A few days back I watched with amusement Arnab Goswami grilling the BSP spokesperson about an incident involving a police officer polishing Mayawati’s shoes. One almost felt sorry for the spokesperson after seeing the dressing down he received from the anchor. Sometimes I wonder if these guys regret taking up jobs which involve defending blatantly wrong acts. However, much as Arnab Goswami may loathe the feudalistic mindset of the political class, the fact is that the arrogant sense of entitlement is institutionalized among the rich and powerful. Another example of this emerged yesterday when it was revealed that a miniscule number of seats for the world cup matches were being sold to the general public. The elite who complain about reservation in jobs are shamelessly making themselves benefactors by reserving entertainment for themselves. For the rest of us, watching matches on television is expected to be our definition of sporting culture.
As a teenager I watched my share of cricket matches in-stadia but not before spending half a day roasting myself trying to buy a ticket. I could only afford a seat in the cheapest stand which had half a roof, so getting into the stadium was no relief from the over generous subcontinent sun. Back then I did not understand much about roof construction costs but it was evident that affordability came with the ‘suffer, asshole!’ tag. If getting your skin burnt was not enough, you had to contend with chipped wooden slabs for seats, graced with bird shit. These seats were obviously manufactured keeping children in mind, or for those who crave physical proximity with strangers. Before every match I fantasized about rubbing shoulders (literally) with a pretty babe but mostly had to settle for fat overbearing men twice my size to whom I would gladly concede my 1 squarefoot ass-rest. My entertainment did not end there. In India events are official platforms for extortionists to ply their trade. Vada Pav was made available at the price of a MacDonald’s burger and a small pouch of water for the price of a bottle of beer. (Some bottle throwing lunatics had ensured that anything that could fly would not be allowed inside). Poor affordability of water and heavy sweating was a blessing in disguise as it eliminated the need to visit the sewage treatment plant called the loo. Watching a match was an interesting mix of privilege and punishment.
It might seem to you that I have digressed much from what I started with. Feudalism and entitlement. I assure you I haven’t. When I heard about cricket fans being lathi-charged, I was reminded of my past experiences, which were not bone shattering, but were equally painful in their own way. An Indian defeat (which were plentiful that time) in the match would only add insult to injury. These days we lose lesser matches and the stadia seem to have better seat. However one thing that has not changed for sure is the anger that comes from not being able to purchase the ticket. Not disappointment, but anger. During my college days I attributed this to the fact that I woke up at the last minute to buy a ticket. Gradually the truth dawned upon me that there simply weren’t enough tickets to be bought in the first place. Fat cats cornered most of the seats and for the rest of us it was back to the television set or a seedy beer joint.
Many of us do not realize that sponsorship does not end with a ‘DLF Maximum’ or ‘Karbonn Kamaal Catch’ kind of corporatization of cricket lexicon. Behind the scenes, sponsors extract their pound of flesh by appropriating a large number of seats. There is nothing illegit in all this since the sponsorship contracts provide for this kind of bourgeois practice. Sponsors themselves dole out a large number of these tickets to politicians and government officials. After all the entire system itself is a result of industry-government-babu nexus. Stadiums in India have not come up for the common man. These stadiums double up as clubs of the super rich, built on prime public land acquired through government support on ridiculously favorable terms. Such resourcefulness of Sharad Pawar Inc. has to be rewarded ultimately.
Nothing, however, is more paradoxical than fans getting the stick on the one end and near empty stadiums on the other. Cricket for all its hype, refuses to make inroads beyond the traditional bastions. Every 4 years you get the same set of teams who would have played each other two dozen time in the preceding years in the form of Champions Trophy, Asia Cup, T20 World Cup and all permutations & combinations of Triangular contests, so there is little novelty of contest left. The result is a plethora of one sided group matches in which you feel desperately sorry for the way the minnows get thrashed.
A conspiracy theorist told me that China is secretly preparing for the 2015 Cricket World Cup and it would send a team that would whack the daylights out of the ruling kingdoms of cricket. I certainly hope so, for the sake of the game, to which the word “Incredible” has been added in this edition of the cup. ‘Incredible’ (unlike the adjective ‘beautiful’ used for soccer) is a flexible word that can be employed to mean incredibly stupid, incredibly boring, incredibly predictable and so on. Cricket lovers will hate my cynicism, but there is some truth in the fact that Cricket is becoming unfairly India centric, dangerously sponsorship driven and a cohort of yes men kind of administrators and ‘experts’ who are only bothered about where their next paycheck is coming from.
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