Cricket in the new world
Just as hockey is the unofficial religion of Canada so is cricket the all-encompassing boundary that confines an Indian’s brain. An Indian cannot think beyond cricket unless his thoughts go for a six. And that too, he will religiously pick up the ball from the stands and throw is back into play.
Indians take cricket intravenously and then use the same needle over and over again.
If you were one of the many geeks hooked on cricket in India, there are now cable networks in Canada who might entice you with “ Pssst, pssst…want a quick fix of the final game in the IPL? That will be sixty nine dollars and ninety nine cents for the final!”
And only then will the otherwise frugal South Asian cave in. This is the same man or woman who will buy greens from ‘Fruticana’ in Surrey to save on vegetables. But for cricket he opens up like a man with a stuffed wallet and no self-control.
My family has a $15.50 cent monthly rental of “the paid cricket channel” on cable. We are in the middle of the IPL series being played in South Africa in April-May 2009 and we did not opt for “ live coverage” because we felt the rate of $99 was steep. But let us say, we decide to watch just the final. It would then cost a whopping $69.99. For that kind of money, the entire society of eighty cottages of our first house in Memnagar, Ahmedabad could watch cable for a month. And that cable service would cover the IPL for peanuts.
So what is the solution? Do we cave in to our addiction? Or do we engender new games like baseball and ice hockey?
Fat chance!
Baseball looks a bit like cricket, but is a shade incomprehensible. And ice hockey looks like a game for “goondas” armed with rough arm tactics and “lathis” - who sporadically slip on banana peels.
But the next generation of immigrants will espouse baseball and cricket with zest. They will wave you down and hold placards prompting you to honk for their favorite ice hockey teams. They will look at a game of cricket and wonder what all the calculated boredom is about.
And finally the will pronounce their forefathers as “ jerks” who had nothing better to do than to count from one to four and straight to six for five drab days in a row. Little might they know that this legacy from the British was the basis for a style of life and an all-absorbing obsession in a distant world.