The Gentleman's Game

I am a definite lover of sports, and cricket like many Indians is one of my favorites - to watch, to cheer and to cry. Though I haven't followed it closely for many years now especially after moving to US, I still get connected when there is a big event like the World Cup. That is to say to some extent.

When they make Sachin Tendular into a modern day God and idolize him I find the whole matter dis-respectful to my faith and ridiculous to say the least. I understand that he is a good, ok maybe a great player, but thats it. He does what anyone else does on a daily basis. Be good at our chosen profession. Dumb luck that some of our professions is not so colorful as one might have hoped for and we don't get the same mass following that he does. But everything else is the same. Of course he can be an inspiration to the team, but what else would you expect of a seasoned player, or a VP of a company? Good folks in turn lead the rest and continue to do so in all walks of life.

Now the game, I love it. I can watch a good match and sit at the edge of the seat cheering our team. But I don't get completely sucked into it either and I don't want to. To those who have superstitions on what color of shirt to wear to a match to which God to ask favor on, I say it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Only the best team (yes TEAM) wins. Take our final match for example, at the beginning it looked like Sri Lanka would be all out for something like 150 but they came back and gave us a score that would give any team some fear. Then when we started our wickets fell like ripe apples. Even now I recall the face of a lady on the stands as they announced that Sachin was out - her mouth wide open, the shock and almost fear of us losing was well written in her eyes. But then Ghambir stayed on and turned the pace somewhat into our favor. Yet up until the last few balls, it was a tight race on who will become champions.

But post the win, we are back at being ridiculous and seemed to have crossed the lines of jubilation! One can offer an incentive to win, to do well on a job but only so much. If the BCCI has already offered 10M per player, you don't need states offering up their states player additional money or offer land for each of the players. This is all excluding their pockets over-flowing from endorsements they do. To be fair, since companies are answerable to their shareholders so at least they are likely to ensure the player continue to endorse the products. But states spending so much money without a care in the world for its people seems outright unfair.

I still will stand-by the good game of cricket, but will not stand by for this. But for the time being I am proud of these boys, they delivered. What a victory!!! I don't remember the last World Cup win, but this one will be etched in memory. Hats off to you Team India. Good work!


* pics courtesy Google pics