Three Views of Cricket in India

View 1.
I am sitting in a wonderfully luxurious hotel suite in Chennai (the Accord Metropolitan) flipping through to channels on the television and really wishing for the day that computers with Internet access become standard in hotel rooms. There’s really nothing I want to watch. A Bollywood song and dance is entertaining for a moment but I surf on.

Then I see a cricket match. I recognize the teams as India and Sri Lanka in their ODI uniforms. “But that series was over weeks ago”, I thought. Then they show a close-up of former coach John Wright. “This must be from years ago.” Then I see that the bowler is Ashish Nehra. Then there is a commercial break and there is an announcement that this was ESPN’s “Glorious India” series. Then I figure it out: this is from the NatWest series in England from three years ago.

I just thought, “how pathetic.” I mean really, how cricket crazy must someone be to sit and watch a match from three years ago that you already know the result?

View 2.
My wife and father-in-law have to run some errands and I tag along. We stop in a travel agency to pick up some tickets for a flight to Kerela. There is a little television on in the back and we can hear the audio. It is a test match between India and Sri Lanka. I imagine productivity in India plummets during the World Cup.

View 3.
I am in a car with my family going from Kabini to Mysore, a journey of maybe 100 kilometers (60 miles). It is Sunday and the children are playing cricket. I count the matches going on. There was one in every village we passed. I counted 10 matches on the way.

I could see that in the small villages, these cricket matches were the biggest form of entertainment and fun around. Life was hard so the cricket was pure joy. And the kids could play too. I saw one budding Tendulkar lace a scorching drive right past the bowler and across the field and across the road just after our car passed. Believe me, that was a solid shot.

I believe the talent in Indian cricket will blossom like anything in the coming years. That is because they will be able to tap the enthusiasm in these village cricketers. At one time, one-third of all the major league baseball shortstops came from a tiny village in the Dominican Republic. Why? - because there was nothing but baseball and sugar cane in that village. There’s nothing but cricket and rice or wheat for most of these Indian village children as well. They might as well dream big dreams because that is one luxury they can afford. And some of those dreams will come true.