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Editorial |
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The Rise and Fall of Cricket
Nationalism
The first issue of Phalanx has come out a little later than scheduled.
As envisaged in its manifesto, the first issue does not have a focus though
multiculturalism in the arts may appear to get more than its share of
attention. Since Phalanx has decided to be eclectic, it is not
appropriate for each editorial to 'unify' its contents or paraphrase them. What
a Phalanx editorial will do instead is to take up a central issue and
speculate broadly on its significance. The issue to which the first editorial
is devoted is Indian cricket and not only because it is in the news right now.
Cricket is arguably the most important issue in India today -- or at least was until the World Cup. To those who are outraged by this proposition – and there will be many – cricket made front page news in India's newspapers more often than any other issue. Since newspaper readers constitute the most influential segment of the public and the segment did not respond unfavorably to cricket getting front-page coverage, the game was virtually installed as India's principal preoccupation in the new millennium. And unlike many other issues which tend to be local, cricket is also pan-Indian. If cricket were a mere game it could hardly have assumed such importance. The 'meaning' of cricket therefore needs closer examination.
Cricket was never selected to be India's National Sport and hockey continues
officially to be so. A 'National Sport' is perhaps always to be played by a
team because it would be more difficult for an individual to embody the nation.
Hockey and cricket are both team sports but although hockey became the National
Sport, cricket was the more glamorous of the two and received more attention
from the press. This is probably because cricket is a middle-class game and the
newspaper reading segment is also predominantly middle-class. While India's
hockey players usually came from the railways, from public sector industries
and from the services, cricketers were traditionally employed by the
nationalized banks.
Hockey and cricket are both team sports but they are not alike. Hockey (like
football) depends on individual performances being coordinated and the decline
of Indian hockey can be traced to individual skill (dribbling and stick-work)
being supplanted by orchestrated effort (short passes and coordination) at the
international level and the consequent rise of Germany, Netherlands and
Australia as hockey playing countries. In cricket, on the other hand,
performances are sequential rather than orchestrated and in this respect, it is
like the Indian kabaddi. It can be argued that orchestration, even in
other disciplines, is not an Indian specialty. Indian - unlike Western - music
and dance have not depended on it. Their strong points have been melody and
individual performance rather than harmony and choreography. The jugalbandhi
is perhaps to cricket what the orchestra is to hockey and football. Cricket may
therefore be a more 'Indian' (or, rather, South-Asian) team sport than any
other played internationally and one of India's tragedies on the playing field
is that it has taken so much to an international sport of, by and large,
limited popularity.
The rise of Indian cricket to the status of the exclusive sporting
preoccupation of the nation may have begun in the early nineties with the State
also beginning its withdrawal from the public space. Hockey depended on
government patronage and an officially patronized sport appeared anachronistic
- especially when the national hockey team was not performing well. If cricket
was the eventual beneficiary, patronized not by the State but by private
enterprise, there are still two questions that remain. The first question
pertains to the corporate sector's involvement in cricket, how and when it came
about and why. Cricket being a middle-class preoccupation and the corporate
sector having long been sensitive to the middle-class as a market, it was
perhaps inevitable that cricketers should eventually endorse products when such
endorsements became common. The second question pertains to the moment when
cricket became associated with nationalism. It is, of course, patriotic to come
out in support for one's country at a game but the real issue here is when
cricket became the repository of the Indian's patriotic sentiments vis-à-vis
Pakistan.
Looking at cricket as manifested in cinema - a useful register - one sees
different attitudes towards in the game in Hum Aapke Hain Koun..?
(1994) and Lagaan (2001). Only in Lagaan does the cricket
team become the emblem of national aspirations and also constituted accordingly
with due representation to all social segments. Of course, in Lagaan,
the adversary is not Pakistan but the film came out at around the time that
anti-Pakistan films like Gadar and Mission Kashmir were
successful and it draws upon analogous sentiments. Anti-Pakistani sentiment was
particularly high after the nuclear tests of 1998 and the Kargil war of 1999
and fervent cricket nationalism could have been an attendant consequence.
Neither Pakistan nor India was at the top of the cricket-playing world in the
early years of the new millennium but India-Pakistan cricket matches - whenever
they were played -generated huge excitement. Their cricket teams were perhaps
regarded in the countries as their respective nuclear capabilities were - as
only for specific use against each other. In any case, the anti-Pakistani
sentiment in India appears to have subsided after Pakistan officially joined
the US sponsored 'war against terror'. From the Pakistani side it is also
likely that since a military dictator like Musharaf does not appeal to an
electorate, he does not need to whip up sentiments as elected Presidents were
obliged to in the past. A Pakistani visitor once remarked that he hated cricket
but if he had support a team in an India-Pakistan cricket match, he would come
out for India because of the hysteria drummed up for Pakistani cricket. This
suggests that cricket was a handy tool on both sides of the border to breed
nationalist hysteria.
Games like football also generate hysterical loyalties but that is not
necessarily at the level of the nation. Since there is virtually no
spectatorship for any cricket in India except at the international level, and
we may surmise that the interest in the game is entirely in it as a nationalist
endeavor and this has been methodically fuelled by the media and the corporate
sector. Individual stars in all sports have become models and brand ambassadors
but in cricket 'team India' has come to mean something by itself. While the
advertisements featuring individual cricket stars are usually more frivolous
(the Pepsi ads, for instance) the graver advertisements involve the entire
team, sometimes entering an arena as if a battle-field. The cricket ball is
commonly seen aflame and the analogy to an explosive is unmistakable. It is as
though cricket matches were the continuation of war by other means.
Once the corporate sector perceived an advantage in cricket there has been no
looking back for our cricketing stars. Cricket is perhaps the only
international sport where the richest stars are not the best. In the past few
years it is apparent that more and more people and agencies are being
implicated in cricket's deliberate myth-making. There are, for instance,
'classic' matches being played and replayed on television channels and one
detects special attention given to declining stars - as if to remind their
disappointed fans of their capabilities. It is difficult for a cricket fan not
to be confused and manipulated when what is on television are not only today's
matches but yesterday's and those of tomorrow - as imagined by advertising.
Cricket statistics are unreliable and when a player's future is being debated,
it is the less relevant information that is typically furnished. There are also
few happenings as inexplicable as 'world records' being created by habitually
losing sides. As far as cricket commentators, writers and specialists go, the
sport is perhaps the only discipline in which the lay spectator knows better
than expert opinion. The recent history of Indian cricket abounds in deception
and there are so many economic interests involved that one cannot be certain
that every one of these participants is not incriminated. The cricketers
themselves are so cash rich that some of them may be maintaining their own fan
associations to engineer civic disturbances when their careers are in balance.
It has been said that creating a huge military capacity and not putting it to
appropriate use can be a dangerous proposition. Using this as an analogy, a
huge cricketing capacity has been created in India which, like military
capacity, also provides no guarantee of victory. Unlike military capacity,
however, cricketing capacity is not linked to the creation of physical assets
but that of intangibles - reputations, spectatorship, passions and influence.
Since this capacity was apparently created for use against a specific
adversary, it is apparently hopeless for any other purpose. And just as it is
difficult to contain an over-prepared military, it will be very tricky to
contain the turmoil created by Indian cricket's failure. From the other side,
Pakistani cricketing capacity was also created in the same circumstances - for
specific use against a single adversary. Pakistan is therefore in the same
predicament today, at least as far as cricket is concerned. |
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