Justification is a just demand

Why such a name of the blog when it talks of cricket in a completely different manner? Well, the name doesn’t suggest an agenda and thus, expectations of unabashed cricket-bashing alone are certain to meet with disappointment. At the same time, the name does underline the author’s viewpoint about the sport and as the author decided that his ‘pearls of wisdom’ should be shared with others i.e he decided to publish these posts on a public forum, this justification or clarification was deemed by him as necessary.

On a lighter note, the blog was created on the author’s behalf by a blogger friend and being the lazy person that the author is, it took him three months to finally post something on it and it so happened that the first or the second post wasn’t really ‘in sync’ with the name! Apologies for the same.

Why such a viewpoint then? First, let me make it very clear that I have nothing against cricket. Like every other Indian, I spent most of my time playing cricket in the neighborhood and in school and even nurtured a dream to play for India for a while. Later I realized that cricket was not really regarded as a sport in India but much more than that. Every second-grade neighborhood all-rounder like me was imitating the mannerisms of Kris Srikkanth or the bowling action of Abdul Qadir with the secret hope that one day the neighborhood ground would be replaced with something bigger and more meaningful. In short, cricket was synonymous with ambitions.

We used to watch football, tennis and even the Olympics. In fact, we used to watch the super-heavyweight title bouts too as and when they happened. As I grew up, I didn’t even realize when the watching habits had changed. Nobody was bothered about watching the athletes showcasing their talent at the greatest show on earth anymore or nobody was perturbed by the country’s glorious past in hockey being degraded on the astro turf and even the naturally gifted footballers in the neighborhood had stopped harbouring dreams of playing for Mohunbagan or East Bengal. They had instead taken to watching NBA and Formula One. When a team comprising of school kids chose NHL (ice hockey) as their favoured topic in an open quiz, it was an eye-opener for me.

Aspirations of making it to the Indian cricket team though were and are still there.

The reasons for such cricket fanaticism are well known and the foremost reason of course is that India failed miserably in all other sports barring cricket in the last 3 decades. But it wasn’t the same always. Agreed, India never produced world class athletes apart from a couple of exceptions in the forms of a Milkha Singh or a PT Usha, who failed to live up to the expectations when the occasions demanded so. But no one needs to be reminded of the Indians’ trickery with the hockey stick and even with the football. Till the 70s, sports were taken seriously and people had a wide array of them to choose from and thus, chose the sport of their choice. Even though results were not immediate and forthcoming, there was no dearth of sincere efforts being put in.

Things started changing from the 80s. Going through the rigours of a daily schedule of a sportsman was not the order of the day anymore, as cricket, pardon me for saying this, didn’t even require its players to do so.

Cricket unlike other sports has always depended on God’s gift (read talent). Thus, pot-bellied icons are commonplace in cricket (Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Inzamam-Ul-Haq, Arjuna Ranatunga, David Boon). And the fact that fitness is never really the top priority, at least in Indian cricket, becomes evident when 22-year-old Rudra Pratap Singh tries to bend down and pick up a ball from the boundary line.

That doesn’t mean that talent does not matter in other sports. But, those sports make sure that their players don’t lag behind as far as other important aspects like fitness or agility are concerned. In cricket though, the rules are different. Thus, one of the icons of modern cricket, Anil Kumble continues to be clueless when it comes to diving or sliding on the field even after spending more than a decade and a half in the international arena!

This I guess suits the Indians. Less work out, less rigour, fables of Gundappa Vishwanath drinking away to glory at night while a Test match was on and more rewards which talent alone could secure. It doesn’t matter if only a handful of countries are aware of the rules of the game and one of them is Bangladesh, the other one is Zimbabwe, the third one is Pakistan and the fourth one is Sri Lanka. Apart from Australia, New Zealand, England and to some extent South Africa, cricket-playing nations are miserable when it comes to other sports.

It doesn’t matter because in a country of 1 billion, making ends meet is a serious issue and cricket guarantees that if one could instinctively produce a copybook cover drive without sweating it out in the gym.

Fair enough, but this attitude does not speak highly of a nation. Sports and all of them are considered career options in most of the developed countries and they are treated like any other vocation. Just like the way one has to prepare himself for obtaining an academic degree, one has to prepare himself for an Olympic medal too, instead of depending on a ‘magic delivery’ or unbelievable ‘peripheral awareness’.

India controls the finances in cricket today and more and more cricketers would join the bandwagon. But that should not for a moment compel us to think of ourselves as a sporting nation as cricket is no sport for any or all of the abovementioned reasons. Cricket shares nothing in common with any other sport and while supporters of the game could put forward the same logic to prove what a great sport this one is, they also must wonder why it is so!