Saturday, May 18, 2013

For Harsha Bhogle - Don't cry for cricket

This blog is in response to Harsha Bhogle's article in Indian Express: Don't cry for cricket

Hi! Harsha,

As always a great article. But at this point we need more than just great commentary about the dark times that cricket is facing.  

It is easy for all of us mere mortals (excluding you :) to tell the players to stay away from greed of money. But how can they? There's just too much of it. It's humanly impossible to stay away from it, unless you are the master of your domain. You are dealing here with very basic human tendency - Greed, power and fame. We all have it and the temptation is just too powerful to control. Infact these grown up players are no different from 10 year olds. They see candy and they want it. Who wouldn't?  

There's just too much money being pumped into IPL. It is impossible to separate candy from the game. Cause people who are putting money in IPL are not putting in for the sake of the sport. They are in it for the money. If you ask me, IPL and cricket are two different things. IPL is business and cricket is a sport. Their combination is dangerous and that is what has exactly happened here in the case of match fixing. You tell me otherwise how else are these people (aka investors), who are pumping in Corers of Rs., expected to get their money out?  

So, the focus now has to be on how the candy can be separated form sports? You inherently need some candy since that's also the motivate to make the sport worthwhile. Hence that economic element (candy) has to be there. The key is balancing the candy and protecting the sport from it. What steps can be taken to bring that balance? This is something that the BCCI has to think about. I haven't seen BCCI do anything about the balance, do they even know that such a balance is needed? OR have they succumbed to investors?  

My question to gods of cricket such as GavaskarJi, KapilJi, DarvidJi, SachinJi and others is how get the sport called CRICKET back to life? Please let them know that me, my 10 year old son and my 13 year old niece are waiting for Gods to answers our prayers, just like drought hit farmers wait for rains....

Aditya

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