You Must Like Cricket? Read Online Free PDF

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on millennial development goals, said in a recent interview that ‘India is poised to become one of the three large economies of the world. By the mid century I think India could overtake the US by absolute size.’
    But this is only part of the story. Seventy-two per cent of India’s population still lives in the hinterland, many of them in shocking deprivation. That is why, despite its growing global status in information technology, India has, according to a recent study, eighty-four television sets per thousand people (America has 938); why it has 7.2 personal computers for every thousand people (Australia has 564.5); and why the internet reaches only two per cent of the population (in Malaysia, that figure is thirty-four per cent).
    The gulf between the educated, urban elite and their fellow countrymen in the vast rural hinterland is widening by the day. Cricket has become their only common ground. For the urban rich, more than anything else, cricket has fostered a strong sense of national identity. For many people my age or younger, who have grown up in an independent country and are too distanced from the pangs of either Partition or the thrill of not being under Raj rule, the game has become the most triumphant mirror of the ideas of nation and patriotism.
    But for millions of Indians (the ones who live on minimum wages, never take holidays, have no other avenue of entertainment and can only afford merely a community television on which to watch the matches), exulting in the success of eleven men on a green field is as close as they will ever get to success. These Indians are not proud of their city/town/village, their politicians, their backgrounds, their careers; they have little to look forward to in terms of what their country might have to offer them or what they might be able to give themselves. They have only the cricket.
    Any outsider on a visit to India can see them – watching the game on their community TV, standing in a huddle with their noses pressed to the window of an electronics store, attending a victory procession after the game is won. They can see what all this is about. And they will go back home and talk about it in wonder.
    * * *
    In the winter of 1993, I surprised myself for the first time in my life with the intensity of my obsession: on impulse, I took a plane from London to watch the final of a limited-overs tournament back home in Kolkata. And yet, it was not quite entirely on impulse. It might have been madness (a lot of people told me that it was certifiably loony, that a passion for the game was acceptable, likeable even in an innocent, pleasant way, but travelling from London to Kolkata to watch a game was taking it a bit too far) but there was some sort of method to it.
    On the occasion of its diamond jubilee, the Cricket Association of Bengal had put together a one-day championship involving India, Sri Lanka, West Indies, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It was called the Hero Cup. The final, scheduled for 27 November at the Eden Gardens, would cap three weeks of high-quality cricket.
    At first, it had just seemed like a nice idea. Then, as I began to think about it, it became clear that my longing to be there need not remain merely a longing; it could actually be done. Not very long after I first thought of it, going back home for the cricket seemed the
only
course of action open to me.
    Perhaps it was because I had not watched much cricket involving my country for a long time. (India had played only Sri Lanka in Tests during 1993.) But when I decided to buy my ticket I had no idea that India would actually make the final. So it must have had more to do with watching cricket
in
India than watching India play.
    The distance I had put between myself and cricket in India in physical terms had strengthened the emotional bond between myself and the game; it had sharpened my desire to see the game in India, to see, with new eyes, how much of what I