“Cricket is a game where 11 fools play and 11000 fools watch” – George Benard Shaw
“Cricket is my religion and Sachin is my god” – Anonymous
“I believed in myself. I never imagined myself as just an ordinary player.” – Imran Khan
Because of political differences India and Pakistan no longer play with each other as often everybody would like them to play. World Cup and other tournaments where it’s mandatory for nations to play is the place these great nations try to square off the things. Today is eve of such an epic game. India Vs Pakistan, world cup semifinal can’t get better.
People from subcontinent (South Asia) will find their Facebook flooded with status updates which directly or indirectly says their team of choice. Some of these status and comment are descent, well written criticism coming directly from brain whereas most of the others are just cheap jokes that supporters of each side write denigrating the opposition. It’s not unusual for even players will be doing nothing different in the pitch. Also it’s not unusual for the nations who have bitter and violent past behind them. Both the teams have something to boast about Pakistan has good head to head record in tests and one days and India has never lost to Pakistan in a World Cup. These teams also have seen both success and failures in the past, India’s world cup triumph in 1983 and Pakistan’s victory in 1992. Since then both teams have been to finals in one occasion each, both eventually losing to Australia. These two nation combined roughly has 70-75% of followers of cricket and South Asia has almost 90%. Every child born in these countries at some point of their childhood and youth wants to become Imran Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Wasim Akram etc one day. For them cricket is a religion. But having people who are this passionate of the game these countries like West Indies and Australia haven’t dominated any form of the game except for brief spell of Pakistan in early 90’s and India these days. As matter of fact Pakistan won against West Indies and India won against Australia in the roads to the semis. The teams from subcontinent are dominating the game. If we see in other semi finals Sri Lanka seems to be clear favorite over New Zealand hence its almost certain to see two countries from subcontinent fighting for the trophy in the final.
It’s amazing how times have changed. Teams which did dominate the game previously don’t seem to produce players of same quality anymore. We can take examples of West Indies and Australia it would be shame to compare any current players from current West Indian Team to the greats like Vivian Richards, Clive Loyd, Malcom Marshal, Walsh, Lara etc. Also same goes with Australia no one has been even close to fill the empty spaces left by Warne, McGrath, Hayden, Gilchrist etc(Leaving pointing behind since he has been playing since last 2 decades). Not only these nations who have dominated the game in past even teams like South Africa and New Zealand which had great players like Shaun Pollock or Richards Headlie in the past are not even close enough to produce such players these days.
It was couple of days back when I came up with these thoughts when England was playing against NewZeland and was playing against Wales in football. How many percentage of English people would have watched Cricket match against New Zealand?? I think negligible I don’t have means to check the stats but a well functioning brain can say that the percentage was minimal if we take in account all the English people watching sports at that time. Though England is mother of Cricket and it introduced Cricket to the world it’s already dead in England. F1 racers like Lewis Hamilton and Jensson Button have more chances of getting into GQ’s cover than the Cricket World Cup winning captain in England. And with this sort of scenario I don’t think there is enough kids playing Cricket which needs to produce a World Cup winning team. Same is with West Indies. West Indies is group of countries and a single country has good chances of being into football world cup. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago have already been into football world cup. Youngsters out there have no reason playing cricket for West Indies. Its not that their countries name is proudly said of. I having followed cricket for such a long time I don’t know where Brian Lara is from. But yes I can say Dwight Yorke was from Trinidad and Tobago. Its same with Australia and South Africa. Both have been regularly featuring in football world cup and later having hosted football world cup very successfully past year. And I think things are not very different in New Zealand too. Hence I think we are left with only teams from subcontinent who really care about cricket these days which justifies their dominance of the game.
Time has come for the team from subcontinent to realize that they are not being any better its just that others are not playing it anymore. And with the introduction of short version of cricket T20 and IPL it has huge chance of being like NFL is in United States and not being the world wide accepted form of sports. Whatever the result of India, Pakistan game, whatever the result of this world cup Cricket is dead and team from subcontinent winning this world cup is final nail in the coffin.
