Stumped Conscience!
Years ago, I had my first encounter with supernatural or rather spiritual phenomena of the universe. It was a holy experience, watching a cricket match on a black-and-white television. It was some ODI cricket match between India and Sri Lanka, where India registered a close win. I don’t remember the final score, I don’t even remember who was awarded the Man of the match title, but I had the ever lasting impression that I cherish even today. Well that was not the only moment. That was just a beginning of my faith in the religion called cricket.
Like many other Asians, I have grown up worshiping the game. In school, we would play cricket in the playground. If not permitted outside, the game would come to the class room in the form of book and crushed paper-ball. Sometimes there would be only a book, where page-numbers on the right hand side serving the purpose of scores. It was a pure fascination towards the magic numbers of four, six, fifty, hundred and duck!
Back at that time, there was no cricinfo or internet to keep cricket stats. We had our little player cards with all the stats on. Some chewing gum company distributed couple of those player cards with every chewing-gum. Boy! I have had a lot of them. My first introduction to real accounting was in terms of card currency. Any Indian player would fetch me three West Indies player or six Bangladeshi players. Sachin’s card alone could fetch me 10 foreign player cards!
Everything belonging to Cricket is worshiped and discussed over and over. Let it be radio commentary, sports section in a news-paper, an article in ‘cricket-smrat’ or interview of a cricketer, it would be visited and discussed again and again.
I was attracted to cricket in pretty much the same way grannies are to a religion. Drawing parallels to Hindu mythologies, there are various ‘stars’ in cricket specializing in different fields. There are frequent clashes between ‘favorite’ side and ‘enemy’ sides, and there are ‘sacrifices’ as well as ‘out-standing’ performances. Unlike the mythologies, where the ‘good’ side wins all the time, there is much more sportsmanship. It’s not predictable. Even defeats bring a sense of satisfaction sometime.
Years later, there was a serious attack on the sanity of the game by ‘match-fixing’ scam. The precious unpredictability was on stack. It was a dark time, but the moment passed. Some goons, couldn’t uproot our faith from the religion.
But today, I saw a major downfall. It came in the form of IPL Player Auction. Back in the school, we were innocent when we bartered players’ cards, but selling and buying real players by some business orientated people, who don’t necessarily have any passion for the game. The closed room drama turned cruel as it silently witnessed gems like Boucher, Ganguly, Gayle, Gibbs and Lara go unsold. For years we have supported a team for its players, and now all of them are scrambled.
IPL has raised concerns over purity of the game. With big-money, late night IPL parties, scams, auctions, and what not. For the first time in years, my faith in cricket is shattered. I have doubts but unfortunately my religion has no answer.
Years ago, I had my first encounter with supernatural or rather spiritual phenomena of the universe. It was a holy experience, watching a cricket match on a black-and-white television. It was some ODI cricket match between India and Sri Lanka, where India registered a close win. I don’t remember the final score, I don’t even remember who was awarded the Man of the match title, but I had the ever lasting impression that I cherish even today. Well that was not the only moment. That was just a beginning of my faith in the religion called cricket.
Like many other Asians, I have grown up worshiping the game. In school, we would play cricket in the playground. If not permitted outside, the game would come to the class room in the form of book and crushed paper-ball. Sometimes there would be only a book, where page-numbers on the right hand side serving the purpose of scores. It was a pure fascination towards the magic numbers of four, six, fifty, hundred and duck!
Back at that time, there was no cricinfo or internet to keep cricket stats. We had our little player cards with all the stats on. Some chewing gum company distributed couple of those player cards with every chewing-gum. Boy! I have had a lot of them. My first introduction to real accounting was in terms of card currency. Any Indian player would fetch me three West Indies player or six Bangladeshi players. Sachin’s card alone could fetch me 10 foreign player cards!
Everything belonging to Cricket is worshiped and discussed over and over. Let it be radio commentary, sports section in a news-paper, an article in ‘cricket-smrat’ or interview of a cricketer, it would be visited and discussed again and again.
I was attracted to cricket in pretty much the same way grannies are to a religion. Drawing parallels to Hindu mythologies, there are various ‘stars’ in cricket specializing in different fields. There are frequent clashes between ‘favorite’ side and ‘enemy’ sides, and there are ‘sacrifices’ as well as ‘out-standing’ performances. Unlike the mythologies, where the ‘good’ side wins all the time, there is much more sportsmanship. It’s not predictable. Even defeats bring a sense of satisfaction sometime.
Years later, there was a serious attack on the sanity of the game by ‘match-fixing’ scam. The precious unpredictability was on stack. It was a dark time, but the moment passed. Some goons, couldn’t uproot our faith from the religion.
But today, I saw a major downfall. It came in the form of IPL Player Auction. Back in the school, we were innocent when we bartered players’ cards, but selling and buying real players by some business orientated people, who don’t necessarily have any passion for the game. The closed room drama turned cruel as it silently witnessed gems like Boucher, Ganguly, Gayle, Gibbs and Lara go unsold. For years we have supported a team for its players, and now all of them are scrambled.
IPL has raised concerns over purity of the game. With big-money, late night IPL parties, scams, auctions, and what not. For the first time in years, my faith in cricket is shattered. I have doubts but unfortunately my religion has no answer.
Labels: cricket
posted by Ritesh | 11:51 AM
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3 comments
