Cricket? Allegedly

Four defeats 8212; and ignominious ones at that 8212; in a row must also be some sort of a record. This clinches the irrelevance of Indian cricket despite the occasional victory. One Tendulkar doesn8217;t make a summer. In any case, he sees a brighter future running restaurants. Wise guy.

The historical relevance of games was that they provided release for macho energy, helped display skills, afforded spectator satisfaction and met the need for social mingling.

All were honourable intentions 8212; and all were neutralised, reversed, sabotaged and hijacked as soon as competition became the driving engine of games by early 20th Century. All games are now about winning, money, bets and profits. In order to achieve these, they are also about agents and fixers and politicians and middlemen and drug pushers and shady operators of all kinds.

Cricket in particular was ruined when television and commercial sponsors took it over. In no time, a presumed gentlemen8217;s pastime became a crooks8217; business.

In this business the Indian public is the most fooled. When a game, howsoever humiliating, is going on, work either slows down or grinds to a halt as otherwise level-headed citizens lose themselves in the idiot box. Indians spend the most money on cricket. The Board of Control in India is the world8217;s wealthiest cricket authority.

Any game that rakes in money in such gargantuan proportions ceases to be a game. This waste of national resources and national energy may not be strong enough reason for a ban on cricket. After all, there are other activities that waste more national resources and national energy example.

But don8217;t forget, cricket is an unashamedly colonial game. Indigenous to England from the 17th Century, cricket was exported to the colonies as a means to dazzle the natives into admiration and submission. The only colony that refused to take to cricket was America. And today it is a superpower.

Above all, cricket has become a disgrace to India. Getting caught in the match-fixing scams was bad enough. Getting disgraced in match after match against a hu tu tu team like New Zealand is simply unacceptable. When a player is selected to a team, he is said to be capped. We are a non-violent nation, so we cannot call for decapitation of our players. But we certainly can demand de-capping.

Then we can return cricket to what it originally was 8212; an insect of the family Gryllidae with thin antennae and hind legs modified for jumping. At least the chirping of the male cricket is musical.

Or better still, hand over the whole thing to VHP8217;s Togadiabhai.

He will handle it with terminal efficiency. Cricket may not be Italian, but it is entirely videshi, horribly pseudo secular and completely against our glorious policy of cultural nationalism. Out, out, brief candle.