Letter of the Day

Wrestling with cricketing emotions

It's so strange that even after India won the 4th One Day match against West Indies chasing 325 runs I felt no elation or the sense of pride that was normal when India won matches earlier.

My enthusiasm for watching the game has never been the same after the match fixing controversy.

I remember, when I was in high school and later in college, cricket was a major sport for us. We used to play the tennis ball version of the game in the building compound. Well, actually most of the time we played with a rubber ball and the tennis ball was reserved only for matches on Sundays.

Each team had its own Gavaskar, Vishwanath, Lillee, Viv Richards etc depending on one's favourite player. Few years later the names changed to Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Alan Border, Malcolm Marshal and so on but the passion and pride was the same.

Endless discussions and post match analyses of India matches was a norm. "That new ball should have been taken first thing in the morning" or "He should have held that catch at this level of the game" or "Don't know why our bowlers are unable to swing the bowl as much as them"

The last comment was the beginnings of the seed of doubt that crept into our minds about cricket being a gentleman's game. Later when it became clear that it was possible to doctor the cricket ball to ensure prodigious swing much later in the innings I am certain it broke quite a few hearts of youngsters at the time.

As years passed and we moved on with life - college, engineering, business school - and took up our first jobs, cricket continued to be on top of the charts though other priorities began to crowd in as well. But whenever India played a final everything else had to wait. The offices would empty out. Lame excuses from office staff were an accepted norm.

"I am taking half the day off. Have to take my wife to the doctor" (India batting second) "I am going on a sales call to Hoechst, Andheri or BARC, Chembur " Naturally this would be in the second half of the day and the call depended on where the salesman lived.

And if India won, well, the whole world was in pink of health. Strangers would smile at you on the road in Bombay. The autowallah would be magnanimous and waive off the small change in the fare saying chalta hai saab.

God help you if India lost.

Chutta nahi hai tho uthro the BEST conductor would bark. The bai would not turn up and our mothers would sulk. And the auto drivers would show road rage - baap ka raasta hai kya!?

After the Cronje gate incident things have never been the same. For a few months lots of us just stopped following cricket. With passage of time however we began to believe that things would be as before. Cricket after all gave many of us, at least at that time, the surrogate pride of world-class achievement. Intense discussions after India matches resumed once again at office canteens or at restaurants after office hours. But there was a difference this time around. There was always some wet blanket who stepped in just when the post match discussions were hotting up to say that the match was fixed. The enthusiasts would try to brush them away saying things like " Come on, you can't fix two catches like that" but the doubt always lingered.

Did our cricketing heroes really playing an honest game or were they playing with spectator emotions?

Coming back to the present series, it immensely surprises me that a team, which lost by an innings on two occasions in the Tests, is suddenly scoring at will in the one-dayers against a bowling attack that's by and large unchanged. Timely spectator disruptions of three matches and a heroic run chase in the fourth (lightning does indeed strike twice) leading to the series being evenly poised; I am wondering.

Maybe there's nothing to it and I really want to believe that and hold on to my memories. But you never know. Maybe the 'wet blanket' is right after all!!

You know what, the powers that control the game, if you are listening and if the 'wet blankets' are indeed right why don't you convert cricket into a WWF kind of format. That way at least you will be open about the fact that the game is stage-managed. Consider this situation: -

India is playing England and our bowlers are being thrashed to smithereens. Srinath totters to the boundary line and touches Glenn Mcgrath's hand (the Aussie team is waiting in the pavilion you know) and he hops into the field to take over the bowling to rip apart the English batsmen. The spectators cheer wildly.

In this format you could even have other teams like USA, Russia, China and Iraq join the cricketing fraternity.

Imagine Pakistan and USA jointly taking on Iraq and Russia jumping in to save Iraq from an innings defeat. And consider the markets that will open up to sponsorship money - BCCI, ICC are you listening?

Krishna Gopal