Last one week saw hectic frenzy across all television studios. Former cricketers hopped from one studio to another lambasting Dhoni and his men for the abrasive performance displayed by them in the West Indies. This was the second year in a row that the team had faltered against quality pace bowling. A nation that has all along boasted to have the best batting attack in the world, capable of tearing apart any bowling unit was made to look like a club team.
This is not the first time that the nation & the media have gone out of the way to make the cricketers feel that they had committed an 'unpardonable' crime by faltering at such a big event. We witnessed similar scenes when the Indian
team exited in the first round of the '2007' world cup in West Indies, when we lost badly in our second group match against Australia in the 2003 world cup and way back in 1996 when we were stunned by Sri Lanka at Eden gardens in the world cup semi final.
We have never created such a hue and cry when our hockey or football teams fail during a big event or sometimes fail to even qualify for major international tournament. The problem with Indian psyche is that cricketers are not sportsmen but they are superstars or in a way our only hope of glory in the world of sport where we don’t hold such a great position.
Cricketers became icons way back in the 80’s when the Indian team for the first time won the cricket world cup. From there began the journey of Indian cricketers to become icons. We created icons like Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohd Azharuddin (who later became the villain after the match fixing scandal emanated) Kumble, Dravid, Ganguly, Sehwag,Yuvraj, Harbhajan & above all Tendulkar who by far has been the biggest of them all. These icons were created by the media on the foundation of solid fan following these cricketers or should I say super humans enjoyed.
So whenever our cricketing icons fail the fickle Indian psyche swings to the other extreme. From gods they become demons in an instant. All the past glories are forgotten and they are questioned like criminals for their failure. Yes, it is indeed sad that we tumbled in such a terrible fashion against the mighty short pitch bowling but the bigger problem is that we as a nation believe that we are a one-sport nation. So it is an unwritten law- that we have to perform every single time we step on the cricket field.
It is true that it is cricket among all the sports where we saw the maximum success in the 80s and 90s. This rise in cricket popularity also coincided with decline in our hockey performances. But in the last 2 decades we also saw other Indian sportsmen achieving huge success in different disciplines. Viswanathan Anand, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupati, Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar Vijendra Kumar, Saina Nehwal, Sania Mirza etc. We have performed exceptionally well in chess, tennis, wrestling, shooting, badminton, Kabbadi (we are the world champions in this sport) etc. All of them have done exceedingly well in premium sporting events but still we have not given them the same encouragement what we have given to our cricketers for so many decades now.
It is this trend that underlines the fact that we as a nation see ourselves doing well in only one sport. The week we got knocked out of the T20 world cup- that very week Viswanathan Anand won the world championship again and the Indian hockey team made it to the Shah Azlan cup finals. The Indian women cricket team also made it to semi finals of the T20 women world cup. The only reason it got a bit of coverage in the news was because the Indian cricket team failed so badly. Had they done a little better, these events wouldn’t have got the little coverage they did manage to get.
It’s high time that we tone down our obsession towards cricket and start appreciating our success in other sports. This change in attitude is imperative for India to prosper in other sports as well. This nation has the talent to excel in other disciplines, let’s give them a fair chance as well!!
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