I’m in the country where cricket isn’t a religion; it’s an unholy passion. Channel surfing on television is a nightmare. They explore every angle of a cricket match. Including a minute by minute analysis. It’s not like a lap by lap record you get of a race on the net. It goes something like: ‘At 1:30 pm, Yuvraj came to the crease”…”At 2:16 pm, he hit shoaib off a beamer” blah blah …”At 2:18, Yuvraj has scored his 50″…”At 4:33 pm, Yuvraj waved to the crowds as he scored his century”…”At 4:47, he has secured his place for the tour of Australia”…….!
Do I need this ? Away from this country, secure in a non cricketing world, I thought I had it bad when my other half watched cricket on telly. But in India, it’s crazy. You cannot escape the lunacy. A paper’s front page carried a photograph of Mr Ganguly aka the Maharaj aka Prince of Calcutta aka Dada aka Bengal Tiger aka Chappell’s nemesis packing his bags !! And it showed his mother helping him pack.
Why ? Why ? Why ? Next they would have carried the contents of every cricketers bags. I jest not. And the cricket maniacs lap it all up.
I can understand if the team plays really well and has a schumi like brilliance about it. And now they’re off to get beaten royally by the aussies.
Need I say more ?
Come on guys. Karthikeyan just won the A-1 grand prix in China. See? A real sport. Real guys. Not “boys”. But men.
It’s different.
Tekcirc's Weblog 
At the risk of starting World War N, i must put this forth –
Ferrari technicians v Mclaren technicians v Some-Other-Technicians-On-A-Fraction-Of-The-Budget-Of-The-First-Two” is real sport”? Even in the College of Engineering here at UC Berkeley it would be considered a boring sport (Unless you were on the third team) 🙂
Besides, did you watch Yuvraj Singh bat on the first day Bangalore Test? It was a performance worthy of the greatest stages of the world….. 🙂
The letter to Garyji was pure gold…….
There are some newspapers in India which stay away from the hype. Try The Hindu, for a change.
Karthikeyan won what?..Umm…excuse me..A1 GP for race fans is like ‘The Sunfeast Open’ for tennis fans around the world 🙂
I know..I know…he still won in a sport played (though not popular) in more than a handful of countries. But that is not cricket’s problem. We play this sport, and compete at the highest level possible.
Lets have Karthikeyan or any Indian perform at highest level. Although, even then, the problem with Tennis and F1 is the missing concept of ‘team’ and that too a ‘national’ team. I know..Indian cricket team is actually BCCI team…but still..try telling that to man on the street.
Anyways…nice concept for a blog. Try to be less repetitive, though.
Dear well meaning detractors,
Sure the Indian team plays and competes at the highest level possible. Sure F1 is not a “national team”. And yes, the man on the street will not listen to logic. My “repetitive” logic, that is. Or to the fact that the Indian team is to my mind, no great shakes. Whatever matches I catch glimpses off, I see the team losing. Don’t throw statistics at me. I get enough at home. What irritates me about the game is the fact that I see the game not as a real sport but now as an indulgence of the country. I’m glad Mr Mallya’s got his own F1 team. Will that bring more interest in this fabulous sport ? It’s truly an edge of the seat thriller. And you cheer for teams. Made of guys who’re working with and against machines. Drivers, Team directors, Technicians..Sure some teams have more money power than others. So am I to assume that the Bangladesh team has the same monetary backing as the Indian cricket team ? Such disparities of budgets are prevalent in every sport.
And by the way, an F1 race never gets rained out…and rarely are laps reduced.
And as for being repetitive, I have just one request. STOP THIS GAME. Till then, the anti cricket flag will fly high…
Cricket is possibly the only sport in the world which is able to conclude a contest with an “inconclusive” result without making any suggestion that both sides were equal at the end (i. e. without it being reflected in the scoreline).
In this nuance lies the greatness of this sport.. and the understandable frustration that a lot of people feel about its length… As a contest it is a different class of contest from the usual race-like contests.
🙂