Chances are that even if you were not particularly concerned about Indias campaign in the Nehru Cup,an alert would have come your way Monday night. The football title is being decided on a penalty shootout,India have taken a lead,get yourself to a television screen before it is all over. And if you did you who are a sport snob,tuning in for Manchester United v Arsenal,but not among those who thrill at the prospect of India playing Syria you must have surprised yourself.
Monday night was high drama. Once Ahmad Muhmad had missed his penalty to allow India a 2-1 lead,and more acutely after the shootout went into sudden death,how could it be any other way? But the drama came not just from the structure of the contest. It came,cinematically Chak De! India style,from the atmosphere of the stadium. The stadium was so packed beyond capacity and the thousands of spectators charged to a point where their cheer gained a hysterical edge,that the celebrations begun with Subrata Pauls successful defence of Syrias seventh penalty kick had a sense of release coursing from the stadium to those watching in the isolation of their homes.
Mondays crowds at the Nehru Cup final kept a timely date at one of Indian footballs big nights. This is the summer when cricket began to assess the viability of its traditional format with an alarming tone of pessimism. Test cricket,they say,must change or be relegated to a curiosity. Look,they point,at the echoing emptiness of the stands at a Test match presumably a series in which England actually have an admittedly rare chance to beat Australia is an exception to prove the rule look how Test cricket is losing appeal to the growingly popular Twenty20. Reformat,or else.
Even the most undistracted purist would admit that to connect spectatorship with a games excitement is important. Certainly,those marketing a game for television rights,of prime importance in the commerce of sport,must know that there is a connect between the enthusiasm of those sitting beyond the boundary rope and the estimates for audiences needed to interest the broadcaster/ advertiser.
So,imagine what could have been Monday night with the same action in the field had there been slim attendance in the stands.
India would still have won a hard-fought match. And if you were one among those few witnesses,your heart would still have gone out to the Syrians. But on the television screen,it would have appeared just marginally more real than a computer game.
Thats an exaggeration. But in a country achingly conscious of its inability to keep the competition,the spectator and,by extension,the aspirant interested in anything but mens cricket,in overstatement may be found the hint of a solution.
Football,the regulars at Indias relatively modest stadia,will tell you,has earlier too managed to pack in the crowds. Hockey certainly has. Even women cricketers will remind you that away from the big cities,their matches have on occasion had people finding themselves seating on tree branches. But as Monday night showed,they still await a tipping point.
That could come from a variety of sources. It could take the big performer. As Michael Phelps insisted before,during and after his bid for a record eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics,what he was attempting at Beijing was not born of vanity,or an individual desire to be the best. What he wanted to achieve by the excessiveness of his ambition,by the interest he was thus attracting to his races,he said,was a higher profile for swimming. (In the textbook definition of a great sportsperson,it gets no more complicated that that,raising the profile of ones sport.)
Maybe that is what Saina Nehwal has begun to do for badminton in India,by incrementally raising the challenge she offers to the worlds best and by attracting hundreds of visitors to the world championship in her city just by the dint of her promise and preparation.
It can also come with the crush of spectators,as China has found with basketball,a sport in which it is not a big-time contender (while of course giving it some of its best players). Like football almost everywhere,basketball in China connects the sidewalks and big matches. The enthusiasm that convulsed the Olympic city last year when the local team was to take on the US was billed as the most anticipated event after the opening ceremony. It was as if a country just going through the paces to knock the US from the top of the medal tally was perfectly content that night to just enjoy their favourite sport without worrying about the scoreline.
It can come from an aspiration. Monday night had young women footballers scattered in the stands. Two of them told this newspaper that they do not watch cricket,and all the football they consume is,in fact,Indian. Now that the big tournament is over,surely the challenge is to get them back to the ground,to provide them the arena to train and then compete,to see reflections of their younger selves in new faces in the stands.
What holds for football holds for so much else. Boxing,for instance. And Test cricket had better take notice. Sometimes its the spectator who raises the profile of a sport.
mini.kapoor@expressindia.com
