CRICKET & I

People used to look at me with deep negligence & hatred as if I’m a dead dog thrown in the garbage box. Till I became familiar with gully, silly point, forward short leg, off, on, slip etc. etc. These are running within every boy & girl on the street along with blood. Bolds & centuries are raising & dipping their blood pressure & cricket has become not only the national pass time but the national issue of great importance. Winning Indian team on the play ground has become synonymous with India winning on the battleground & vice versa.

Being clever since childhood I grasped the power of cricket rather late in my life. It is truly a great game of patience of concentrating on small, heavy, leathery stitched red ball by at least fifteen men on the ground & fifteen millions if not more out of the ground. Players in white used to keep hitting the ball for three – four days, got exhausted, earn money & got back to their places. Interested people used to see them, applaud them someone more interested would talk of them, feel sorry on loosing his favorite team & forget them. How boring it used to be. There were players like Don Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar, Viv Richards, Kalicharan, Vishwanath, Botham, Gooch, Gower etc. etc. poor fellows. They batted, bowled, made runs, took wickets, caught & lost catches, chased balls to stop it they won & they lost too. How boring! They played, earned money, those who liked them got some recognition on attaining age when they themselves realized that it is silly to stay at silly point, slip in at slip, can’t throw from the border, get run out often they retired & lived peacefully like any other man. How boring! It was the same old dignified way of opting out no politics, no columns after columns filled gossips by so called experts in the sports pages, no intervention by the ex sportsman & neither discussions on the sports channels by cute & hot filmy babes along with ex he-men of the games. Truly boring.

‘Who’s’ that guy holding the shaving razor in his hand?’ I innocently asked my twelve year old son without looking at him while both of us were sharing the same TV screen fortunately. He looked at me with great depression as if he wanted to say, ‘that’s why I don’t sit with you to see the TV, and you just can’t keep pace the world’ that is xxxx he spoke with great stress as he wanted me to never forget the name & face ever in my remaining life. How can I afford to not recollect such a familiar face? But what on earth made him hold the gigantic shaving razor, whose shave he is going to do for any way? This time I asked my wife this question in lower tone. She just gave me her peculiar glance which I’ve been getting since our marriage, whenever I talk ‘truth & only truth’ referring to my honorable in laws. I kept shut that time, no choice!

That wasn’t my first brush with the cricket. Earlier too, hearing their pay packages I was stumped. That was nothing, I was told they gain in many folds from the advertisements, sponsorships, many ‘gods of cricket’ work in films all this to earn money. I never knew they were so poor that despite earning all that money they resort to betting. But anyway the whole thing is for better & getting still better.

The cricket coach is better know person than the national security adviser to the prime minister and more gossiped person than the secretary of the hottest Hollywood or Bollyood actress. Players once played amass enough for their next hundred years both money & fame. Cricket control board is so rich that, I read in a thirty five year old fresh newspaper that they can bail out any state out of the debt burden & turn the fiscal deficit balance sheet to surplus. Given a choice to become prime minister or chairman of BCCI I’d opt for later, no worry for him its players who perform, non performers get kick performers kind, you just take a nap before breakfast, after breakfast, before ….

All are benefited, managers, cricket control board, pitch makers, bookies, players, viewers, channels you name them. I recently overheard the discussions of ministers of defense, finance, home, agriculture, commerce…. That the government is keenly considering ODI or tests as the best remedy for any issues, problems facing the country. Be it, peasant’s suicide in Vidarbha, Naxalite outbreak in Andhra, mercenaries’ intrusion in north & west, floods in Mumbai, whatever. Being in the coalition I even heard they are thinking of matches on the face of left movements in left controlled West Bengal or Kerla or even to appease Mulayam, tame Jaya & Mamta etc. etc. Yes, they don’t think they need to worry of opposition since the top duo like films anyway; they have plans to arrange ‘Lagaan’ in the parliament auditorium. I heard….

By
Vijay Yelmelwar