Crime and cricket

The birth of a leisure society, I think, is one such factor. Some sociologists have long been of the opinion that time-saving technology and prosperity would eventually lead to a workless society. Though the prediction is still some time coming, some of the frills are already in evidence even in our relatively backward country. The mind-boggling expansion of the audio-vis- ual media, the corresponding surge in sporting events and the greater number of hours available for vie-wing being some of them.

Players play too much cricket8217; is a commonly ai-red complaint th-ese days and one of the primary re-asons quoted for the fall in performance standards. What is rarely mentioned is that fans watch too much cricket as well. In earlier times when access and time were more limited viewing could be prioritised. Today, with television be-aming cricket all the time and with every match/tournament hyped with equal fervour the hierarchy between matches has decreased. The widespread surge in betting could have been in part an outcome of the viewers8217; growing boredom with the relentless availability of cricket and its need for added excitement. Another factor is the emphasis on winning. It seems a very long time ago when every speaker at a sports meet thought it incumbent upon himself to close his speech with the familiar words: quot;It is not the winning or the losing that counts, it is the taking part.quot; Those words seem quaint today, at a time when we celebrate the killer instinct and inculcate in very young children theneed to compete and vanquish.

Patriotism for instance, has always been tied in with sport. But earlier followers of the game se-emed more willing to appreciate nuances of the ga-me, to acknowle-dge good shots regardless of the na- tionality of the pl-ayer. There was also an expectation of camaraderie between teams. Today players attempt to psych each other with abuses. Spectators tend to turn violent if they are unhappy with the way the match is going and cricket viewing in an average household too has become a far more charged affair, particularly when an India-Pakistan match is on.

All these factors have served to demean the game. It seems an odd thing to say, that too at a time when more cricket is being viewed by mo-re people and more coverage than ever is being devoted to it. And yet consider the fact that betting defl-ects attention away from the game and focuses it on the viewer8217;s private winnings and losses making it a game of speculation played by the viewer rather than one of skill pl-ayed by a professional. Consider al-so the fact that the charged expectations from the game imply that it is no longer what it is: a game. A battle of talent in which someone has to win and someone to lose. And in which the competing players are sp-orting rivals, not sworn enemies. There was a time when people argu-ed passionately to keep sports and politics apart. It is a measure of change that prominent cricketers such as Kapil Dev and Tendulkar made a plea for suspending cricketing ties with Pakistan around the time of the Kargil war.

What all this adds up to is the fact that cricket has gone bey-ond the point of bare reality. It has entered the realm of myth. Not the kind of myth made up of stirring anecdotes, sepia toned pictures and dry statistics but a more contemporary myth. A myth that is on the one hand a sort of hold all for a myriad glorious expectations and on the other has the hypnotic but mundane quality of a stock quotation ticker tape on your television screen.

None of this in any way excuses or ameliorates the act of a player accepting money to play a certain way or even to provide information to a bookie. But if one were to look for reasons that could lead a successful cricketer to succumb to such temptation then perhaps one could hazard a guess that like his audience, he too has forgotten that it was a game, a test of agility, skill, speed that he had set out to succeed in. There is of course a more simple explanation : the celebration of greed.