Well Deserved!

 A devoted loyal Indian fan watched in glee as Sachin Tendulkar reached 91.Felt proud of watching Amit Mishra the night watchman hit 84. So what we had already lost 3 matches in the series, so what we had seen 19 days of English dominance. Day 20 of the series belonged to India. But did it?

Within a space of 5 balls, all the loyal supporters of the Indian cricket team at the Oval were sitting back with those long and gloomy faces they had on during the entire series. And the same old story unfolds. India loses the 4th test match and earns a series whitewash. Well they worked hard for it. Well deserved, I say. Faithful Indian fans will now be blaming the BCCI, IPL, coach, player’s fitness, and player’s attitude and proclaiming how this team is good for nothing, bunch of greedy dogs, and that it was inevitable. They will grumble how the BCCI is a draconian devil for being interested in only money and not the supporters. How the team has brought shame on all sports enthusiasts of the country. Et al et al…

Everyone will be dissecting the reasons for this defeat. Granted the BCCI is only interested in minting money off the fans. But that’s because we are interested in watching only our cricket players. We don’t watch any other sport and cricket is the only sport that sells, so can we blame BCCI of taking advantage of that? We say the players are fatigued after the IPL and shouldn’t have played in it. Would you have gone out and watched the matches had the main players of the team weren’t playing in the IPL? Obviously, NO!

All of those grumbling over this defeat, do you have any idea what else is happening in other sports? Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati have claimed the Cincinnati tennis doubles crown. But we don’t care about that do we? All we know is dt Bhupati is going to be a dad and Lara Dutta the mom. Or how many of us are excited that there will be an F1 race in Delhi? How many of us are going to watch it in fact? How many of us have bothered to keep up with the exploits of our Indian athletes after the Commonwealth Games? (and no, the doping scandals are not included) How many of us have any idea what our Indian athletes are doing in ANY other sport?

Not many. Let’s admit it, Indians are not true sports fan. Hark; they’re not even true cricket fans. We don’t applaud players from other teams. We are content at losing as long as Tendulkar gets a century. Well, we lost and Tendulkar ALMOST got a century. Same old, same old. The truth is that India didn’t lose this series, England won it. Hands down. Football is the biggest sport there, but still people came out in large numbers to support their national team. And they will come out again to support their other athletes during the Olympics.

As for us Indians, it’s a humiliating defeat, but we have more important things on our mind. We are busy supporting Anna Hazare aren’t we?

 

Tags: amit mishra, amit-mishra-watchman, BCCI, Cricket, england, India, IPL, Sachin Tendulkar