Of
all the sports, games that are played in India, the members of BCCI Cricket
team are the richest of all. The reason is due to the non involvement of the
government officials during the developing stages of the private company called
BCCI. But when the politicians have seen the huge money involved, this company
has seen much political and non political interference to obtain posts and also
obtaining chances to their players in the teams. But the basic criteria have
always been prevailed to some extent in the player selection.
Even
though there are no quota systems in this governmental paid job, the players
have come many varied backgrounds, and hopefully based on merit. Though this is
highly debatable, there is some truth in this, otherwise Mary Kom would not have
won the Olympic medal. But what after achieving the medals is the real story of
the sports in India. The Indians have been made to get addicted to one game
called Cricket with varied forms giving different kinds of entertainment to
different set of people - orthodox, liberal and central groups. The overload of
entertainment has ensured that no other sport gets the required attention
unless big money is involved.
Serious
campaigns are made to get some kind of popularity to other games and sports,
and the F1 racing, European foot ball have been catching more eyeballs in the
recent times. The reason behind is not the affection but to get into the upper social
echelons where the largely English speaking people interact and talk about all English
things. Football is the most watched game in the world, and even though Cricket
is the game bought by English to the common wealth countries, foot ball has
outgrown the sport in its birthplace, England.
The
recent invention of IPL has even bought the world cinema into the ambit of
cricket. Thus current IPL has all the ingredients for best entertainment for
the consumption of the viewers - politics, bollywood and cricket. The cheer
girls who dance to tunes best known to them and crowd jumping and making bizarre
moves continuously to get a chance to show their relatives they are in stadium
and have come on national TVs. Bollywood involvement in the cricket is very
obvious from the tunes, the pathetic “jumping….gili gili” and every man
desperate for some money is shaking his body to the tune.
The
involvement of politics at the highest levels was obvious because many of the
top posts of state level bodies of cricket are being occupied by politicians, at
least the richest boards. The politics does not end there, the selection of the
players and the dramas on the field are all guided by the politics. The
slapgates, abuses, sledging etc are all the projections from the parliament to
the cricket field. People have been laughing at the dramas in the parliament
and now are also enjoying the same in the cricket field. Removal of Srilankan players while playing in Chennai,
non entertainment of Pakistani cricket players in the IPL, cricket diplomacy
etc are all part of political interferences in the game.
From
the movie Invictus, even Nelson Mandela has done some rugby diplomacy to
integrate his country. If diplomacy is one thing, the betting is the underside
of the diplomacy. The huge amounts of money that are involved in betting is a
big revenue earner for the governments in certain developed nations. In our
land of poor people, middle class people bet on matches in thousands and still
enjoy the games those who have the money to afford, while others survive on a
mere Rs.32/day. Players spit precious water; clean themselves with mineral
water while some part of the country is suffering from severe drought.
While
great sages have told, poverty cannot exist without richness and vice versa,
those suffering in India have come to belief excessively in the law of karma
and also in their destiny and fate. Getting bored with all the billions earned,
the rich then talk about social responsibility, funding the education of some
few hundred children support for fellow countrymen who join other sports are
all part of the popular cricketing culture. This monolithic addictive behavior of
Indians in the area of sports if in sync with their lack of taste and lower
levels of innovation, because IPL is a reengineering of football for the Indian
population and many slam bang cricket forms existed earlier. ICL is the mother
of IPL and Kapil was kicked out of BCCI fold and both have joined back for some
grace in front of the public eyes. Now Kapil too is doing “jumping….gili gili”.
Just
like majority of Indians cannot think beyond cricket, the common people cannot
see beyond Congress party to lead them. Like cheer girls doing some
entertainment we get some acts every now and then. The more people try to get
away from cricket stronger temptations are bought to maintain the supporter
base and there is no escape, because to escape addiction bigger addiction is
required. The bigger addiction, some call it higher goal or purpose in life,
hobby or any other thing except addiction. A society which supports only
culture/game/party is bound for a disaster in the long run because homogeneity is
not the order of the nature.
The
minimum support for many of the other games is still not sufficient to sustain
and the administration is also at fault to not creating a winning team. As
Mandela hopes that a win in a rugby world cup will boost the hopes of people,
bring people with different back grounds together, similarly different sports
bring different kinds of people together thus a greater chance of integration.
How much can the game of cricket integrate this nation for how long is a matter
of suspicion, but sooner other sports and games start winning and show good
results, there is no escape from the “jumping….gili gili”.
No comments:
Post a Comment