Cricket

                                                                            

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

The first lecture I heard at Allahabad University was delivered by Prof. S.C.Deb, National Professor of English , who was given the fond sobriquet-Professors’ Professor by  L.C.Knights, wherein he had said by way of advice to the PG students: ‘play cricket and read Shakespeare, your study of literature would be worthwhile…’ I was a keen follower of cricket but I never had the chance to play the game. Frankly at that time I couldn’t connect Shakespeare with cricket. And Shakespeare, I’m confident, never heard about the game in the Elizabethan times. As I grew up with life’s vicissitudes and watched cricket avidly I began to comprehend the significance of late Prof Deb’s statement. Cricket is a bold metaphor of life. The rope – boundary in a park is the world where two teams of eleven players each display their prowess, manliness if you please, to the epitonic limits of their mind and body. The batsmen at both ends of the wicket play but only one man at a time faces the ball thrown at him from a distance of twenty two yards.  The bowler is like fate ever eager to hit the stumps (of your personal life) which the individual has to protect by his artful intelligence and technical ingenuousness converging his mind and body on a single object – the cricket ball – the red cherry. A slight error of judgement will end his innings of life – stumped, caught, LBW, hit wicket or losing his stumps to the fateful enemy on the other side. But if he can hit the ball beyond the ropes horizontally or aerially he is a hero. The audience (the society or world) will cheer to acknowledge his heroism and the hero would raise his bat in majestic humility coloured with the pride of achievement.

The hero is surrounded by a hostile field. The enemies are in a battle array. The hero is like Abhimanyu in the hostile array of war. But he must show his mettle, his preparations for life, his intelligence and sprightliness. He will fall certainly, for, that is the name of the game, the law of nature. But before his fall he must conquer the world never playing the “Roman fool”. This world does not give a second chance, no pardon, no leniency; the umpire will raise his dreaded finger unhesitatingly and you have to leave the field. Man has one life. He must make the most of it by his native worth.

Life is a display of excellence on this earth, which holds gracefully on her display disc man’s glory in her moral order. Shakespeare gives this poetic metaphor in style. Life is short, death is a given. But man makes a heaven of hell by his virtues.

In the twentieth century the game earned the pride of place by virtue of its entertainment value which, however, was commercialized in no time. Cricket’s International popularity spurred on by competitive patriotism and television broadcast became a password for modern culture. Even poor countries too took to the game wasting five full working days on the field. Cricket is now a money spinner and conservatively a multi-billion dollar industry. Cricketing gear – pads, bats, hats, uniform, helmets, balls, wickets, gloves, etc are now under the grip of corporates. Stadiums are built in small cities. Schools, colleges, universities play this expensive game. Tournaments are organized in almost all cities. Clubs have come up. And after the one day and T20’s caught the imagination of the paying public the corporates have taken over the game. Day night games with the mast lamps shinning bright on colourfully dressed gladiator like figures, playing with a white ball has now become the craze of men, women and children all over the world.

India learned the game from the British masters and plays it as a nouveauriche aristocrat competing with the masters to beat them in their own game. One may argue against India playing cricket to beat the hangover of the foreign masters: when forty crore Indians are below the poverty line why should the rising middle class indulge in imitative luxury? Well, all those arguments are now pointless as Indians call cricket their Religion. This religion is now monopolized by the politicians and corporates. The Ambanis, Adanis or Shahs as well as some bankrupt millionaires and retired film stars now own teams and the greatest show on earth; The Indian Premier League is played in India much to the jealousy of some cricketing countries. The BCCI today is the richest Board controlling cricket. The IPL has raised the price of the cricketers even in the small towns of India. The IPL auction of players from all over the world is the funniest corporate jamboree where cricket stars and candles are bought by amounts astronomical. The stadiums are jam packed, the carnival is the toast of sporting events. But the diseases of corporate culture too have entered the game. Match fixing, spot fixing, betting and other betrayals of this wonderful metaphor have brought the game to ill repute. The spirit is now missing. The gentleman’s game is now commodified. Ball tampering and cheating like infernal images now attack the metaphor. Yet cricket continues despite our nasty minds trying to reduce the metaphor to a dud.