Parliament146;s pitch

How will history judge this obsession with cricket our leaders display?

The will of the people had been subverted. Parliament was in uproar. Every politician was declaiming against the calamity that had befallen the land. The media could not stop talking about it. An emissary code named 8216;The Colonel8217; was dispatched to convey the sentiments of a deeply hurt nation, but to no avail. All entreaties and stern warnings were refused by the offending parties. They continued with their irresponsible and spineless behaviour and brought shame to the nation. Some elements of the Left had long suggested that India8217;s future would be at risk if it refused the leadership provided by a Bengali of great grit and determination. Others suggested that the most sensitive area of national policy-making had been infiltrated by a foreign power. The agent of this power had weakened our resolve, undermined our character and taken away our clarity of mind. Worse still, our national assets were being dissipated on frivolous advertising rather than being put in the service of the state. The nation was deeply hurt. Someone had to pay for this humiliation, someone8217;s head had to be put on a spike and displayed in the public square. But when calamity struck, the nation did not work methodically to conquer the enemy. Instead, it turned upon itself, looking for scapegoats. And there was going to be blood aplenty. The nation was, admittedly, experiencing many triumphs, in a vast range of human endeavour. But every achievement 8212; high growth rate, booming stock markets, triumphs in women8217;s boxing or golf 8212; seemed to be undermined by this one signal failure. Only one thing seemed to be occupying the minds of the greatest leaders of the time: the unprecedented crisis that had hit the nation.8217;

So a future historian, with Thucydides8217; sense of drama, might record the last four or five days in Indian history. He might further record, 8220;Never before had a nation so novel been witnessed in history. It8217;s a nation which said: 8216;We can live with an unstable neighbourhood. We can live even if our armaments don8217;t work. So what, if our guns and planes, missiles and bombs routinely fail? We can live without energy. We can live with dismal performance on child nutrition. We can live without pension reform. We can live without schools, colleges, hospitals. We can live even if our land is acquired, our air polluted, our water drying up. But there is a loss the nation cannot bear: humiliating defeat on a cricket field.8217;

A future reader of this version of history will smile. She might read these passages and wonder. Surely this is an exaggeration. Could such a nation really exist? Perhaps these passages are not meant literally. Another reader will disagree, and an interminable debate on how to interpret texts will ensue. But then some historian will discover an archive of recordings and see what our politicians, from ministers to MPs, from the vice president to small-time party hacks, actually said when the Indian team lost in South Africa. Then they will all admit: this is no exaggeration. When you see politicians getting excitable, do not doubt what you hear. After all did not Groucho Marx once intone about a character, 8220;He may talk like an idiot. He may look like an idiot. But don8217;t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.8221;

It is always tempting to use cricket as a metaphor for India. In the good old days, one version used to go: cricket really is an Indian game: unfathomable rules, interminable duration and still no result. Both India and the game have changed. But the ability of cricket talk to reveal much about our politics has not changed much. There is something odd about politicians and Parliament going on and on about everything from Sourav8217;s selection to Chappell8217;s methods. It is distasteful, because much of it is humourless, a display of an ego that is simultaneously fragile and flippant. But it is worrying because even when they talk about something they are ostensibly so passionate about, they commit some of the same mistakes as they do when they discuss less weighty policy matters like national security or education.

As our future Thucydides might continue, 8216;This was a republic whose leaders were given to rhetoric, often replacing reason with passion that aroused the masses. They were meddlesome, interfering even in areas outside their competence.They were often in denial. The country had meagre achievements to show on overseas expeditions for most of its history. Yet each new defeat came as if it were entirely unexpected. This nation8217;s politicians constantly confounded long-term measures with short-term palliatives. They imagined that firing a mere coach would be a palliative for vanishing playgrounds in urban areas, a deglamourised domestic circuit, and the fact that it has been almost a decade since we produced top order batsman who could sustain an average of over 40. Pericles had said that Athens8217; greatness consisted in the fact that its citizenry had no care other than the love of politics; the Indian Republic attended to cricket with the same single-minded devotion. Yet this very single-mindedness had proved Athens8217; undoing in relation to its competitors; it is only to be hoped that the Indian Republic will survive the Spartas that surround it better.

8216;This nation was fickle in its modes of worship: it apotheosised one minute and demonised the next. This nation confused deeds with words, as if merely admonishing players would produce the desired results. This nation often forgot its own realities. There was great clamour to withhold the pay of players or link pay to performance. But did it not already have such a system? Was its three tier contract system or the linking of selection to performance already not an acknowledgment of these principles? Or was the nation, in the tumult that followed the defeat, revealing what everyone knew but no one admitted: that selection was not linked to performance? Politicians declaimed against everyone but themselves. And finally, this nation constantly confounded ends and means: for this nation cricket was no mere amusement, it had become its soul. That would not have been such a fatal vice had politicians not rushed to take possession of it, without knowledge or forethought.8217;

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research