Why Cricket?

For a long time, what seems like ages, there has been a cry about fading popularity of the national sport of India, hockey, and almost no support or backing for other sports and other sportsmen. For decades, sportsmen playing other sports have been wanting support and attention and of-course the sponsorship which keeps the sport alive. Hockey has lost its sheen or importance as the national sport and though in official records it is still the national game, cricket is the only game which attracts huge sponsorship, huge crowds on any given day. It has long replaced hockey as the national game, although unofficially. Why is cricket so immensely popular in the Indian sub-continent? Why such a boring game (test cricket runs into 5 days and becomes bit boring when the result is a draw) which lasts for almost 7 hours (ODI) or 5 grueling days (Test) is so wildly popular and followed by millions of fans? A game which came to India only because we were once ruled by the British, a game which only handful of countries play, a game where one has to chase a small red leather ball for the entire day. How can such stupid game draw millions of fans to the stadiums, keep them glued to the television sets for the best part of the day? And how can few people make the whole nation stop and pray for them? Lets make an attempt to find out.

In my opinion, there are many factors contributing to the popularity of cricket and that starts with our so-called "gully cricket" and our childhood. For many decades now, parents have found it easier to buy plastic bats and balls for their toddlers, mainly boys, to be specific. I guess, throwing a ball or hitting it by a bat (or whatever object in hand) doesn't need specific skills. Also that bat-ball thing brings a wide grin to the kid's face for sheer movement of the ball (mostly red) and sound of hitting it with that plastic bat. Almost every kid gets attracted to any sort of sound made by someone and playing bat-ball is probably the easiest way to be with them, throw the ball to them and ask them to hit, sounds music to most of the parents here.

Availability of round rubber-balls, widely used for gully-cricket, or even harder tennis balls at cheaper rates gives a good reason for teenage boys to play cricket. Plus, you don't really need a proper cricket-bat at all times. I myself have played, with whatever I could, with my friends with wooden plank, hardbound registers, normal wooden bats (costing barely Rs. 20-100) and sometimes, even with bare hand used as a bat; of-course it was painful to hit the ball with bare hand. We were crazy bunch of kids back then. And it wasn't really necessary to have a full size ball, it could even be a smaller one, the size of a table-tennis ball, to play in the backyard.

The other reason, and which many would agree to, is in India, especially in cities-towns, we live in multi-storeyed apartments where we do have a bunch of kids. You don't really need 2 sets of 11 players to play the game. We have played with 3 players on each side and have thoroughly enjoyed it. All you need is one bowler, and two fielders, wall acting as stumps and wicket-keeper. Mostly, you can't find 11 players in each side, even for the over-arm format of gully-cricket or small grounds and you find teams playing without their own wicket-keeper. The batting team provides one. So mostly, there are no runs scored or offered behind the stumps line. (Probably one of the reasons why Indian batsmen are good at driving the ball.) The point is when majority of the boys in the society are playing cricket, it becomes tough for the other kids not to go and join them.

Currently, if you look at the state of sports in the country, it is only cricket where you have multiple state/region teams, many of the companies do have their own cricket teams. It means that there is sufficient infrastructure available at the base level to groom, nurture and provide cricketers more than other games. Though there is a need for establishing and developing the basic infrastructure for other games, because cricket is the most popular game in the country, there is no such development in that direction. Moreover, other games require some special skills, and special conditions. To become a hockey player, you have to acquire the skills of being able to use the hockey stick and hit the ball in the desired direction (like cricket), and also to pass the ball towards the other player through the crowd of opposition players attacking or pouncing on you. Moreover, you have to be able to hit the ball (in hockey or football) into the goal post, no points/rewards to hit it in any other direction. For almost every other game you need to have special skills, and apart from hockey and to some extent football (football is not yet as popular, except in convent-run schools and some colleges), most of the other games are individual games. So you have to rely on self and prove yourself. For cricket, it is rare to see a specialist in India. It being a team-game, your inability can get covered by others in the team and you get a chance to rectify your mistakes. In hockey, I don't think if I make an error, I would get another chance in the remaining part of the game. As Shahrukh Khan says in "Chak De", the ball barely comes to you for more than a minute in the entire 90 minutes of the game. Who would want to run around the ground when you hardly get any chance? In cricket, you either get to bat, or bowl or even field, and a chance to do something on the ground.

Well, another reason for the popularity is public view. I came to know about this when I started travelling in public transport. We all have seen funny interviews and discussions on the game, before and after it, by the so-called experts of the game. The interviewer or the host rarely gives the expert a chance to voice out his full opinion and in the end, ensures the expert is saying the same thing that he (or his producer) wants. Remember the "Match ke Mujrim" on some news channel (probably Aaj Tak or NDTV) after India used to lose in matches? But in the public transport it is even more frenzy, fanatic. Anyone and everyone who sees something related to cricket, has his/her own view on the game, mostly its result. People, even those who don't even know the difference between off-spin and leg-spin talk for hours on how the bowler should have bowled. Those who can't tell the difference between cover drive and pull shot, bark about how a batsman should have played that shot to save his wicket and win the game. This insane following is the fruit of telecast of the game to millions, or we could say, the game is telecasted to millions because people love to watch the game. The media knows what to show and how to show. They have long ago picked the hint of showing the game to people and get most viewership.

Lack of heroes in other games, especially in the past, has also been one of the contributing factors. Barring Major Dhyanchand, there wasn't a big name in Hockey, or we rather would say, other names were quite overshadowed by his game. But after we stopped winning at Olympics, the game slumped in the popularity quotient. In tennis, chess, badminton, we have had heroes in recent past, not too long ago. People like Prakash Padukone, Dhanraj Pillai, Anand have made us proud on numerous occasions, but I have rarely seen people inspired by them and representing the nation and taking over the torch from them. But in cricket there have been many such performers who have inspired the kids in the nation to take up this game and dream of representing the country. Right from the pre-independence era, we have had some fascinating players who drew crowds to the stadiums, inspiring youngsters. And the media has only added to that fascination. Ask any current young cricketer, what brought him to the game and they would unanimously say, Sachin Tendulkar. Seeing him, many drew inspiration and came to the game and are now representing the country. Right from Sehwag, Dhoni, Gambhir, Ashwin, Yuvraj, Virat, you name them and they would say the same story. Sachin himself got attracted to the game because of Sunil Gavaskar and the story goes on backwards in similar fashion. I am of-course not neglecting the role of media in making Sachin a legend and visible inspiration to youngsters. If they had not seen him on TV, they probably wouldn't have been drawn to the game. But the point is many kids saw him reaching new heights and their love for him and the game has only increased. He too has been a fine ambassador of the game, a inspirational figure for others. We also had a great reason to celebrate when Kapil and his "devils" won the 1983 World Cup and now when Dhoni and his team has won the 2011 World Cup. Never short of heroes, to be honest. If the other games want to have a better status, they need to have more heroes, impactful heroes, who could put the name of country on global scene with consistency. Sania Mirza did show that hope, but it was short-lived. Saina Nehwal currently is doing great and hopefully she can inspire others. But ofcourse, we need better infrastructure for those sports too.

In today's times, I have seen many people saying cricket is not a worth-ful game only because it has become a fashion to criticize the game, the players, especially after the match-fixing scandal. They say, football is better game, hockey is national game. But more often they sound like people who don't like cricket's popularity and don't really care for the other games too. Merely following the game on TV doesn't mean you become a football fan or a hockey fan or a tennis fan. You have to know the game, understand the game, understand the nitty-grittys of that game. Cricket, as a game, is lot easier to follow. We all know, how a bowler should bowl, how a batsman can score and how a fielder should field. To understand it is a lot simpler than to understand the other games like football. It isn't mere kicking the ball and scoring goals. There are hell lot of other things in the game. Even a housewife knows what is a wide-ball or what is a run-out. That ease of knowledge is not associated with other games in our country. As a small kid you tend to follow what the family is following and this is passed on from generation to generation. That is the real beauty of the game's popularity. Media has only cashed-in on this, but it has always been there right from the beginning.

I have tried to touch a few points which I found important over the years of playing and watching cricket. As Rahul Dravid pointed out in the Bradman Oration recently, cricket started out as a gentleman's game, but has trickled down to the common man, even to the poor section of the society and that makes it more popular than any sport in the country. In a poor section, you can't really afford to buy that big foot-ball or a hockey-stick and no tree branch can substitute for a hockey stick. But you can always find enough money & time to buy a small rubber ball and a wooden plank to play cricket in your backyard. Unless you have the real desire to stand out and counted for the other games, I don't see any reason why in India cricket will lose its popularity to even football which is the world's most popular and one of the richest games.

Readers sure have the right to disagree, but believe me, for the next 10 years I don't see any cricket match having completely empty stands or zero viewership, which sadly has been the case with many of the other games.