“Cricket is a game where eleven fools play and eleven thousand fools watch” said George Bernard Shaw. “A Lazy man’s game” was the mocking remark often made by Western countries to ridicule English man’s obsession with cricket in olden times. However, the leisurely paced game of cricket has suited Indian psyche more than any other game.
The youngsters in India take to cricket like fish taking to water. Though so many other games are open every kid wants to become a Tendulkar or Dhoni. My theory of our obsession for cricket is as follows.
We Indians have an innate liking for long drawn out battles. Epics Ramayana and Mahabharatha are inculcated in our system. Even Indian movies run longer than the Western movies. Cricket is perhaps the only game in which the battles are long drawn and all the ingredients like aggression, patience, perseverance, petulance come into play. The game is like real life events played on the field where you get to meet different characters like overtly aggressive fast bowlers, deceptively mild spinners, attacking strikers and dourly defensive batsmen. In this game a Hero becomes a villain in no time when he throws away his wicket at a crucial juncture or the converse when a pedestrian bowler suddenly captures an important wicket.
Another important reason could be that perhaps this is the one of the few outdoor games where a relatively small built Indian can take head on the massively built West Indian or the powerfully built white men.
During sixties, when I started following the game, Indian team consisted of a very few agile cricketers. Exercises and physical fitness were not considered mandatory. Lazy movement on the field was no issue as long as one can prove their mettle with the bat or ball. Fast bowling was considered foreign to Indians. The team had some “immobile assets” like Bedi, Chandrasekar and Prasanna. With due respects to their abilities, I choose to call them as immobile assets as they were very sluggish on the field and the opposition fully made use of the same. Yes, they were real assets when they came on to bowl.
The one-day cricket popularised in seventies made it difficult for the slovenly cricketers to survive. It made the cricketers realise the importance of keeping fit. The World Cup win in 1983 changed the perception of the game. After Kapil’s exploits with the ball, Indians realised the importance of pace bowling. Many youngsters suddenly started to take fast bowling seriously.
Then came the World Cup T20 in 2007. The win in this championship totally galvanised Indian cricket. IPL, a totally new concept, became a big success. Cricketers realised that it is no longer enough to be fit but they have to be athletic too. Players can no longer get away with their sloppy fielding as their survival will be under threat. Pace bowling became as important as slow one if not more.
The sea of transformation over these five decades in the game is astonishing. No other game has gone such a change as cricket.
