I don't like cricket. I don't quite 'geddit', as in what the hype about sitting in front of a TV for games that last 8 hours, watching the 1000 something like advertisements that they show between every over four 50 overs. To me those are good prerequisites for having your brain washed over a long period of time.
So when India won the ICC cricket world cup, the hype and the happiness all but escaped me. I didn't watch the game, but I did keep a tab on the scores, which was made easy by keeping a tab pointing to ESPNcricinfo page open in chrome as I did my other things. So when Dhoni hit a 6 to win the game I smiled briefly knowing that this was going to be the topic among all my Indian friends for weeks to come. It doesn't matter now that they been scrutinising his performance in the other matches till the final. People close to me even mentioned that all his talents are in advertisements and not on the field. None of that matters now.
It has been a big debate for a long time now, India with a population just next to that of China, being fanatically crazy about one sports. Indians suck at football, either they know that they would never be good at it or they just don't care about the sport in relation to cricket. A babe called Sania Mirza had her stint in tennis for an year or two but that is all but dead now. So India is good at cricket, on top of their game, but the game is not played by more than 10 countries. That is where the problem lies. And I believe that's where the hype also comes from
To my understanding Indians are trying to increase awareness about how the game can be, trying to promote the game to the rest of the world by pushing in a lot of money. This is evident from IPL, the cricket league in India that's aptly named to counter EPL, the football stanza in English. The name itself suggests that there wont be any football hype in the country for centuries to come, not as long as there are Indian players like Tendulkar who keeps hitting centuries in every other game. The big daddy of the game didn't perform well as the tournament came to a close but that didn't stop other younger players and the captain from performing well. So its on with cricket for Indians, as the case would have been even if they didn't win this world cup. Cuz, to summarise, India is a cricket crazy nation
I hope that India can do well to promote the game to other countries and bring about a change to the game and bring on to the same level as football (or soccer depending on which part of the world you are from). I hope they keep dominating the game over other big players of the world, such as Australia, England and so on. Why do I hope for these things even if I am not interested in cricket. That is because I wish to see Indians doing well in something they would readily bleed out for. Because if they don't do well to strive in this sport, even with one of the largest population of the world, they end up being good at nothing. I don't want that to see that day, much as the world would not want to see a better half of the world being good at nothing.
Maybe one day Maldives would give up on its football dream (a dream kept only alive by sheer faith in the game, a dream that doesn't seem possible, not with the population we have). Maybe we would also join in on the subcontinent domination of the game and have supporters glued to the TV for 8 hours and watch ads all day long. Its something not very likely, not with the support cricket has in Maldives. But whats wrong with hoping for things you don't really care about, eh?
So to all Indians. Just paint it blue.
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