Some good things happened in the Windies

[roshcrazy]

frnzz ...whr every1s upset abt india playin bad in d world cup..here r a few good thngs abt wht happ. in the windies.......

an article of toi..

There are reports that many Indian wives have left their homes to go stay with their parents because they could not bear the World Cup insanity of their husbands. The women may now plan an early return. India's team effort against Sri Lanka has almost banished it from the tournament. The final punishment for cricket fans in this country, not counting the impending return of wives, will unfold today when they will have to stay up late to watch an atrocity called Bermuda versus Bangladesh.

If Bangladesh wins and goes through to the second round instead of India, there is some comfort in a piece of rationality. The Indian team does not belong to the nation. The players are employees of a private society registered as an association under Tamil Nadu's Society Registration Act of 1860.

This association, The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), is affiliated to a limited company registered in the British Virgin Islands called the International Cricket Council (ICC). Cricket is a private enterprise. Obviously, this is not comforting enough. The myth of nationalism is deeply entrenched in the game and many of us feel the melancholy of the country's humiliation at the World Cup. Yet, India's probable exit is deserving for reasons that have nothing to do with how Dravid's men have performed.

Indians often proclaim that they are the money. The madness, the passion, is apparently here. The game, we say, will be impoverished without the finances Indian cricket brings. Yet, for a country that claims to be a cricketing superpower, what has been India's contribution to the game? Hawk-eye, a technology that shows the virtual progression of the cricket ball, was devised by scientists of Siemens in England, a breakthrough that was eagerly, almost poignantly, adopted by broadcasters there in the desperation to attract viewers. Spin vision, Snickometer, and Super slo-mo are technologies that have entered cricket as a consequence of the rising standards of Ashes broadcast. In return, India has given cricket inflammable effigies.

In the 1990s, cricket had considerably fallen in popularity in England, unable to compete against football, rugby and even golf. When the World Cup was played there in 1999, a newspaper survey of housewives showed that most of them did not know such a tournament was underway. But throughgrit and long-term plans written down in huge vision statements by managers of the sport in England slowly brought the game back.

Australia is so serious about young players that its survey of regional cricket is marked 'confidential' until it is released in public domain. Both England and Australia consciously cultivate sponsorships for long-term financing of regional cricket while the Ranji trophy in India usually does not have sponsors. Mumbai players manage to endorse egg consumption only because Sachin Tendulkar is featured alongside.

Even in the way the game is played on the field, India has not had much influence. Apart from the curious hypothesis that Ranjit Singh invented the leg glance (assuming that the leg glance can be invented), the legendary spin ambassadors and the claim of old timers that it was our pacer Dattu Phadkar and not Pakistani ball tamperers who first invented the reverse swing, Indians have nothing much to own. There have been Indian geniuses who enriched the game but they were genetic freaks who arrived not because of the system but in spite of it.

The West Indian high five, New Zealand's audacious experiments during the 1992 World Cup, Australia's two-teams concept, the technological innovations of Ashes, Woolmer's laptop philosophy and the horizontality of Rhodes have had far greater impact on world cricket than anything that a country in the delusions of power has contributed.

There is, of course, an endearing culture that India (and Pakistan, our brothers who are attached to us through a historical hyphen) has given cricket. Underground betting. The syndicate of politicians and the underworld that controls illegal betting has today put almost every contest involving the subcontinent in the shadow of match fixing.

The jesters who are right now burning the effigies of Indian players on the streets and hitting posters with slippers for opportunistic television cameras are falsely counted as passionate fans. Many of them are just gamblers who are inconsolable because they lost money on India. They deserve their melancholy. It would have been unfair if such people rejoiced during the World Cup instead of the more genuine fans of sports in Australia, England or South Africa. It would have been even more cruel if the officials of the BCCI got to keep the Cup in their dusty wooden cupboard where they stock trophies.

BCCI, despite its wealth, has not found it meaningful to improve the condition of stadiums. India is one of the worst places on earth for cricket as a spectator sport. People watch one-dayers under the tyranny of police and the stench of urine as BCCI officials reverently kiss the bottoms of politicians in special boxes. It's better for cricket that it slowly escapes the hold of the subcontinent and surges in those nations that know how to use the power of money to make the game better.

Cricket in the subcontinent is a huge parallel economy that has for long made many observers feel that a murder was due. Though the cause of Bob Woolmer's death is not known, the first instinct of all parties concerned is that it had something to with the betting industry. The sensational murder has reminded the ICC with far greater gravity than anything before that drastic measures are needed to save cricket from the shadowy world of subcontinental mafias. In fact, it will be interesting to see if, in the coming months, the ICC has the courage to question the ability of India and Pakistan to host a safe World Cup in 2011.

Manu Joseph.