Indian Football: Cricket is not our villain

Indian football fans are a rarity, not in absolute numbers mind you – just in the relative context of other sport(s?) in India. Being this rare bunch, we tend to be very passionate about the game and will stop at nothing to support our side. After all we have all seen a significant improvement in the physical and mental state of the team as well as the emergence of some (hopefully) future stars in recent times.We’re all very excited for the Olympic qualifier playoff against Qatar and the world cup qualifier against UAE. Despite all our recent results from the Asia cup and before, there is an optimism in us (at least in me) which suggests we can actually pull off an upset in either one or both of these games.

And yet, should it upset us so much to think that this other sport (yes I mean cricket), is the number one reason football is shelved aside? Should it irritate us so? There are twitter discussion with some of the greatest experts in Indian football discussing this right now. I read an article where a fan suggests the prime minister should show up to Indian football games. Really!? The Prime minister came to an India Pakistan cricket world cup semi-final. Is he expected to make his way for a group stage game against Australia where the team is almost certain to be humiliated? Or to a game against Pakistan in the AFC Challenge Cup qualifiers!?

There is a HUGE fan base for cricket, a sport we have done very well in over the years and have always looked to dominate. Now, Indian cricket has hit a peak which hasn’t been felt by this nation since 1983. The celebrations across the country right now are a good enough indicative of how big an impact this game has on our country.Now, coming back to this Indian football fan bunch – we’re all of the opinion that football is THE sport. Cricket is played by 8 countries seriously, football by about 150. Winning the cricket world cup is probably a smaller deal than qualifying for the football world cup for us. I, for one, can imagine myself running around the streets all night when India finally does the latter.

And yet, at times I feel we aren’t being at all fair. Quite honestly,I think football is very popular due to its simplicity (kick..ball..goal) with ‘offside’ being the only complicated rule. Its intricate in game play but not so in the rules of the game itself. Cricket isn’t for everyone with its complex rules and it shows in how so few teams are really good at it. One has to commend the Indian cricket team for returning the results of the all the fan following and money invested in them. They have conquered every avenue of the game over the past year. Its like a treble winning season for gods sake. It doesn’t seem right to be saying ‘They’re good, and thats why Indian football is awful’. Indian football is awful because Indian football is awful. The sooner we come to grips on that, we might stop blaming everyone but the footballing bodies and players, perhaps even occasionally the coach – and actually make some progress.

I know there is an argument which says all the money goes to cricket, but quite frankly, Indian football needs to show results to really get noticed by a greater spectrum of people. Our most famous upset victories in recent times were against Syria (because they were ranked below 100 at the time), after that its just the win against UAE way back in 2002. Loads of people watch the football world cup but have no idea what the Indian football team is upto. Its a clear indicative of a potential fan base once the results start coming. What Indian football needs to do is to do their thing – play better, compete and actually win some of these big games. What Indian football fans need to do is a) promote the sport, spread awareness of whats happening in Indian football and keep faith, b) shut up about cricket killing football.