Move over, Azhar

When last heard, that gentleman8217;s game involving a fist-sized leather ball made to gently ignite against a willow bat was in the doldrums. In such a state was the much-hyped Singer Akai Nidahas Trophy tournament being played in Sri Lanka, that it couldn8217;t even be wrung out and left to dry on the pitches of Galle and Colombo. Whether it was this dismal state of affairs or whether the rains in Sri Lanka symbolised a more visceral switchover will never be known, but there is no disputing the fact that a republic which has long drawn its sense of self-worth from Sachin Tendulkar8217;s bat, promptly switched its sports channel. While sports editors squeezed in a niggardly paragraph or two of the copy from Colombo on to their pages, they devoted whole stretches of newsprint to La coupe du monde. Cricket went into slow dissolve as the yellows and greens and the whites and the reds leapt and pirouetted, swept and kicked in Lyon and Paris, Marseilles and Nice. So who wasted time calculating India8217;s NRR vis-a-vis NewZealand8217;s. Net run rates were strictly for the birds and cricket fanatics, whose numbers were in any case being rapidly decimated in the face of the samba onslaught.

But look, even Wimbledon didn8217;t stand a chance against the World Cup, some may argue. True. Nevertheless, the strawberries-and-cream pace of Wimbledon tennis may have its aficionados in this country but it never came even close to toppling cricket from its special perch in Indian hearts. The football threat is far more real. If there are still any doubts on this score, they can be set at rest by the simple expedient of consulting those perennial weathercocks, the cola merchants. The tune they are now singing goes something like this: eat football, sleep football, drink only cola/ More football, more cola. Make that more Zidande, more zest 8212; because ultimately the appeal of football lies in the sheer joie de vivre and immediacy of the game. There is also the time factor. Cricket has, no doubt been fast-forwarded considerably thanks to thepioneering efforts of that marketing whizkid, Kerry Packer. But even after lopping four days off the game, there are still 100 overs to be gone through before the winner emerges. Football, in contrast, packs a universe of action and passion into just 90 minutes. So it does appear that as the world spins faster and faster, when everything from coffee to sex is instant, the future would favour the footballer.

It would, of course, be both impetuous and foolish to sing a dirge for cricket in this country. As long as Mumbai8217;s Shivaji Park continues to be a hatchery for the Gavaskars and Tendulkars of the future, as long as little boys bat and bowl on the sands of Marina Beach, it will remain live and singing. But the contempt that the rest of India always reserved for the excitable Bengali losing his shirt over East Bengal or Mohun Bagan, as the case may be, has lost its raison d8217;etre. Today, the whole country sits up nights to watch Ronaldo live.