India's obsession with cricket

India's obsession with cricket has reached gigantic proportions. The recent lathi charge at Bangalore of ticket-seekers goes to show the extent to which the people are ready to go to cheer the team in the stadium. The iconic status enjoyed by the Indian team in general and folks like Sachin Tendulkar is tending to go beyond abnormal behavior.

No one in our cricket fraternity in India dares to make any negative comment about him even when it is warranted. For example when Dhoni made a statement that the team will win the world cup for Sachin, no one in India made any comment. The Indian team is represents India and not Sachin Tendulkar. But no one had the spine to make this statement. It was Waseem Akram who made a fair statement on this. So far, I have not heard any Indian comment on this one. It is also a known fact (statistics can prove it) that whenever Sachin has scored well, in majority of the cases, the Indian team has lost the match. Does someone like Harsha Bogle have the guts to talk on these lines? Never.

The lure of the IPL money and the clout that BCCI has on International cricket has made things worse. A batsman of high potential like Manish Pandey gets signed for a paltry 20 Lakhs while some one like Virat Kohli who has played just a couple of matches for India gets crores. These kind of discrepancies will induce a lot of corruption in the team selection in a country like India. I would be surprised if it is not true already. Even in the current team that is playing the world cup, there are many players who should not have been there in the team if the selectors were fair in their selection procedure.

Where is it headed? In my view, a time will come very soon when the Indian team will start losing against most good teams. I am assuming that the matches will not be fixed. When the team gets into a losing streak, then, at-least a good number of fans will lose interest. That is the time when I propose that some corporates with deep pockets do the unthinkable. i.e start promoting other sports which can really make a difference to India. Some of these include Gymnastics, Badminton, Athletics & Football. In Badminton & Athletics, we have already seen some stars and hence there is some momentum already, but in the other two, the momentum has to be built up. This would ensure that India's obsession with Cricket comes to an end, sometime in the near future.