SHORT
TAKES
Cricket
vs. Cricket
Cricket in India has
turned out to be so much fun, more off the field lately than on.
It seems only yesterday
when we were congratulating ourselves that under the Srinivasan period Indian
cricket had become an adult finally and had joined the global capitalism of
cricket. The post-globalisation generation in india, now the prime mover of all
markets, does not even know of the pre- Wadekar/Gavaskar era of cricket
feudalism, except by reading books – if it reads books at all. Even the ICC of
the firangis had to bow to the suzerainty of BCCI. India of the middling
classes had found something to be proud of at last. A seat in the UN Security
Council seemed imminent.
But the era was short,
like that of Louise XVI. From the womb of that pride and prejudice was born the
Indian Premier League, led by Lalit Modi. And everything changed. Beyond the
imagination of everyone. Today the world acknowledges that it changed the genes
of Indian and world cricket. World cricket has found its Kumbh Mela through
IPL.
Money, sleaze, betting,
fixing, girls, booze, drugs were always there – even in the Wadekar era. But
today`s scale and splendor is something else. Moreover the latest exposes on
the shenanigans of Srinivasan and Lalit Modi have taken us by a delirious
storm. And the exposes are not over yet, not by a long chalk. Much fun has been
unleashed!
In retrospect Srinivasan
will come to be seen as Gorbachov to Lalit Modi as Yeltsin – two stages in the
capitalist liberation of Indian cricket.
And , as we know, there
are capitalisms and capitalisms. Srinivasan period`s capitalism was
brahminical, constipated, exclusive, furtive, and corrupt. Post Lalit Modi, the
djinn is out, and India`s cricket capitalism has become OBC, exuberant,
inclusive, flamboyant, and corrupt. More fun, more animal spirits, any day.
Oddly though, that seat in
Security Council seems less imminent.
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