One just had to see the Tri-series in Australia to know why cricket is an unrelenting obsession in India. After a series marred by obnoxious weeds of the human variety, some serious monkey business, foul play and fouler language, India’s young team lugged into the field, the baggage of having been targeted by the Aussie media, booing crowds and unjust umpires who saw and heard things even the TV cameras did not.
Then came the cathartic sigh when Sachin Tendulkar’s bat spoke louder than his critics, inspiring soppy placard messages like, “Thank you for the memories, Sachin.”
Indian and Aussie commentators good-naturedly ribbed each other with, “This could be a movie. Harbhajan comes in to bowl and who are the two players he has to get rid of? Mathew Hayden at one end and Symmonds at the other!” And then finally, memories of a portly Sharad Pawar being hustled away from the victory dais by the Aussie captain faded as Harbhajan Singh screamed out pent up emotion before the cameras during his victory lap.
The cameras, yes, the cameras. Before the unblinking gaze of the TV camera, cricket has slowly become synonymous with national pride. That is the reason why when newspapers splashed on the front page, Indian army’s heroic recapture of a key mountain peak during the Kargil war, they also featured side by side, India’s win over Pakistan in a crucial world-cup match.
Make no mistake. The soldier in his combat gear may be fighting frost-bite, waves of nausea and home-sickness, the fear of death and clinical depression and yet putting his life on the line for us everyday but the man in the blue will always garner more applause, attract more money and evoke more emotion because we can see him lock a defiant gaze with an Andrew Symmonds in the name of national pride.
The emotional investment we make in cricket to the exclusion of everything else is staggering. When was the last time we saw a sport other than cricket being talked about or promoted on television? There is only a token cluck cluck to mourn Indian hockey’s failure to qualify for the Olympics. Vishwanathan Anand may sweep all the top honours in chess, Pankaj Advani may be a world-champion but they will never attract sponsorships or evoke channel wars for telecast rights of their sports because the crowds and the TV cameras are elsewhere. Look what the absence of media support and the lack of money has done to hockey.
Cricket on the other hand is a cash cow getting fatter every minute and every one wants to milk it. From the cricketers to the sponsors to the Television channels to a certain Mr Khan who played a scarred hockey coach looking for redemption in Chak De! India and is now busy buying cricketers to play them against other cricketers much in the vein of Nawabs who groomed roosters to peck and claw at each other in mock life and death battles. Money and hysteria has turned cricket into a potent brew that knocks us all out flat even though there is nothing sporting left about it anymore.
In Olympic medal winning countries, sports are a discipline, a commitment, a way of life. In India, we have no time, money or television bytes to spare for anything other than cricket. And when our cricketers in their sponsored gear, march out in a simulated battle-field, there is only thing that redeems them and us for a minute. The thought that under our assorted skins bristling with petty agendas and animosity against each other’s Gods and regions and languages, we are Indians afterall.
