Back from hibernation.........

Its been quite a long time, and I am back after a pretty long and busy month!(Theoretically, this is one of the shorter months, but life had so much for me in this month that made it seem long!!)

Well I really dont know what to write about, but my thoughts have been pondering over the recent victory by the Indian cricket team in the Twenty20 world cup and its aftereffects!! When I think about it, lot of things come into my minds. First and foremost is the fanaticism of the Indian public. The same Indian public had literally screwed the happiness of almost the same Indian team not too long back. Hardly 6 months back, when Indians had been eliminated from the World Cup, the furore and the outrage of the Indian public was unimaginable. The house of M S Dhoni which was under construction, was badly damaged. Similar things had happened with other cricketers too. Hoardings and advertisements bearing these cricketers's photographs were damaged. Even corporates backed out of multi million deals with these players. The frequency of TV commercials starring these players went down drastically. I started wondering, what happened to the Indian public?? I always pitied those people to have been cricketers, more so Indian cricketers!! Indian cricket is a great leveller! And people take it too much emotionally. At times they tend to think from their heart.

And now, barely 6 months away, they are world champions, though in a different format. And back they return to a totally different sort of welcome from the public!! I had heard the saying "Every dog has its day". But I had never expected that day to have come so early! A victory procession almost 20 odd kilometers on the busy roads of Mumbai, paralysing normal life; cash rewards showered on all players by the board as well as state Governments; apartments by main sponsors in any of the cities of the players's choice and what not?? The same BCCI which had opposed the T20 concept in its formative days has come forward to organise the Victory march! In fact it even has started the Indian Premier League, which is the domestic version of the T20!! Coming to the point, the victory is definitely commendable. For one, nobody really imagined India to , forget winning, even qualify for the semi finals. But this young team has definitely done really well. And secondly, this was Dhoni's first tryst with captaincy, and no senior player was around whenever he needed any assistance or suggestions. He has done a phenomenal job and has shown traits of a great captain. But then, time only will tell. Its too early to comment on his captaincy.

That brings me to one more point!! Whenever there is a cricket series of this magnitude happening anywhere in the world, people start popping up everywhere as "Cricket Analysts" and every Tom, Dick and Harry is an expert. Especially in those review sessions on the news channels and other major discussions on other channels. Anyone who can speak a fair deal of English with a few words which common man cannot understand here and there, will be labelled as an expert. It doesn't matter whether whatever he speaks makes any sense or not! The other day, I saw two of the renowned Indian cricketers arguing on a news show about which World Cup victory was better, the 1983 one or the current one!! I fail to understand, how can one even compare the two!! Both are great victories in their own way. But you cannot compare the two victories, as such!!! Its like comparing price of gold with apples!! In fact, most of the players in this squad, were probably not even born the last time we had won a cricketing event of that magnitude!! So its highly immature to compare the two victories!!

And coming to the last point, when Governments can reward cricketers like what they have done, what injustice have other sportsmen done?? Only that they chose to play a sport that was not popular among the public?? The other day, I saw a dejected Pankaj Advani complaining, "If 5 World championships, an Asiad Gold, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and Arjuna award is not enough, then whats enough??" In fact, as I sit to write this, Vishwanathan Anand is all set to win the World Championship in Chess!! P Gopichand won the All England Badminton Championship which is equivalent to Wimbledon. Paes and Bhupathi have won lots of titles in the tennis circuit. Narain Karthikeyan had opportunity in the F1 scene too. But people hardly bother about it. Just a couple of weeks back, the Indian Hockey team won the Asia Cup Hockey. What did the players get?? In fact how many of us are even aware of that?? As we talk about all these, one unanswered questioned has remained so for decades together "There are lot of talented sportsmen in other disciplines also. Why doesn't the Govt support them??"