(Just a small request before you go on with this. I wrote this blog on 2/4/2011, just a few hours before India had its hands on that great trophy. I urge you to read this with an unbiased mind, without being pre-occupied by the fact that we are the cricketing world champions)
It was not just a normal Saturday. People of all age groups, of all classes, of all regions had carved their time table in their minds for that Saturday. The so called sensible media, who tune themselves to the people rather than tuning the people, were all high on the one and only thing, The Cricket World Cup 2011. Roads lit with colorful lights, free live screening of the match on open grounds, tattooed young guys and girls, Indian flags on bikes and ricks, a huge stock of crackers and what not. I guess even some of the greatest festivals of India were not celebrated that way! I have a reason to say that. There were even a bunch of people (or I should say Fools), who replaced Lord Vishnu with Sachin, Lord Rama with Dhoni and performed pooja on them. Great. At least for this particular day people and media have accepted that winning Cricket World Cup is like fighting for our country to gain freedom and the players are the ones who are in the forefront of that battle risking their lives.
In a way, it feels good to see people flying high on patriotism (I donno if I’m using the right word here), shouting “India is the best, I am proud to be an Indian” and things like that. But, it somewhat gives an irky feeling when I try to think of the reason behind all these. The first thought that struck my mind was, how many of these so called Nation lovers celebrate our Independence day, or Republic day or even remember the birthdays of some of the actual Heroes of our country?Between, when I said "celebrate", I didn't mean JUST changing the profile pic on FB to Indian Flag for that particular day and tweeting "Happy Independence day folks"!! (sorry if i have hurt someone over there, but that's the fact)
Who do you think is responsible for this weird ass situation? I would say, Media, to a great extent. I can give you one simple example on that. For the past 6 days, the headlines on one of the well known daily newspapers has been nothing but cricket, not just the newspapers, the news channels too. For God’s sake, wake up you morons! There are a lot of better and interesting things happening around in the world. They have completely forgotten what they are there for and have turned themselves into some entertainers, I would say ADAPTIVE entertainers. They study the people’s mind, see what they enjoy and showcase only such news and bury the rest under them. The reason why all other sports are becoming extinct in our nation is this Media.
Look at it from a different angle, why are we even portraying these cricket players as some kind of heroes? They are getting paid for every ball they hit, every ball they throw and every ball they catch. Any sincere government official is doing the same thing. He is doing his bit for the Nation and he is being paid for it. Why this extra hype for these cricket players? Fine, some of you might disagree with me and say that these heroes are representing the Nation in the International level and hence deserve their extra piece of cake. Well, what do you think our Hockey players are doing? What do you think our boxers are doing? In fact, they are doing a better job than these people and they are not being paid like these cricket players. Their names don’t even make headlines when they win medals for us, whereas any cricket player having a honeymoon vacation with his girl in some unknown island of the world will create a buzz. The point here I am trying to make is, Cricket players are NOT the only Legends in the country, there are a lot of great legends out there who need to be respected, who need to be acknowledged for the work they have done. And I strongly believe it is only through media this can happen.
If you are thinking that all this is coming from a person who hates cricket, who doesn’t even know the ABC of it, you are wrong. I too have a poster in front of me right now which reads, “Till April 2nd, This is your Calender” But I have seen myself gradually changing my views about this game from the first day of that calendar and here I am. Having seen a bunch of crazy people crazily cheering for the country, who on any given normal day, wouldn’t give a damn for our nation, I have realized this overhyped Cricket is just another game and Media is just another Fool, fooling everyone around.
