Everyone loves a winner. It is always amusing to watch cricket take up the front page news on most ordinary Indian days. But there are days occasionally when cricket takes a back seat and usually it has nothing to do with someone winning a Gold at the Olympics!
It is quite fascinating that anything remotely connected to cricket (especially Indian cricket) usually finds its way in some form on the front page of most leading dailies. It is almost equally fascinating that on the day when a defeat has to be reported from a previous day, not even a mention will be made on the front pages as if a game was never played. Tomorrow’s dailies may well not carry India’s defeat. But this then is an exception.
Ironically perhaps Abhinav Bindra could not have chosen a better day to create sensation with honours in the Beijing 2008 Olympics. In a crazy fanatical about cricket, it is difficult for any other sport to thrive or even survive on media awareness. On most mediocre days, cricket hogs too much of the limelight anyway even at the expense of other perhaps equally deserving sport. While it cannot be measured here objectively enough whether the adulation and unwavering gaze is a stare too strong, what can be said is that ironically for other sport to receive its share of the sun, there have to be days like these.
But it benefits cricket as well, or rather the Indian cricket team. The series in Sri Lanka was a battle, no less. Too many days have been a struggle for India to really stake a claim for the series victory. Thus, came under the scanner the skipper himself, Anil Kumble, for his own inability to perform in his role as the chief spinner in the side. The so called ‘fab four’ have not been spared either and perhaps rightly so.
This drab defeat would have certainly stirred an hornet’s rest. Therefore, this is one day when cricket takes umbrage a little easier, hiding behind a phenomenal day that has been for India at the Olympics. An individual gold is something that would be valued more than a team where each one is aiming at self-preservation (another matter then on who has actually succeeded doing so).
So, when the sports hour on the channels that do anything to catch the nation’s eyeballs (pandering and criticizing the game to do just that) would have normally rained down past cricketers and their scathing views of what went wrong with the game of cricket, they will now focus on India’s glory at the Olympics. It will only take the focus and dissection of defeat away from the Indian cricket team for which they will have Bindra to thank, at least for a day which the team learns to digest the fact. It will not be for long though because the aged five will make their way back to India and not to a consoling embrace.
After it is not everyday that victory like this comes about. Even Indian cricket, even with its share of patrons and enormous resources, knows that.
