Reading the article by Arvind Lavakare dated Apr 03, I couldn't but agree with the author.
What happened in the 07 World Cup is not a surprise because Indian Cricket team has always been a bunch of heroes rather than players. The BCCI might as well have assembled a team with Shahrukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Akshaya Kumar, Sunil Shetty and the like. The passions, the ad revenues and TV viewership would have been no less if not more. I have been living in Sydney Australia for last 10 months. I watched Australia continue to pound and pulverize every other team despite being short of Brett Lee. But that wasn't so noteworthy as the fact that while Mathew Hayden scored the fastest WC century, there were no TV chats or analyses or speculations before he did that, nor any endless newsroom accolades for him after that match against South Africa. All in all, his blinding century got about 3-4 minutes of time on National news, and a few minutes on sports channels along with the due coverage in sports sections of leading newspapers the next day. And this is in a country that has won the cup twice in recent succession.
This is in sharp contrast to what happens in mera Bharat. For two days before any match, all newspapers, TV channels and newsrooms are full of "Cricket Experts" and even Astrologers speaking so positively about our heroes, that it creates an impression as if India has some kind of a right on the World Cup. Like the team (of heroes) is there just for the formalities. And then the TV discussions continue after India's defeat as experts calculate the probablity of Bangladesh losing to Bermuda.
That's more talk and less cricket.
I don't remember ever seeing Australians discuss strategies before playing any match or analysing the results after any match. Even if they do, most of it stays confined to the player's dressing rooms, and when their team goes out in the field, it never shows like they are concerned about who the opponents are. For the last three World cups, winning is a way of life for the Aussies, whether it is a full 50 over game or if bad weather applies Duckworth-Lewis constraints on the match.
RE:Heroes or Players
by Sanjeeb Ganguly on Apr 10, 2007 02:55 PM Permalink
Hi Vishal, You are absolutely correct.Its so much of a hype here that they tend to forget that one fine day it would be very difficult for these players to keep up to the standards made by the newschannels.Almost all of them are a hype & selling news to Indians is the easiest thing done as they believe in whatever they see or being shown.Its become a trend to sell news here but its high time the media should curtail certain things in their reporting nature.
