Cricket in the New India

Ride my seesaw

A sudden call disrupted my fervent attempt to tee off at the Chembur Golf Club on Saturday morning.

As a new convert to this fascinating game (and fairly struggling to connect club to ball till then, must confess), I was loath to squander time on the phone. But the voice at the other end sounded earnest — and was from Australia.

“How do you see the recent cricket controversy?” asked the lady, after a few apologies followed by a few references. She was from a radio station Down Under, and assigned a special programme to understand whether this was just a sporting fracas, or something more significant.

“Is this a defining moment in India’s history, or just cultural differences between two countries exposed on the field? Does it reflect a passing sentiment, or something deeper, like post-colonial resurgence?” she asked, or words to that effect.

I found the line of inquiry revealing on a couple of counts. The undying interest in the controversy, almost a month old now, shows the depth of introspection which it has provoked in Australia. Simultaneously, it is has sparked off hitherto unforeseen desire to understand, as I see it, the ‘phenomenon of new India’, and its place in the new global order.

A socio-political scientist would have a better fix on the subject, but clearly what happened during the Sydney Test was not just a set of unruly players hurling unseemly words at each other.

More significantly, there was a change in the decades-old status quo. India were not prepared to be the underdog and take things lying down any more.

The precipitating factor was the poor umpiring, which worked so heavily against Anil Kumble’s team, but at the subterranean level, the protest (and the humungous support from back home) was about asserting team, and by proxy, national identity.

These are weighty, complex issues obviously, but given cricket’s impact on the Indian psyche, inevitably of larger consequence than a mere tu-tu-main-main on a sports field.

The change in status quo in the cricket versus Australia reflects the change in the mindset of the new India vis-à-vis the old. There is a bustle and restlessness, driven by ambition, success which drives the new India in most of its endeavours.

In the sphere of information technology, in pharma, in engineering, in medicine Indians have performed with distinction. Business houses are becoming big, acquiring global companies and becoming bigger.

In effect, Indians are shedding the baggage of the past rapidly, competing with the world on almost all counts, wanting to be acknowledged as the best, fairly and squarely.

That’s where the real sense of power — or superpower if you will — should come from. To locate the current issue in the argument, India is now the financial superpower of cricket. And therein is the crux.

I see the Sydney controversy in two phases. The first is what happened on the field, and its immediate ramifications. My support for the Indian team and the BCCI in that is total.

What has transpired subsequently, leading to the hearing by the Appeals Commissioner on the allegedly racist comment made by Harbhajan Singh reveals a few warts and moles.

The threat to pull out from the tour if Harbhajan was found guilty was unseemly. The BCCI is a signatory to this protocol with the ICC; to nix it on peeve would have been short-sighted.

Indeed, by virtue of being the financial powerhouse of cricket, the BCCI can help provide new thrust to the game, with a value system that endorses the aspirations and identity of new India without disrupting the universe of cricket.

Sanctimonious clap-trap comes from misuse or abuse of power. The United States, for instance, has sought to spread the gospel of democracy by ruining nations in order to resurrect them as they deem fit. India’s position in the cricket world, like in much else, now stands redefined.

It is a powerful nation with a ready supply line of highly talented players, and just short of being the best in the world. To get there without breaking up the cricket world should be the priority.

Email: ayaz@dnaindia.net