not just in expectation of a good game but to watch Shah Rukh Khan, sway in the stands with his wife, cheering his team. We go to the stadium not just to experience the electric atmosphere as the game progresses but also to drink beer in public supplied generously by our Liquor Legend. Then there is bonus of watching white-skinned young girls shake and jiggle in celebration of the big bucks that have flooded the game. This stamp of public approval on hedonism is perhaps unprecedented and IPL can take full credit for it.
A cause for a different and serious concern is the images of violence that are being conjured up in selling the game. From being heroes and some times zeroes, our cricketers are now being called “goondas” and “villains”. There is the unequivocal declaration, from the billboards all over the city that henceforth there will be no compromise or talks for peace; the only way out for this particular team is War. Then there are other violent images being evoked like the “hunting down” of players in a game of scratch and score promoted by a newspaper group.
Since life is all about imitation, this high-powered verbal violence is bound to have negative effect on people, especially children. Cricket is no longer a game but a war that has to be won at all costs. Even if we no longer believe that cricket is a gentleman’s game, why should it become a Third World War between different teams? If the game being played is a “fight to the finish”, and a “Karma Yuddha”, then there will be a resort to illegal, immoral and violent means to win the “war”.
The violence by fans during soccer, football, hockey, baseball and other contact sports in Europe, Canada and USA tell us that extreme violence is encouraged indirectly by owners of different teams, sponsors and the media, especially the TV, to grab the eyeballs which in turn attract the moolah of ads. Cricket is the latest addition to this list. “Good behaviour” is bad in the TV media corporates’ books. “Bad” people are good for their business. Ergo, bad behaviour is at a premium.
As parents we despair at the violence that is present everywhere we turn: in TV, in films and in cartoon channels, in computer games and of course in news channels. Bombarded by such violent images, will a child not see violence as a means to a goal-a win in a game of sports, in this case? And resort to violence to express anger, frustration and disappointment at a loss in a game?
From another point of view, yet another opiate is being manufactured for the masses in the form of organised sports, the other one being our film industry. Organised sport is the new manifestation of American-style capitalism in which it rouses nationalistic, militaristic and in Indian context perhaps even regional passions. Alongside, every other social problem is pushed under the carpet while every minute detail of rich and the privileged personalities and the tinsel celebrities associated with the game as sponsors and owners are lapped up by the salivating masses. It is immoral to convert the love of millions of Indians, for cricket, into a passion, arousing negative emotions. Let the fun in cricket remain fun rather than convert it into a “war minus the shooting” as George Orwell said.
