If you know anything about online messageboards, you’ll know that the two subjects most guaranteed to have Indians hurling vituperations at each other are cricket and religion. As sociologists often tell us, we use cricketing success as a balm for frustration in other areas of life, and by the same token, cricketing failure must amount to a personal betrayal.
In an excellent article last year, author Mukul Kesavan denounced the average Indian cricket follower as a “lazy, pampered know-nothing with an unreasonable sense of entitlement”. What this effectively means is that the “gentleman’s sport” brings out the chest-thumping fool like nothing else does.
After more than a decade of following online cricketing discussions and mulling what they reveal about our collective simian condition, I was unprepared for a rare phenomenon: cricket boards that aren’t laden with hate and jingoism. Instead, there have been measured, reflective discussions about the retirement of Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly, the impending retirement of Dravid and Tendulkar.
Nostalgia is in the air, nowhere more so than in Siddhartha Vaidyanathan’s poignant piece “Losing my Religion” on Cricinfo (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comcontent-ind. cricinfo.com/ magazine/content/ story/376791.html), which will strike a chord with anyone who began watching the game in the early or mid-1990s. Quoting a school-friend who observed that “our childhood is ending”, Vaidyanathan adds: “Tendulkar’s retirement... for a generation of 25- to 30-year-olds... will mark the end of the first part of their lives... Some of my friends... have been talking of needing to revaluate their own careers.”
Scrolling the 200-plus comments here, it’s remarkable to see how many of them echo the author’s feelings; there’s a near-cathartic fervour about the way readers have been writing in to share their own sense of loss. On another article, a tribute to Anil Kumble by Suresh Menon (http://content-ind. cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/376696.html), a commenter named Sid317 is clearly practising for a writing career: “As I woke up... from my sleep which came very late yesterday, there was a feeling... which constantly pinged me (sic)... As I scratched my head, I got to know the reason which created the void. Anil Radhakrishna Kumble will not bowl again in a test match…”
Sure, it’s overwrought, but most cricket-lovers understand what he means.
Also Read
I’m not suggesting that all the nastiness has vanished from online discussions. In the cricketing context, our traditional fondness for maintaining karmic balance means that it’s impossible to praise a player without simultaneously putting someone else down. “KUMBLESWIFE” proclaims on the Rediff board that “when we compare with other cricketers like rude n brash ganguly, sachin etc, none r equal to Anil.”
And on Rediff.com, an elegant piece by Prem Panicker (http:// www.rediff.com /cricket /2008/nov/03prem.htm) draws the following reaction: “You should have been writing a Victorian novel instead of a cricketer’s tribute. A simple... ‘thank you’ would have been more effective than this verbal diarrhea of an article.” More proof of the inability of some Netizens to read anything that’s longer than a couple of sentences: little wonder that Facebook Walls are the predominant form of communication these days!