Vidya Bhushan Rawat
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| Aussies defeated BCCI at Ahmedabad |
India ‘lost’ the World Cup. Winning or losing is part of the game but what happens when the game becomes part of the political propaganda and the audiences are not sports lovers or cinema lovers but fans who hate others. A Bania paper in Uttar Pradesh gave a headline for the final game as ‘dharmyudh’. The game of cricket is being used for political purposes. As cricket is a powerful business in the country and every one non-playing ‘captains’ of the game earn a much bigger sum than the players. There is not a single stadium in the name of any cricketing legend anywhere unlike the politicians and powerful leaders who might not have played cricket but dominated it. Bishan Singh Bedi opposed Feroz Shah Kotla's ground in Delhi being named after Arun Jaitley but what happened. Bedi, the legend is thrown away from the game. The same thing happened again when legends like Kapil Dev and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, two World Cup-winning captains, not being invited to watch the game in Ahmedabad. Why? Perhaps, because, the board and its political masters were certain of Indian victory and nobody ‘else’ should be there on the podium to ‘greet’ the Indian team except for the ‘Supreme Leaders’, who must have been practising to ‘deliver’ the ‘winning speech’ for days. Unfortunately, that did not happen as India was defeated.
As a team, this is a superb team that lost the game but won the hearts of the people but the real defeat is of the Board of Cricket Control in India which has converted it into a political game. It is not a game. It is purely business and politics.
I lost interest in the game once I saw players being ‘auctioned’ and the format of the game being changed to favour the batsman. The biggest crisis of cricket was the demise of the West Indians’. They were unparalleled and a sheer joy to watch. In India, the biggest upturn in cricket came after the historic victory of 1983 under Kapil Dev at the Lords. I still remember the excitement and joy it brought in our lives. For days, we did not forget it. It was just the transistor age and many of us had not even had the luxury to watch it on TV. After that investors came in and cricket became a big game. Kapil Dev was the player who changed it and brought cricket to non-English-speaking people of the country. He was not an intellectual like Bishan Bedi nor sophisticated like Sunil Gavaskar, who could fit anywhere according to the requirements. Kapil always spoke from the heart and that is why he has always been straightforward and stood up for the rights of the players. Years later, the other man who changed the dynamics of cricket in India was Mahendra Singh Dhoni, emerging in from a relatively smaller town/city. After Kapil Dev, it was under Dhoni that India won the world cup. That was the time when we were growing and the rules of the games were still great.
As the new dispensation in India came in 2014, the game of cricket also changed a lot. More money came in but it also wanted players to sing and dance to the tone of the board. India had already hosted several World Cup tournaments in the past but I think this was the worst. And the reasons are clear. Rather than thinking about India, the whole focus of the board of cricket control in India was Gujarat and Gujarati Asmita as if other cities and states don’t have it or deserve it. Whenever cricket is understood and the history of cricket is written by any impartial person, the four to five cricket grounds always come in our minds. The first and foremost remain Eden Gardens in Kolkata where players the world over would love to play in front of a truly sports-loving crowd. Have we seen how the first World Cup win of Australia happened under Allen Border at Kolkata and how he was greeted by the stadium giving a standing ovation? Similarly, Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Cheapak in Chennai, Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi and Karnataka Rajya Cricket Stadium in Banglore had always been extremely welcoming to the international players and enjoyed the good game. After all, you go to watch a match to see a good game and not merely a win for your team.
In the last ten years, Gujarat has got unprecedented favour from everyone. It got the maximum funding for ‘sports’ even when there is not even one player who could have gone to any international events like the Asian Games, the Olympics or elsewhere. States that have been sending players to international events never get even half of the funds that Gujarat has. Look at the World Cup events. Ahmedabad was pampered so much that it was given the ‘prestigious’ match against Pakistan. Why? It is purely for monetary purposes because a match against Pakistan is still an extremely popular game in terms of business. The crowd at the Ahmedabad have been boorish, to say the least. They don’t come to watch a game but purely for a political purpose. Frankly speaking, Ahmedabad never deserves important matches of the World Cup. The World Cup final should have happened in Kolkata or Mumbai, the two cities with incredible cricketing history but then how do you expect a cricket administration which has not even bothered to invite the two giants of our Cricket history who brought us the World Cup and gave us tremendous joy, Kapil Dev and Mahendra Singh Dhoni to watch the match, to be fair towards other places for the purpose of World Cup Final. Can there be a bigger scandal than this as to why was Ahmedabad given preference over Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai left aside from Delhi? The crowd forgot that they were watching the final of an international event and needed to be polite and appreciate the game.
It was sad to see the crowd behaving in such a filthy street-level manner. They had not come to watch a game but wanted to celebrate a victory. Obviously, every Indian would love to have a World Cup victory but then at the end of the day it is a game and once the game is over, the opposite team, need to be applauded and acknowledged. The crowd at Ahmedabad left the stadium before the Australian captain could be handed over the World Cup Trophy. This is not merely disgraceful but simply outrageous but then when you convert people into mindless frenzied crowds such international embarrassment is bound to happen. The Bania Brahmin media in India has reduced us to a joke. It needs to educate people that it is a game and gamesmanship is the need of the hour. Respect players and enjoy the game. Winning and losing is not important but the prestige and honour of the country. This World Cup, from the beginning, had problems and it was looking a tournament that was meant to make India win at all costs. The game was to be played by the players and the boards had a duty to provide space and environment. The richest board of the world suffer from megalomania and remains highly biased and prejudiced. Any cricket lover in India would give Kolkata, Bombay, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi stadiums and crowds far above rating than over-pampered Ahmedabad. It is time the administrators of cricket and other sports bodies think beyond their narrow political interests. Remember, the Indian cricket team played like a champion team though got defeated in the final but that is the part of the game the real defeat happened to those who wanted to reap political profit from India’s victory. A country that ignores and disrespects its sporting icons for the sake of making the political masters happier will never be able to have a sporting culture and sportspersons of international class. Moreover, in cricket you might have financial control, the other sports bodies are watching your arrangements and a badly managed cricketing event might affect India’s chances to host other international events and tournaments. Stop political interference in sports bodies and allow sports persons and professional administrators to play a key role in it. The defeat at Ahmedabad is not of the Indian cricket but that of its political administrators who are lording over the body, minting money and destroying the gentlemen's game.
(The author is an independent commentator and social worker. These are his personal views.)
