India - A nation of 'Armchair' know it alls!

Know it alls?

Cricket and Football are two sports which are as different as ‘chalk and cheese‘. While Cricket, the ‘Gentleman’s game‘, was a sport played by the ‘Elitist‘ class in England, Football though having its origin in the same country, was and still is a sport for the masses. Cricket has 11 ‘fielders‘ (including the bowler and the wicketkeeper) running after a red or white ball(depending on the format of the game), whereas Football has another set of ‘adrenaline pumped up‘ men, running, tackling and heading a much bigger ball!

Though there is not even an iota of doubt as to which is the more popular sport amongst us Indians, certainly a comparision between ‘encyclopedic fans‘ of the two sports in the country would surely do well to whet appetites of both the ‘traditional bat wielding kid in the gully‘ as well as the ‘pub going-beer guzzling United faithfuls‘. India have always had its share of ‘Armchair Cricket analysts‘, as well as the new-gen ‘Football lovers‘, who believe watching the Champions league and wearing a Manchester United jersey(and yelling out the choicest of abuses at ‘Scousers’ during a game screening!) make them the next best thing to have ever happened in our country of more than a billion people.

While the possibility of an Indian who has never played cricket is probably equivalent to our Football team beating Spain in the World Cup final, the fact remains that Indians do the ‘analysis‘ part of sport really well. Even the most ‘Son, don’t waste your time dreaming of being a Rooney and get into an Engineering college!‘ mouthing Indian parent, will have a strong opinion on Tendulkar’s retirement (India’s opinion on the genius have always been as fluctuating as Vivek Oberoi’s Bollywood career graph!). On the other hand, the current crop of ‘Hey, I watch the Premier League, hence I am superior to you! ‘football pundits‘ believe, juggling the ball after watching a ‘You-Tubed Ronaldo freestlyle’ makes them ‘connoisseur’s of modern day Soccer’.

Though it is true that the number of kids playing football nowadays on a ground (a small square piece of land filled with stones and kids hitting a DLF maximum which can only be found in India!) are on the rise, it doesn’t spell the end of our numerous Cricketing and Footballing experts, who can give our very own Navjot Singh Sidhu (‘Ha,Ha,Ha‘, and more of it to follow!) and ‘Football Director’ Shebby Singh (for the uninitiated, Singh was a football analyst at ESPN Star and is now touted to change things around at Blackburn Rovers) a good run for their money.

The writer feels that though India have a great chance of qualifying for the 2080 Fifa World Cup and also Sachin playing the ‘Evergreen hero‘, a ‘la-Dev Anand‘, for Indian Cricket, it is high time we Indians stopped flaunting our ‘know it all‘ obsession regarding sport (any guesses on what exactly is a ‘Chinaman‘ in Cricket?), and get down to where it really matters most, encouraging more of our Tendulkars and Chettri’s and become a country with real sporting culture!