The Blues Billion: Crying into the World Cup

Phew, what a week! It began with news of Bob Woolmer’s death and ended with the death of a billion hopes right here in India.

Phew, what a week! It began with news of Bob Woolmer’s death and ended with the death of a billion hopes right here in India. So a few stray thoughts and general observations on the past few days, most of them my own . . .

• Like, don’t know about you, but if that was cricket that was being played at Queen’s Park on Friday night, should our boys not be playing kabaddi instead?

• Like, now should we not chant, ‘Jeetega, bhai, jeetega/ B-E-R-M-U-D-A jeetega’ and hope that the spirit of Spanish explorer, Juan de Bermudez, spurs his descendents to greater cricketing glory?

• Like, isn’t it ironical that Mighty India now looks to Midget Bermuda, to keep its Super Eight hopes alive?

• Like, don’t know about you, but if that does not happen I think the BCCI should requisition some burqas rightaway, so that Team India can return to India in as discreet a manner as possible.

• Like, don’t know about you, but this instant exit out of the tournament could be just the reality check that cricket in this country badly needs: our men in blue are not demigods, our cricket administration is a scandal, our cricket sponsors together constitute a enormous greed machine, and our cricket fans are stark, staring loonies who need to be in straitjackets.

• Like, don’t know about you, but I think the time has come to build a tombstone to commemorate the memory of India cricket — at a convenient spot just outside the BCCI’s headquarters if possible — with the words: ‘In Tearful Memory of Indian Cricket. Rest in Pieces’.

Story continues below this ad

• Like, don’t know about you, but I believe the best thing that has emerged from these defeats is that some of the arrogance has been beaten out of these over-stuffed gentlemen who “control” the game in India.

• Like, don’t know about you, but the Indian fan had better wash all that paint off his/her face and start watching Ranji matches instead.

• Like, just a suggestion, but how about putting Indian cricket on a general detox and rehabilitation programme and cricket fans on a de-addiction regime?

• Like, just a suggestion, but as part of this process could we not stage a consolation Indo-Pak tourney together, so that the two subcontinental ‘giants’ of the cricketing world can lick their wounds and celebrate their status as ‘minnows’ together?

Story continues below this ad

• Like, isn’t it strange that they talk about the glorious uncertainties of they game, when actually they should be worried about its inglorious certainties — like the gargantuan presence of the match-fixing mafia?

• Like, what do they know of cricket, who only cricket betting know?

• Like, if they’ve always said ‘cricket is war, minus the shooting’, isn’t it time they revised that to ‘cricket is war, plus the looting’?

• Like, isn’t it ironic that, with the tragic death of Robert Andrew Woolmer, the game has now got its first, full-fledged murder mystery?

Story continues below this ad

• Like, isn’t it ironic that instead of asking innocent questions like, ‘who won?’ cricket watchers now ask, ‘whodunnit?’

• Like, having said all this, I would hope — for the sake all the millions of little kids having a ball with a improvised bat and with wickets drawn as three lines on a wall, kids celebrating the game in the shadow of the Himalaya or on a Coramandel beach — that Indian cricket survives World Cup 2007.