Im bloody bored/sick/tired of cricket, while most some of my friends cant get enough of it! While discussing IPL, i was betting that it wont make too much money for its backers but was rebuffed by some cricket crazy friends.
Cricket like the Mahatma is treated like a holy cow in India and it looks like the media has simply gone overboard in promoting the game. There is very big money in that sport game, both legal and illegal. Agreed that India is a cricket crazy nation and cricket is mightier than politics, no wonder the man in Power is more interested in BCCI than in farmer suicides. Such is the passion that people swing from collective admiration to worship when the team wins, to idol burning, or poster burning when the team gets collective dysentery.
Its ok, if Cricket and bunch of adds featuring players are featured prominently on Sports channels and News channels, even ok to individually glorify them so as to sell that boost or hairgel or that insurance policy. But it gets on my nerves when they portray our cricketers as some kind of crude mix of Spartans and national heroes going out to battle to save National pride, and Cricket as some big war – that too on business channels like the CNBC TV18 etc that when in reality, the players aren’t half as brave and the BCCI isn’t half as democratic or caring about the fans or the game and isn’t even changing its logo, which represents British Indian Raj more than it does free Indian.
This add simply gets on my nerves, it is high time some one should battle this kind of terror inflicted on our ears our eyeballs or on our minds.
Is the amount of time given to cricket by news channels in the name of TRP justifiable, if it means prioritizing it over vital national issues ? Worse is the kind of money given by State governments to players for winning a puny 20-20 using taxpayers money for getting some brownie points justifiable, when they fail to provide their citizens with basic decent administeration when the BCCI is sitting on a shit load of cash ? Are we promoting Cricket to the detriment of other Sports?
BCCI, is the richest sports body in the Subcontinent and amongst the richest in Asia. BCCI is in the process of overtaking England’s ECB as the richest national cricket board, with an income of Rs 650 crore for 2006/07. It has so much clout that it can even fix matches influence decisions just so that interest in the sport cashflow from sponsors is maintained. Is the game being sidelined by brute money power ? is the Lagaan team really a bunch of underdogs ?
Being a private entity enjoys a tax free status – is this justifiable when we the people have to pay service tax on our telephone and restaurant bills at 12.25% ? that too when Aussies still tax the Indian team.
Is it not reasonable that the team be taxed and the money so acquired be used to fund more AstroTurfs so as to help our National Sport Hockey? or even a part of it used to fund school and college level sports including cricket.
Ok enough ranting time to crash into bed …
Tech and Trek 