Soccer and Cricket

I have been following the soccer world cup with a certain degree of regularity over the last few days. Now, I have never been as ardent a fan of soccer as a lot of my friends have been but I have been sucked into the maelstrom by the waves of passion which must necessarily exist for a game as widely played as Soccer in a place as multicultural as UCSD. So I have been waking up relative early in the morning, watching the games, trying to figure out the myriad combinations through which teams can stay in the fray without actually scoring even a single goal, cheering for teams which in my relative ignorance I find more watchable and rooting for those who manage to win my sympathies merely by virtue of the facts that their countrymen are my close friends and roommates. And in the national fervor and pure joy which the world cup seems to have engendered, my mind invariably goes to the question, 'Whatever happened to cricket?'

I remember the time when my passion for the game rivaled that of any soccer fan today, when the instantaneous joy and polarizing effect of watching an India Pakistan slug-fest was as sanguine in my heart as the crushing desperation of Italy's ignominious exit is in the eyes of my roommates. That all seems to have changed and I realized it all the more when my sister told me that India managed to win the Asia cup to which I replied, 'Is it 20-20?' The truth is, it's not that I feel disappointed with myself that somewhere along the long course of the last 4-5 years, I stopped caring about cricket as much as I used to. For that I blame cricket itself and how it has been managed in India. If I had to describe it in a few words, I would say that the current state of cricket 'is a joke.' It's a terrible terrible joke and if someone had asked me a few years ago what changes I wanted to suggest in order to improve the condition, I would happily have suggested to gun down the managers, the players, and anyone else who is concerned more with making money than playing. Having mellowed down a bit now and hopefully having become a bit more rational, I try to see how such a degradation fits into the general scheme of things. When people come from a background of severe paucity, when there is so much to be frustrated with, every human endeavor is poised to degenerate into mere entertainment. Quick fixes are needed to alleviate the pathos of an existence which is already tough to begin with. The spicier and more fantastic one can make them, the better and more palliative it is. That is why television is so dumb in India and that is the same reason, I think, that the game of cricket has transformed into just a couple of hours of mindless antics. There is money in the shorter version of the game and thereby, quite understandably, we have 1 T-20 world cup, 1  IPL, 1 ICL, and god knows what else every year. But the effect of it all is to push the game into the direction of heartless capitalism. It doesn't help that cricket is a very localized sport which is played by only a few countries. It certainly doesn't help that within those few countries the true financial muscle lies with a country which is in such a transitional state of development where every artistic endeavor (yes games are artistic endeavors) is in danger of becoming a mockery of its former self. I'm hopeful that things would improve as people become more confident of a living and more discerning in their interest but by then the face of cricket would have changed beyond recognition.

Compare it to soccer where the countries which play the game come from such different backgrounds that no single country can dictate changes. Any change is difficult to come and that is not always a bad thing. Money is big in the game but the essential structure has remained more or less intact so that money becomes inconsequential if the basic qualities are compromised. Let me put it this way. The game of soccer has not been tweaked in the way cricket has been in order to satisfy those who supply the moolah. And therefore its fans can have a feeling of continuity of passion. Their passions, their loyalties, their love now is towards the same uncompromised structure that soccer, to a high degree of approximation, has always been. I, on the other hand, have lost that feeling of continuity and my passion has gone missing. It doesn't help that justified or unjustified, I have some sort of a prejudice against dumb things. I weigh the intelligence or lack thereof in T-20 in the same balance which I reserve for those family soap-operas which infest the Indian silver screen with a rotting stench. They are both heartless, mindless, dumb shadows of their former intelligent selves.