The Ugly Indian Cricket ‘Fan’

The most immediate cause for concern after the attack on Greg Chappell in Bhubaneshwar before the second India-WI one-dayer, is the glaring lapse on the part of the security agencies. For a team that is living and playing under the shadow of persistent terrorist threats, one would have imagined that arrangements would have been strong enough to keep at least a deranged “fan” from coming in physical contact with members of the team. Fortunately, Chappell escaped unhurt from the attack and the man has been arrested. But the possibilities of what might have happened had something with more elaborate and vicious designs been attempted, are quite frightening.

After the dust settles on this issue – it will eventually, once a few regulation heads roll in the security establishment and the inevitable “high level probe” is ordered by the authorities – I wonder whether we will find time to address some other disturbing questions arising out of this incident. Questions that have been lurking round the corner for some time now, begging to be answered, but which we refuse to even acknowledge because we don’t want to be disturbed from the happy stupor we’ve fooled ourselves into.

These are questions that ask us to look into the mirror – and answer whether the face we see in it belongs to an aficionado of a gentleman’s game, or to an intolerant, parochial and foul-mouthed ruffian.

These are questions that ask us why, when we accept that zonal chauvinism is unhealthy for the game, we still unabashedly hold on to our own little regional biases. These are questions that ask us why we complain of racism against our cricketers overseas, when we ourselves have populated the North Stand of the Wankhede Stadium and perpetrated nasty racial abuse against a touring West Indies team. These are questions that ask us why, instead of glowing with pride that Mohammad Kaif, a young son of a railway ticket inspector from Eastern UP, has risen to represent India on the international stage, we readily deface the house that his family stays in every time he performs below our expectations.

These are questions that ask us to step out of the veil of devotion to the game which we’ve been hiding behind all this time. And expose ourselves for the fanatics that we are – not cricket fanatics, just ordinary ones.

I remember that during my engineering exams, I always hoped that the questions on sections of the syllabus I had not read through would be in the “optional” part of the question paper – I’d avoid them, and still get through. But there was always the fear of them appearing in the dreaded “compulsory” section, which meant a huge penalty for not answering them.

For long, we as the cricket-following public have tried to play the same game – hoping that these uncomfortable questions will be optional, that we’ll get by without answering them. Unfortunately, as the bigotry and crudeness that has become a part of almost everything in our lives, now takes over even our cricket, these questions are slowly creeping in to the “compulsory” section.

We better start preparing to answer them now, we better try to change the ugly face of the person we see when we look into the mirror – the penalty, otherwise, might be larger than we can bear.

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