How can cricket be so popular in India ?

Written for Hostel-1 Magazine Anubhooti'2010.

Prologue:

Let's accept. Cricket is the most popular game in India, at least for the sake of this article. But is it possible to imagine that in a still developing country like ours, that a posh looking, celebrity filled, infrastructure hungry and equipment wielding sport as the most popular one? It is well known that the cricketers are making forays into arenas like advertisements which were the stage for actors and models and this pushes up their financial rating. And all these give an illusion that cricket is in the league elite games (like golf, pool) far beyond the reach of common public of this country. Or is it so? As a person grown with cricket all around different forms, I beg to differ, even in my whimsical times, like when I was writing this article.

Some attribute this popularity to watching cricket on TV. Agreed, that thanks to many wonderful schemes (like the free TV scheme by the TN government), the idiot box has reached places where even water, food and clothing can't reach. But could it spurn popularity of a sport? I don't think so. It is rather due to the versatility that cricket offers that people play cricket and make it popular. Wait, did I say versatility ? Isn't that cricket requires a huge oval ground to play or that it requires exquisite equipments which on a man resemble a warrior going to the battle field ? No. If you leave those who have grown up playing cricket only in big lush green grounds with well laid pitches and practised inside 3 sided mosquito nets, others would recall at least 10 different forms of cricket that they have played in their life.

Exquisite Equipments and big ground? Rethink:

The ground:

It is well known that, in India, the so called "tennis balls" are used the most not for playing tennis but for playing cricket. So much so that there are "tennis balls" manufactured exclusively for playing cricket. Indians respect Tradition, so we have left the name of the ball with tennis. Along with a bat, we can take to any place and start the game. In narrow lanes between houses, in the balcony and inside the house (not inspired by Dhoni), inside class rooms (to impress class mates), on the road (especially with the next door beauty watching), between two wings in a hostel (Yay!), tennis court, hockey ground, and so on (yeah, include cricket ground). During one of my visits to a hilly village near Kumily in Kerala, I found that cricket was played on a barely flat surface, where the slope was more original and truthful than the mythical slope in Lord's pitch. The bowlers had to literally run down the hill climbing down and up several meters during an over. Not just hills, even the beaches are not left out, for it gives a great opportunity for people to show off their diving skills.

The bat:

What if we don't have a cricket bat, which might be expensive to many people ? No worries!! All that is needed is some structure with enough width and height and can make balls run in all directions. It can be made of wood or steel or iron or cobalt or nickel or gold, doesn't matter. Then there were those writing pads which became bats in the class during the recess time. There were the racquets of tennis, badminton, so as to play cricket with their appropriate balls (e.g. Baddy cricket). And if not anything we have our palms which could act as bats for most type of balls. I remember the childhood days when we hunt for bats and end up looting the firewood stock, nor can I forget the bat we made for our own, carved out of a wooden scrap lying on the road side. Long before the mongoose bat that Hayden used 'for the first time', I have used mongoose, raccoon, rat, mouse, beaver and similar bat species. Yeah, may be my sixes were never farther than 25 meters, but Hayden can not claim to be the first.


The ball:

Are there balls beyond tennis/rubber and cricket balls (beyond those 'pink' balls that MCC is planning)? Practically infinite, I say. How can we forget those weightless, gravity defying plastic balls, that can be hit so well that it makes you feel like Yusuf Pathan. Then there were those cork balls, which resemble sober and calm, but can hurt as much as a cricket ball. And even the ball need not be an actual spherical rubber stuff but something that is small enough to be hit for a distance by the so called bat. Very many different candidates come to my mind. I still have vivid memories of playing in the streets of Madurai with the Coconut tree trunk as the bat and Hing ka dubba as the ball with the electric post donning the role of stumps. In fact, for a long time my highest score in a cricketing innings was hit when the ball was a rubber toy stolen from our neighbour's kid. Then there are always 'quick to make' paper balls (rolled paper), which most often are made out of the Exam question or answer papers and form the vital part of the cricket played inside the class room during the recess time. The list here would go on.

How about stumps? Any set of wooden sticks held up with stones, an electric pole (even if the street dog has marked its boundary there), wall paintings (of stumps), cooldrink tray, a chair, an array of bricks and many other such innovative reusuable structures can form stumps. So the next time you say that cricket requires exquisite equipments and infrastructure, think again.

Cricket is a Calvin ball game:

One of the main reasons for cricket being popular is because it falls under the category of Calvin Ball**. As with Calvin ball games, it doesn't get constrained by rules. Wait, aren't there bodies like MCC, ICC regulating how cricket is being played ? Heck, who cares? Not even BCCI cares, then how can you expect the Indian public to worry about them. We can change the rules at will to suit the climatical, geographical, political, horizontal, vertical and many other arbitrary conditions. Think of this great feasibility. Depending upon a variety of factors, like the number of people available, the type of equipment available, the kind of place, the amount of time, you have a version of cricket. And the rules of the game generally depends on who argues best and who has the power.

What is a game of cricket if it doesn't have fights about rules. Most people find it joyful to spend more time arguing about rules rather than actaully playing itself.You start the game with bare minimum rules and the rules for sixes, fours, wides, noballs, wickets, catches are argued upon as the game goes by. Hence there are multiple strategic breaks like in IPL, just that these breaks don't have boring commercials rather than interesting fights.

This freedom from rules gives cricket the ultimate joy to people master games with specific rules. For instance, the worst player in the regular cricket played in Hostel-1, would be the best player in the box cricket played in the same place. As Calvin would say, "Down with the rules".


** Calvin ball is a fictitious game invented and played by Bill Watterson comics' characters Calvin (6 year old kid) and Hobbes (Calvin's pet tiger). Calvin hates to play the typical sports filled with rules that constraints your joy and creativity. They want to play games where rules can be changed dynamically so as to suit people, especially Calvin himself so that he could win.


Who can Play cricket ?:

Cricket offers a good balance between the ultra fast paced sports and the ultra slow paced ones. It's slower than those "you blink, you miss sports" like the legball, and it is far faster than those "games played outdoors". As with most sports, cricket also is beyond the segregations of region, religion, caste, community, species, genus, family, etc. But unlike other sports cricket fits everyone in the league i.e. there is a place for everyone in some form of cricket or the other.

Let me give an example: Can you imagine to play a sport when your leg is injured? You may say golf, but I consider golf as one of those "games played outdoors" rather than a sport. Here you spend most of the time moving around huge lawns on some kind of lawn mowers rather than 'playing'. So all sports will ditch you, but cricket won't. You become a keeper and make a rule to rule out runs behind the wicket. While you bat we will have a bye-runner.

It doesn't matter if you can't catch, you change rules to have one-pitch catches. If you can't at all run, then remove runs from the rules and make the number of balls a batsman bats without getting out as the score. It's so flexible, you see. Given the different versions of roles that people can play in the team, sometimes you wonder how they can ever be part of a team. For instance, how can we imagine people like Venkatesh Prasad doing the roles for India when they can't even bat against a 6 year old bowling or field a slow moving tennis ball. But they did, because of bowling excellence.

Other forms of cricket

Is that all, you ask? No, I say. If everyone goes off and you are all alone, you still needn't loose hope. Open up your computer and start playing for Dhanier, Tenhelker, Sehway. EA Sports cricket apparently doesn't have the rights to use Indian players' names and hence has some above mentioned completely unrelated names. Though Sachin Tendulkar might have hit the second two hundred in an ODI innings (after Belinda Clark), there have been innumerable number of quadruple centuries that my friends have hit against hopeless teams in EA Sports cricket. And not to forget those other wonderful versions of games like Anil Kumble cricket, Alan Border cricket etc., apart from those coming in different mobile phones.

And even if the Electricity board plots against you and cuts the power, even if you don't have any equipment to play cricket, you still can be with cricket. For this gets us to one of the simplest, purest and easiest form of cricket: "Book Cricket". All you need is a decent enough book and may be a pen and paper for scoring i.e. if you bother to add score. It is suspected that the term ''bookie'' for those who are involved in gambling in cricket comes from book cricket. For you can easily mark those pages with '0' and '6' and open those pages as you wish to suit the need of the player. For instance, after watching India loose the 1992 World Cup match against Australia by just 1 run, I resorted to book cricket and made India thrash Australia by more than 400 runs, with even Venkatapathy Raju scoring a 50.


Epilogue:

The next time you see an enthusiastic chap walking along the corridor practising a shot without a bat or bowling without a ball, you will realize the impact of this sport. Unlike other games you don't even need to play cricket to be with the cricket. It is that simple and that flexible.

As I wind up my arguments on cricket's popularity, it is necessary to note that a lot of comparisons have been made largely to make fun and nothing really serious (except may be about golf). I have been part of the various club and institute cricket teams over the last 14 years and have had an urge to write this for years based on what all have I seen. And also have enjoyed being part of and playing Football, Basketball, Hockey at various levels and do appreciate and understand those sports well. So it is best to take the article lightly and not send hate mails to me. Thank you.