Batting for Sachin in Jaipur

It’s on this sentiment of ecstasy in agony that club sport is based. It takes time — years, decades — to get such loyalty. And it takes as long for that devotion to translate into good business for those who own the clubs from the day of their inception.

When you support a club, you love everything about it — the players, no matter what creed or colour they belong to; a great manager in a game such as football becomes a father figure; and the stadium is a holy shrine whose mud you proudly smear on your forehead.

Any league needs this passion in order to be successful. The Indian Premier League (IPL), with its brand icons and its millions of dollars, will have to strive for that much in order to survive.

So, sorry for being a voice of dissent in these times when everyone wants to celebrate the power of India’s cricket economy, but true loyalty is not easy to buy — especially not in a country such as ours, where cricket is linked so closely with national pride.

Think about it. Indian cricket is almost jingoistic. We feel shame as a nation when the team loses, so we go into the streets to burn effigies and carry out mock funerals. When Harbhajan Singh is charged with racism, we forget that he’s an individual and react as if the whole country has been called racist. The print and TV media show us non-stop live coverage of a victory march following the Twenty20 World Cup victory, and programmes such as Match ka Mujrim become instant TRP leaders.

Picture this: if Brett Lee of Mohali is bowling to M.S. Dhoni of Chennai, sitting in the heart of Punjab, whom will you support? Will you feel enough loyalty for your city that you cheer against a national hero? Will you jump up in joy in Jaipur if, with four runs needed to win, Mumbai’s Sachin Tendulkar is caught on the fence by Shane Warne off the last ball of the match?

The entire auction in Mumbai on Wednesday was a reflection of that same national pride. Ishant Sharma was bought for Rs 3.8 crore and Ricky Ponting for 1.6, Rohit Sharma went for Rs 3.1 crore and Matthew Hayden for 1.5. Corporate India showed where its priorities lay. They wanted crowd pullers, not necessarily the best team available. Nationalism was the mantra, not cricketing logic.

And, even if India were to suddenly shed its patriotism for the love of cricket, is it being given enough time to form links with the new stars of its regions? The IPL runs for just 45 days. There is no telling if the players you have in the team this season will be sold to someone else next year, or will even be available because of his international commitments. The Andrew Symonds you had just started to love may be batting for another side in 2009, or may not be there at all till 2012.

We are not being sold genuine league cricket, but glitz, glamour and razzmatazz. It could end up making money, but I wonder if it will ever establish the connection with fans that is the soul of sport.

Nobody is too bothered, however. The BCCI has already made its hundreds of millions and the players have cashed in as well. For India Inc, perhaps the returns don’t matter too much anyway. It’s just small change: a tiny price to pay for national pride in this ever-growing economy.

kunal.pradhan@expressindia.com