Cricket India : We're Like That Only

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Amit Mishra.Prabhjot Singh.Sushil Kumar Singh.Yuki Bhambri.Saina Nehwal.Gagan Narang.Jhulan Goswami.

How many of these players could you identify, without straining your memory at all? Amit Mishra and Saina Nehwal?

Which names rung a bell? Gagan Narang and Yuki Bhambri?

Identify? Can't – typical Indian!

Which players did you actually have to look up on Google or Yahoo? Prabhjot Singh, Jhulan Goswami and Sushil Kumar Singh?

Hello, fellow Indian!

Isn’t that how it works? We tend to remember only those we see or hear the most. That is why, we almost instantly identify Mishra and Saina as a cricketer and a badminton player respectively. Natural. Isn’t it? Considering the amount of cricket we’ve all been exposed to and the recent media attention on Saina, it is obvious.

Because, we’re Indian. “We’re like that only”.We know our cricketers better than any other sports person(s), because we’ve seen, heard, read , and have even played so much of it. That’s why, it takes time to recollect shooter Gagan Narang and young tennis player Yuki Bhambri. That is also why we need to look up hockey captain Sardara Singh, Indian women’s cricket team skipper Jhulan Goswami, and footballer Sushil Singh. This, is India!

It’s hard to believe that hockey has actually survived its official position as the national sport for almost 70 years now. Not exactly impossible; the hockey team has won many a gold during the Olympics since almost the 1800s’. But it’s still been a task all along. Why?

Cricket is more than a sport in India, it's religion!

Because it’s not cricket.

Cricket is an export into the Indian way of life; ‘phoren maal’, as some would refer to the category of goods that aren’t produced within the country. In many ways though, Cricket is India’s adopted child. Hockey has been in the country since before the English brought cricket to fore, but one look at the passion the country shares for the sport, and you’re going to doubt that.

I’ve often heard cricket being referred to as the only secular religion in India, and I couldn’t agree more. Not that hockey isn’t secular -it just isn’t a religion. Supporters of hockey believe that one reason that Indian cricket is as successful and hockey isn’t : is the nationwide support it receives. However, they do forget that fan following is only proportionate to performance; the better a team does at a sport, the larger will its following be. One cannot expect the entire nation to turn up for the Hockey World Cup like the way they have and will for Domestic IPL Cricket. That’s too much to ask for of a people who have, over time, used cricket as a healer, uniter, leveler, peace-maker, recreation, and religion.

Therefore, it confuses me when avid hockey fans, or those of any sport other than cricket, try to measure up to the popularity of the latter, because by doing so, they are only self-destructing. The Indian populace has taken to cricket as it has to oxygen and water, and nothing, not even a debacle like the 50-over World Cup 2007 can alter that.

Why? Because we’re like that only!

Edited By: Arpit Kumar