Saving cricket, saving ourselves

It’s amazing how blurred the lines between a political party and the BCCI have become. There’s a widespread malaise of incompetence beginning to spread across the nation, and unfortunately it’s hitting those with substantial amount of power first. The BCCI’s growing list of anomalies is quickly eroding any sense of credibility the organisation had, and any kind of faith a cricket fan had in them is being let go off, along with large amounts of satisfaction.

The BCCI has a bumbling but stoic leader; solid on his stand and unwilling to look at it from any other perspective. A bunch of cronies, all willing to bow down to their all-serving master and stay mum on issues actually relevant, while harping on about things concerning zero percent surround him. Shady deals done by relatives and friends are mysteriously given a clean chit, though evidence points several fingers in the opposite direction. Fans are now being referred to as ‘angry’, ‘fed up’, and having ‘lost all hope’. This coincides so eerily with the shenanigans of modern day politics, you even become convinced with the farce.

The BCCI is the Superman of all sports in India. It could swoop down like a god-blessed angel and sweep you off your feet, but instead, chooses to stay huddled in its gold-plated corner with its wealth and health, and impose power on various sporting bodies within and outside India. The potential the BCCI has, not only for cricket but all other sports in the country, could shower a completely new generation of achievements upon us. Instead we get lies, treachery and deceit. As a cricket writer says, “Everybody seems to know what to do, except the BCCI.”

Indian cricket has reached a lower point than it reached at the end of the IPL. Ankeet Chavan and Sreesanth have been released on bail, Meiyappan and Raj Kundra have been ‘proven’ to be innocent, and now Ajit Chandila is claiming his innocence. As cricket fans, we forget. And that is our biggest flaw. Despite the large amount of rubbish that occurred with the spot-fixing, we still wanted to fill every seat in the house at the finals of the IPL. We enjoy our cricket so much that we forget what happens off the field and get on with our lives like nothing happened. That’s the weakness we have, and that’s the weakness crooks exploit.

Cricket is that one escape from everyday life, the one part that is not related to a bad day in the office, a delayed salary slip, an endless job hunt, a man to vote for, a party to follow, a terrible traffic jam and the likes. It’s the escape that all Indians are so familiar with that there seems to be no other way of living. Why should the average cricket fan feel like the sport is another burden on his head? One should the one solace in his life be another bane on his back, crushing his mental strength into tiny, minuscule pieces. We all face so much pressure in our lives. Cricket is that one things that rescues us from the abyss. The BCCI now, though has its own hand so far down it, we are indeed ‘losing hope’.

The BCCI’s downfall and process of losing face is a slow eradication of an entire culture within Indian society. We don’t want to think about all the problems not on the cricket field. We’ll whine when Kohli departs for a duck, or when Dhoni drops a catch, or if Tendulkar decides to call it a day. Those are the problems we’d like to deal with. The BCCI is supposed to represent the best cricketers in the country, and a large militia of fanatics. Right now, all it represents is greed and incompetence.