It’s just a game!!!

On a day when the shocking news of Bob Woolmer’s demise was yet to sink in, the national dailies carried front page photographs of hooligans ransacking Dhoni’s under-construction house. They were supposedly venting their anger and despair at India’s meek capitulation. But the idiots who were photographed while they were pulling down a brick wall had a nice smile on their face. Each one of them. Never knew that there were people who had the special ability by which anger and despair brought a smile to their lips.

After all cricket is just a game. The kind of pressure such idiots bring to the players and the coaching staff, has already got a victim. If they are so peeved at non-performance, why don’t they ransack the house of the MLAs, MPs and Ministers? After all the cricket team lost only a cricket match. But the politicians are playing with the lives of 100 crore people.

Even Woolmer’s sad demise has been used by the so-called cricket fans to vent their ire on the cricketers. People are issuing statements dripping in hatred about the Indian coach and captain. When will the Indian public get a perspective? It is just cricket.

As if the pressure brought on the cricket team by the so-called fans is not enough, there are articles in newspapers about how crores of rupees will be lost if India doesn’t make it to Super-8. If the team doesn’t make it to the super-8, there will be people who will come out saying that their life has been ruined. The Indian team will be held responsible for it. Who asked these companies to assume that India will reach the Super-8?

“Rahul Dravid is the worst captain India has ever had”. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was parroting this line after India’s loss to Bangladesh. How India’s poor batting can be attributed to Dravid’s captaincy is something I have been unable to comprehend. And there were the usual utterances like “India and Pakistan have indulged in match fixing again” and “Sourav should be reinstated as India’s captain”. As if Sourav, had he been captain, would have prevented the Indian batting from folding up so meekly. And then there was the usual dose of regionalism which is the bane of Indian cricket. And the latest contribution to that came from my little state of Kerala. The average Keralite’s CKQ or the Cricket Knowledge Quotient ranges between 0.1 and 0.9 on a scale of 100. Of course there is a minority who are real hard-core cricket fans. But the majority cannot differentiate a cricketing bat from a boating oar. But that has not prevented them from analysing the India-Bangladesh match and coming up with the hard truth - India lost the match because Sreesanth was not in the XI.

I hope that for cricket’s sake, the popularity of cricket in India starts decreasing. Once the popularity of cricket in India reaches the abysmal depths of where Indian hockey is now, only the real cricket fans would follow cricket - those with a minimum level of CKQ - Cricket Knowledge Quotient. And the game will be restored to its original position - pure entertainment. There won’t be crores of rupees lost. And more importantly there won’t be any lives lost because of the stress.