It's just not cricket

So M.S.Dhoni blames the T 20 fiasco on exhaustion and partying and everyone starts talking about how cricket is supreme and these excuses won’t do.

I don’t care whether Dhoni is making excuses or not. It has once again brought to the forefront the nature of the sport. Dhoni is right when he says:

“The IPL is not just about cricket. There are lots of things going around it. The players must be smart about it. They have to respect the body, give it some time to recover because it’s not just about playing. There have been day-night matches, then parties, and then early morning flights too. All this, including the travel, takes a toll. But if you are smart, I don’t think 45 days of cricket will drain you.”

The last sentence does not seem to have registered. He is trying to say something. There has always been infighting and one-upmanship. Now with IPL there are external factors too. Dhoni is as much a part of the satellite stunts. How well you are dressed, what haircut you get, the company you keep all have become more important than the scores. After all, they are now auctioned items.



The organisations capitalise on this aspect and make the players play other games after they have done their stint on the field. And why would any hot-blooded young player give up the opportunity to be seen at the right places when that is what helps in the selection process? Come on, you have to know the right head honchos.

And those who are getting all righteous about it are not players. What games has Rajiv Shukla played besides politics? Suresh Kalmadi? M.S. Gill? They have stuck to their positions as chiefs of various bodies without ever representing the country or even their mohalla. Jagmohan Dalmiya was a Kolkata businessman and he managed to virtually rule the roost.

Forget treating contemporary cricket as some holy cow. It is just another poodle with fancy trappings added to it.

The high point in recent days was that Sachin Tendulkar had finally signed into Twitter and within hours managed to get a whole bunch of followers. It was crazy how starlets went on about how he should exceed the following of Ashton Kutcher, who I believe has the largest following thanks I guess to the updates he provides on his wife Demi Moore. We even had an old friend telling the media about how he convinced Sachin to sign up. Now there will be newspaper columns about his tweets and when he slept and what he thinks, which is a nice human touch, but it is not national news.

Therefore, Dhoni’s comments are far more relevant. Sachin would not have said it. The good guys do finish first in some areas. And, hello, why is Mohammed Azharuddin railing about Dhoni’s excuse and saying that players can refuse to party? Right.

I’d like to pull up all our tainted players and ask them why they did not refuse those underhand betting deals.

In our country we are bad losers, but this time that is not the concern. It has stopped being a concern for a while now. People are sharp and they know that this is like a dumb film they can watch in an auditorium to get some cool air-conditioning. It does not even qualify as a peanut gallery anymore.