Well now that we are done with cricket (atleast for now) people can start going about their life bitching about the abysmal performance of our cricketers and how we being a nation of 1+ billion couldn’t congregate a team of plausible players, the future of the sport etc, etc....
Public's anguish is justified to some extent, the team went down without a protest or a single hint of fight against the not so matured, in-experienced team.
The game failed to enthrall viewers, the players displayed total lack of commitment to the cause. At the end of the match Rahul Dravid looked shaken and was virtually in tears(that was a poignant sight and i'm sure many would have felt for him) other players looked distant & detached, don’t know what was going thru their mind i can guess the endorsement deals would've been the top priority.
I fail to understand what is it about this game that drives Indians crazy(including me) may be its in our blood, one of my friend's kid is hardly 3 yrs and his favorite ad is 'Boost is the secret of my energy' and he does that with a batting swing action, now now i live in US Midwest where exposure to this game is less than pragmatic and of all the ads this chotu has seen this seems to fancy him a lot.
Some say its time to move on and look at other sports like soccer, formula1, golf, hockey etc... but few say we are not upto power games and attribute it to our puny&scrawny built (compared to Europeans, middle eastern, Americans of course).
To me it seems that we lack commitment and fire to pursue these sports of course there is little or no help from our government agencies to promote these sports, their theory is prove first and then we may help, but it is disheartening to think we haven’t scored a gold in Olympics where as our neighbors(I meant the Chinese) who are maybe same or less built than ours have made great strides in the field of sports.
Question is, if they can why can't we???? how can we change? what does it take for us to be recognized out of the framework of IT?
I know they are Good questions and so life moves on.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Cricket and we the Indians
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4 comments:
this team never looked like they wanted to win (probably apart from the SL match). Against BL, dhoni missed a catch (it was tough, but should have been taken) and he gave a smile indicating it was tough and he still tried as if like he was doing someone some favor). Most of these players are just not professional and all the talks of Chappell n Dravid of building a professional, flexible team etc have been reduced to mere promises. End of day, I am happy that India did not qualify, we just did not deserve to.
I agree with what you say about cricket being in our blood. With this thought, my mind thinks that we indians definitely need to under-go a dialysis treatment. Hope, with that we tend to think (atleast) about other games and sports. I am sure our BCCI is rich enough to sponsor this nation-wide treatment. I vaguely remember that such an initiative is already taken by our Maratha man (Sharad Pawar). Should we call it a fore-sight of Pawar!!!??? Though, not sure where that is heading to.
But, I am sure (dont know whether to call myself optimist or pessimist) this whole process of dailysis will be a big failure, as we luv this game, so called cricket, so much that any dialysis treatment would not cleanse this cricko-blood. infact I am looking forward to next Indian tour to Bangladesh.. :)... silly blood of mine...
The problem is with the selection process and the number of back door entrants who make it to the Ranj Level. Just look at Karnataka's team, we've Roger Binny's son,Brijesh Patel's son in our team & both are pretty mediocre players. If not for their parents name, these two wouldn't have made it to the team.Such is the case with most Ranji teams. Now, we hear that Lalu's son would be captaining Bihar's team soon. The actual talent gets lost in this process. Its a well known fact that our players achieve Nirvana after a couple of endorsements to their names.
First, the change should happen at the top post.The president of BCCI has to be a cricketer & not a businessman/politician.
Quota based selection should go.
Players need to be paid based on performance.
Well, we can debate on this endlessly.
The article was really good. Here are some of my views (which might be scrap):
1. Indians are crazy over cricket because cricket is the only game in which we got some success in the recent past (World champions in 1983) and we performed reasonably well as compared to other sports (in last two decades). This is the only sport where we were able to compete with the best teams. Whereas, we have continuously declined in other sports in the same time frame. For example, once we were Asian champions in football (1962) and World champions in hockey (for almost 5 decades), but for past 2 decades we have faced only failure in these games. Its a general human nature to get attracted by success (rather than failure). Hence, cricket became more popular than other sports. Unless we get success in other sports, cricket would remain the top most game in India, despite numerous failures and little success.
2. Physic plays important role in determining the performance in a sport. As mentioned in the Article, though our government does not spend as much as European or American government does in sports, but it is a fact that we spend much more than African nations in sports. The success of African nations in Olympics is now a well know fact (Kenya always dominate in long distance events, though Kenya's sports budget is not even 2% of India's sports budget). I would like to give one more example to show the importance of physical ability in sports and the physical limits of different race. In 100 meter race, Europeans, Americans and Africans have crossed the benchmark of running 100 meters in less that 10 seconds. But till now, no one from Asia has ever recorded less that 10 seconds in 100 meters, even though Asia is home for more than half the population of earth. Recent successes of China in Olympics are not in track and field, but in the sports which does not need that much physical strength (for example, table tennis, archery, etc). Hence, Physic is a very important factor to get success in sports.
3. The next most important point in determining the success in any field of life (including sports) comes from the behavior of a society (which determines our thinking and way of life). For example, we Indians give utmost importance to academics. Its a wish of every parent to see their children performing well academically, rather than spending time in sports, music or any other field. On one hand, an Indian child seldom gets opportunity to select field of own choice. They are forced from childhood to excel academically. On the other hand, any American or European child selects subject of own interest. Obviously, if any person does anything by interest, then that person would achieve great heights than the persons who are forced to do that. That's why Americans are more innovative and perform better than us in every field of life (academics, sports, arts, music, etc). Though India produce many engineers and doctors, but we still lack innovativeness. From the childhood, all the theorems or hypothesis or laws that I came across in Math or physics or chemistry or biology, rarely I found any Indian name. These fields are as much dominated by Americans/Europeans as any other field.
4. Conclusion: So to answer the question "How we can be recognized out of the framework of IT?", I would say that there is no single step that we can take to improve our self in every field. We have to remember that whatever result we get, we get it because of certain actions that we have taken. In other words, history determines what we would get in future. Nothing is achieved due to coincidence or chance. If you would look into the history of how European/American society got evolved and how Indian society evolved, you would find the answer. You would find that never give up attitude is the back bone of their society. They have faced the same problems that we have faced. On one hand, they fought back, restored their supremacy, but on the other hand, we surrendered. On one hand, when they were involved in new inventions and innovations (as electricity, gravitation, Darwin's laws, etc), we were involved in religion and castism. Even still today, Indian mass cant think logically. We (means our society) still fight on the name of god (that we don't even know whether exists or not) and their is a clear division on the name of language, religion, cast, and thousand of other illogical reasons. When the society is scattered and their are so much divisions and differences, then it is not possible that Indians would be able to do justice to their potential and would do good in all the fields. In short, if we cant change our society (our way of life, our thinking, our actions), then their is no way that we will do good in any aspect of life.
Thanks,
Rajib
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