Themes > Current Issues
01.10.2007
It's Raining Crores for the Cricketers
Jayati
Ghosh
In
the midst of the frenzied euphoria after India’s victory at the Twenty20
World Cup Championship, it may seem churlish - or even suicidal - to argue
that some of the ecstatic response at this admirable feat is slightly
overdone.
After all, people will say, it is not often that we get a chance to celebrate and feel good about something, so why begrudge us our moment of happiness? Why cavil at cash prizes as reward for victorious cricketers, or raise eyebrows at Ministers who drop everything to hang out with "the boys" all day during the public homecoming celebrations?
Especially as this is apparently just one more sign that we should feel good about ourselves as Indians. The cricket victory has been interpreted in much of the English language media as one more sign of India not just shining but absolutely radiant, a country confidently striding forward to take its rightful place as among the leading world nations.
The day after the "new" World Cup victory, the Sensex crossed the 17,000 mark for the first time, going up by more than 1000 points in a shorter time than ever before, led by record inflows of investment by Foreign Institutional Investors. Mr. Vijay Mallya announced that he had purchased shares in Epic, an American aeronautics company. The rupee increased in value versus the US dollar – a huge problem for domestic producers, but a sign of macho strength to others, especially TV commentators. Do we really need any more evidence that we will shortly rule the world?
Even if this particular victory is seen as the symbol of many other sources of national "pride", however, the reactions do appear excessive. State governments that have declared themselves to be so strapped for cash that they cannot provide basic sewerage systems for the cities or minimal protection to farmers in desperate financial straits, quickly find enough resources to shower vast quantities of rupees as prizes for the conquering heroes. Politicians who have had no time to visit scenes of major calamities or listen to the woes of citizens in deep distress, can find enough time to spend the day fawning publicly on the young cricketers, in an effort to catch some of the reflected glory.
The cash awards indicate both lack of proportion and the copycat effect. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, the richest cricket association in the world, has generally been extremely niggardly in funding training facilities and other incentives for young talent, and especially for women cricket players. The Indian women cricketers have actually won World Cups before, but their victories have hardly been noticed, much less celebrated or rewarded financially by the BCCI. Yet the Minister for Agriculture, who is also the BCCI Chairman, announced a cash award for two million US dollars for the Indian men’s cricket team for its victory in the new and relatively untested format of Twenty-20 over cricket, and Rs. 1 crore to star batsman Yuvraj Singh.
This is a somewhat startling sum, even if Mr. Pawar’s intention was not only to honour the men cricketers but also to score a point over the upstart Indian Cricket League. Yet this display of enthusiastic largesse-throwing was quickly copied by the state governments of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat, all of which announced fairly large cash awards to the members of the victorious teams hailing from their own states.
Contrast this with the complete lack of generosity – or even attention given – to the Indian hockey team when it won the Asia Cup for hockey less than three weeks before this. Even after public interest in hockey was briefly revived because of the success of the (admittedly wonderful) film Chak de India, the successes of the Indian men’s hockey team did not lead to much beyond a few media comments about life imitating art. No victory processions down the street of any city for them, and certainly no cash awards in recognition of their achievement.
This is why the Captain and some other team members of the Indian men’s national hockey team have publicly expressed their disappointment and even outrage at this unequal treatment. Yet it could be argued that their anger misses the point. After all, sport is not really sport any more, it is primarily spectator entertainment, and therefore media, and therefore big business. And so the winner-takes-all tendencies of big business also affect not just individual sports, but also categories of sportspersons (women players getting lesser treatment compared to men players, for example) and the relative ranking of different sports.
So the government representatives could well argue that they are simply reflecting the public perceptions and demands. Cricket currently captures the public imagination in a way that hockey simply does not, notwithstanding the recent hugely popular movie. And if hockey players are to be feted and felicitated, then why not kho kho players or weightlifters?
The truth is that we are not really a sports-oriented nation, we are essentially a spectacle- and festivity-oriented nation. And we have currently chosen cricket as one of the main vehicles for expressing this tendency. The shoddy Indian performance at the last one-day World Cup tournament dealt a blow to this particular avenue for social obsession, leading to great concern not only among the cricket establishment, but also - and more tellingly - among the sponsors and advertisers. There is surely now a great collective sigh of relief that this drought in public attention and sponsorship is now over, at least for now.
It is really this which is the key to everything else. Bug business – and associated with it, big politics – is into cricket because it is popular, but it also has to be kept popular because so much is now at stake in this game. There are huge financial interests that benefit from the public celebration of cricket, and for them, perhaps even more than for the jubilant youth rejoicing wildly in the rain, India’s victory in this tournament was important.
After all, people will say, it is not often that we get a chance to celebrate and feel good about something, so why begrudge us our moment of happiness? Why cavil at cash prizes as reward for victorious cricketers, or raise eyebrows at Ministers who drop everything to hang out with "the boys" all day during the public homecoming celebrations?
Especially as this is apparently just one more sign that we should feel good about ourselves as Indians. The cricket victory has been interpreted in much of the English language media as one more sign of India not just shining but absolutely radiant, a country confidently striding forward to take its rightful place as among the leading world nations.
The day after the "new" World Cup victory, the Sensex crossed the 17,000 mark for the first time, going up by more than 1000 points in a shorter time than ever before, led by record inflows of investment by Foreign Institutional Investors. Mr. Vijay Mallya announced that he had purchased shares in Epic, an American aeronautics company. The rupee increased in value versus the US dollar – a huge problem for domestic producers, but a sign of macho strength to others, especially TV commentators. Do we really need any more evidence that we will shortly rule the world?
Even if this particular victory is seen as the symbol of many other sources of national "pride", however, the reactions do appear excessive. State governments that have declared themselves to be so strapped for cash that they cannot provide basic sewerage systems for the cities or minimal protection to farmers in desperate financial straits, quickly find enough resources to shower vast quantities of rupees as prizes for the conquering heroes. Politicians who have had no time to visit scenes of major calamities or listen to the woes of citizens in deep distress, can find enough time to spend the day fawning publicly on the young cricketers, in an effort to catch some of the reflected glory.
The cash awards indicate both lack of proportion and the copycat effect. The Board of Control for Cricket in India, the richest cricket association in the world, has generally been extremely niggardly in funding training facilities and other incentives for young talent, and especially for women cricket players. The Indian women cricketers have actually won World Cups before, but their victories have hardly been noticed, much less celebrated or rewarded financially by the BCCI. Yet the Minister for Agriculture, who is also the BCCI Chairman, announced a cash award for two million US dollars for the Indian men’s cricket team for its victory in the new and relatively untested format of Twenty-20 over cricket, and Rs. 1 crore to star batsman Yuvraj Singh.
This is a somewhat startling sum, even if Mr. Pawar’s intention was not only to honour the men cricketers but also to score a point over the upstart Indian Cricket League. Yet this display of enthusiastic largesse-throwing was quickly copied by the state governments of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat, all of which announced fairly large cash awards to the members of the victorious teams hailing from their own states.
Contrast this with the complete lack of generosity – or even attention given – to the Indian hockey team when it won the Asia Cup for hockey less than three weeks before this. Even after public interest in hockey was briefly revived because of the success of the (admittedly wonderful) film Chak de India, the successes of the Indian men’s hockey team did not lead to much beyond a few media comments about life imitating art. No victory processions down the street of any city for them, and certainly no cash awards in recognition of their achievement.
This is why the Captain and some other team members of the Indian men’s national hockey team have publicly expressed their disappointment and even outrage at this unequal treatment. Yet it could be argued that their anger misses the point. After all, sport is not really sport any more, it is primarily spectator entertainment, and therefore media, and therefore big business. And so the winner-takes-all tendencies of big business also affect not just individual sports, but also categories of sportspersons (women players getting lesser treatment compared to men players, for example) and the relative ranking of different sports.
So the government representatives could well argue that they are simply reflecting the public perceptions and demands. Cricket currently captures the public imagination in a way that hockey simply does not, notwithstanding the recent hugely popular movie. And if hockey players are to be feted and felicitated, then why not kho kho players or weightlifters?
The truth is that we are not really a sports-oriented nation, we are essentially a spectacle- and festivity-oriented nation. And we have currently chosen cricket as one of the main vehicles for expressing this tendency. The shoddy Indian performance at the last one-day World Cup tournament dealt a blow to this particular avenue for social obsession, leading to great concern not only among the cricket establishment, but also - and more tellingly - among the sponsors and advertisers. There is surely now a great collective sigh of relief that this drought in public attention and sponsorship is now over, at least for now.
It is really this which is the key to everything else. Bug business – and associated with it, big politics – is into cricket because it is popular, but it also has to be kept popular because so much is now at stake in this game. There are huge financial interests that benefit from the public celebration of cricket, and for them, perhaps even more than for the jubilant youth rejoicing wildly in the rain, India’s victory in this tournament was important.
© MACROSCAN 2007