'We love watching sports when we win'

A Russian world champion boxer crying after losing a bout is not a common sight. A Russian/American/Cuban/Papua New Guinean/Moldovan/Indonesian world champion/non-world champion boxer crying after losing to an Indian boxer in the pre-quarterfinal at the Olympics is unheard of! Akhil Kumar managed to achieve just that. After his bout against Russian Sergey Vodopyanov ended tied at 9-9 after four rounds, the jury decided it in favour of the Indian Railways boxer. Vodopyanov, who goes out in tears, is the world champion in men’s 54 kg bantamweight boxing.

Akhil had quite a few viewers watching him back home in India. Reason 1: It was August 15, India’s Independence Day, which is nothing more than a holiday for most. Reason 2: Abhinav Bindra won the historic gold medal (India’s first individual Olympic gold in 108 years) in 10 metre air rifle shooting only four days back. One of them, a well-meaning, responsible female citizen who otherwise does not bother about sports was all excited when I found her online right after the bout. She said, “I love watching sports when we win something.” While there is no way one can deny that results are important and nothing succeeds like success, it once again underlined the hypocrisy of Indian sports fans.

What have we won in cricket in all these years? I started following the sport in 1986-87. For a decade or so, we knew that whenever the cricket team toured abroad, it was a matter of saving the blushes more than anything else. A Test victory in away conditions, particularly in countries like Australia, South Africa and England was something that never weighed on the mind of the most optimistic one and a decent performance in the ODIs was enough to keep everyone happy.

During the same time, India started doing poorly in other popular sports such as football and hockey. The decline had started but the hockey team was still one of the best in the circuit. But as this friend of mine said, Indians had stopped watching everything apart from cricket since the country was not ‘winning’ anything. They were not winning anything in cricket too!

My generation’s passion for cricket is largely attributed to Sachin Tendulkar, a man clearly unlucky to be born in India. Why I say this is because if he had the good fortune of playing the Bhupinder Singh seniors and Paras Mhambreys and Dodda Ganeshes and David Johnsons of the world, people by now must have had stopped talking about Sir Donald Bradman or Vivian Richards. His good fortune would have continued if those names were replaced with those of the Ajit Agarkars, Venkatesh Prasads, Javagal Srinaths and Manoj Prabhakars. In spite of Navjyot Singh Sidhu’s famous quote on statistics and miniskirts, the numbers would have shut everyone up.

We grew up watching a small man who looked and behaved like a boy take up the duty to restore pride for the nation upon him without even asking his teammates once to share the burden. And who would he have asked such a favour for? Praveen Amre or Vinod Kambli! But India hardly won anything in cricket in spite of his efforts and when Sachin became the captain, the trend continued.

Then in 1996, out of the blue we found a pair of world class batsmen in Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. Make no mistake, they were not the most talented ones around. During Vinod Kambli’s days, the most refined of the cricket experts used to say that he was even more talented than Sachin Tendulkar. Kambli’s sad story of a career ended on mediocre notes.

What set Sourav and Rahul apart from the bunch was a rare mix of talent and attitude. While Indians were always a talented lot, the word attitude did not exist in their dictionary. And in due course, Sourav became the captain and it was under his captaincy we saw the ‘Dream Tream’ emerge. Everyone from Dinesh Mongia to Ashish Nehra stood up to the moment, inspired by Sourav’s aggressive captaincy. India reached the finals of almost every tournament that was played at that time, including the 2003 ICC World Cup and lost all but one.

We are not supporters, we are viewers. Several other channels will take care of our sorrows today after a last ball loss against Pakistan. One just has to follow the instructions of Darsheel (Safari) and Sonali (Bendre). We anyway never watched the World Track and Field or world championships in any other sport, even though Indians were there and winning. There were far more interesting things on Indian television.

The Africans can’t say that they love to watch anything. The long-distance running world champions produced from the poorest of the countries hardly have television viewers back home but they are still national heroes! We on the other hand choose everything from Desperate Housewives to Sarabhai vs. Sarabhai over the Olympics too.

This year it’s different. Bindra has hit the target on the 3rd day of the Games. Thus, this is Akhil and Jitender’s (Jitender too won his pre-quarterfinal 51 kg flyweight category bout after Akhil) best chance to win and make people watch. One more win will see them in the last four and then they will have two more fights for a medal. The fight is not their alone. It is for all those athletes who did not choose cricket in India.