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Magazine
Why I won't be watching the World Cup
C. RAMMANOHAR REDDY
IT is difficult to be enthusiastic about the 2003 world cup of cricket. You do not have to be old fashioned to feel that intense commercialisation has already stripped the event of all innocence and excitement. Adding to the mess surrounding the cup, we have had the games played by the U.K. Government to boycott Zimbabwe and New Zealand's refusal to play in Nairobi.
And in South Africa, where much of the tournament will take place, the game and its players remain as tainted by colour prejudices as they were during apartheid.
All global sporting events are affected by one controversy or the other.
But even the gigantic 2002 world cup of football did not seem to be afflicted by the kind of wrangling that we have been witnessing in the cricket version. Each world cup of cricket takes commercialisation of the game to a higher level. One should not, however, carp at the involvement of commerce in international cricket. More money in the form of corporate sponsorship and fees for TV rights; the more frequent conduct of tournaments, all of which are telecast, and the hosting of games in newer and newer national and global locations have all done much to popularise the game, create a global audience and attract legions of new followers. This is what has happened in all games that are thriving in the international stage. But in cricket, ineffective regulation of the game (internationally and nationally as well in many countries) combined with financial support that has no connection with performance has meant that sponsorship, advertising and contracts seem to come first and the game next. This time round, our daily lives have, for weeks, been already suffused with "cricket commerce". Our cricketers, along with some of their colleagues from other countries, stare down at us from hoardings selling everything from biscuits to whisky. On TV others sell automobile tyres, electronic equipment and coloured sugar water. And companies, large and small, seem to be giving every activity a cricket tinge and betting that world cup business will improve their balance sheets.
The biggest source of disappointment is surely that members of the Indian cricket team feel more intensely about their contracts and cheque books than about their performance on the field. Yes, for professional crickets, the sport is more than a game. It is an occupation. True as well that the cricketers do have rights, which the Indian board seems to be unaware of and the international body does not seem to be concerned about in spite of India being the largest single source of financial sponsorship of the game. But how long can the millions of passionate followers of the game support the members of the national team when, each time they come on the field, their hearts and eyes seem to be more on the next sponsorship than on the cricket ball? This shows in the record books. Until recently, the Indians were consistent in a superior performance against four teams — Bangladesh, Kenya, Zimbabwe and New Zealand. Now it is down to two teams — Bangladesh and Kenya. As one perceptive writer in the letters to the editor columns recently put it, the Indian cricketers excel in performance — but only at stunts in TV ads when they enthusiastically endorse products.
A poor performance is something we can live with. We have after all lived for decades with the fact that the only thing consistent about the Indian cricketers' is their ability to under-perform in the international arena.
But what we must feel cheated about is that for years this under-performance was actually decided by the bookies. Public memory is so short that we have forgotten all about the betting scandal. The punishment meted out to Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja (now struck down in court) did not end the story. We still do not know how widespread match fixing was (has been and is?) over the years. It is hard to believe that only two or three members of the team were involved with the underworld, while the rest of the team was blissfully unaware of what was going on in hotel rooms, over mobile phones and on the pitch. The cricket fan, who has put in so much time and passion supporting the Indian team, has never been apologised to for all those matches that were fixed all those years. All the members of the team may not have been involved, but surely a collective apology was the least that they owed to those who keep the game going and the least that they could do to show that they were wiping the slate clean. Because of the very casual way in which the game was "cleaned up", the one bet that we can easily place during the 2003 World Cup is that there will be suspicions about how some matches turn during the tournament.
All said and done, we are better off not turning on the TV over the next month. And followers of the Indian team are better off reliving in their minds the spontaneity and innocent triumph of 1983.
E-mail the writer at: crr100@india.com
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