Cricket is cabaret, old chum, and we are the suckers -Governance Now

Cricket is cabaret, old chum, and we are the suckers

So, why blame the touts?

Bikram Vohra | May 18, 2013

Hahahahahahaha….no revelation. Cricketers cheat. Big deal, not as if we didn’t know that! The circus has been in town for years. So why the howl of anguish and surprise that there is a new and sordid chapter being written in this saga?

Do you really watch the IPL for skill and truth and the holy grail? Please. Get a life. The IPL is a set of performing seals doing just that — performing. And it is great fun but you cannot become a purist about choreographed dazzle. I can go to Paris and watch a cabaret, a mela in India and see stuntmen do their thing, visit Rio for the Carnival, attend the Mardi Gras, any of these entertaining fixtures and if I watch IPL with the same mindset then I won’t have my sensibilities bruised. Just have cotton candy fun.

My friend Bicky Carla is upset about being conned by cricketers. Bicky is one smart guy. But if you con yourself into believing a spectacle that is directed and produced entirely for gross profit is a 'give it all you have' contest like some gladiatorial fight to the finish, that is your fault. They never promise you the truth.The ads are designed to create a thrill. The promoters package the nonsense by date and city and the game meanders along happily seeking now highly suspicous cover under the guise of the historical ‘glorious uncertainty’ of cricket, ensuring that the suspense is nail biting.Some of the twists and turns are just too twisty to accept as probable unless the puppet master pulls the strings.

You could be watching a movie, the plot thickens like soup

And then, there is the money. Loads of it. It has to corrupt, there is no choice. Things have gone so out of hand that overnight millionaires and greedy endorsements make every one of these players arrogant and the lure of filthy lucre irresistible. Against this massive magnet we want people with limited IQ and only the ability to hit a ball to resist it? They are not Einstein, they are common guys with common backgrounds, mostly a bunch of kids being shown a Ferrari. What would you do?

Come on, where do you live!

Of course, they will cheat. The current formats are hyped for cheating, the IPl is the cherry on the cake. When ace bowlers can give 29 runs by bowling the worst overs of their lives at the most crucial times!

The IPL is only interested in one thing. Bums on seats.

The cricketers are interested in only one thing. Money.

Same difference.

Comments

Other News

Climate change is stealing sleep

Climate change has at least doubled the temperature-related sleep loss across 1,338 major cities worldwide over the past five decades, highlighting an emerging but often overlooked public health consequence of rising global temperatures. A new study by Climate Central estimates that between 2020 and

Cabinet approves Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme

The union cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi has approved the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme (MPMS) with a budgetary outlay of Rs 62,500 crore. It aims to further scale up the production, deepen domestic value addition, strengthen supply chain resilience, enhance global competitiveness. It

Building infrastructure is only half the job

Recent stories of stolen railway wires, disappearing communication towers and missing public infrastructure are often treated as bizarre law-and-order failures of India. Yet they raise a more fundamental question. Why does the State often discover the disappearance of a public asset only after it has alrea

New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific strategy enters a new phase

India appears to be investing fresh dynamism in its Indo-Pacific strategy. At the time when the US, under president Donald Trump, has adopted a conciliatory approach towards China and has changed the name of America’s Indo-Pacific Command to just Pacific Command, India has quietly moved towards con

CAG flags major fiscal lapses in Maharashtra

Maharashtra`s fiscal management has come under sharp scrutiny after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, in its State Finances Audit Report for 2024-25, flagged significant budgetary inefficiencies, accounting irregularities, understatement of key fiscal indicators and widespread governanc

The health sector research we are not doing

Some neglect is loud. This kind is quiet. It sits in research never commissioned, data never collected, questions never asked. In South Asia, that quiet has let the region’s worst health problems stay understudied, underfunded, and out of sight of those who could act.