Psyche of a rabid Indian Cricket Fan

Year 1967.  I was given my College Cricket cap by our Physical Education Master, a very good man - God bless his soul - who also doubled up as the `Manager' (I deliberately steer away from the epithet `coach', since he never pretended to be one during my 4 years with the team) for all sports teams.  His edict to the group was very simple and stern.  `You should win everything in front of you', he said, as if he was in the league of Alexander the Great and Napolean Bonaparte knitted together, marshalling the best army around to conquer all.  That he was gentle and soft of speech did nothing to support such comparisons. But we knew he was a good college-level cricketer of his time, so we refrained from smirking.  He had a very uniquely strange mannerism. Every five minutes or so he used his elbows, whether he was talking to someone or was by himself, to firmly hitch up his trousers; as if they (trousers, not elbows) were inexorably going out of control by slipping down,  making him vulnerable to potentially malignant charges of indecent public exposure!!  Knowing what was imminent when we were in his presence, we could not help paying greater attention to the much-anticipated and wagered-on next hitch-up move of his, to the detriment of any wisdom we could have gleaned from his exhortations.  But, we need not have fretted much, since we heard substantially the same content delivered umpteen times during the next four years, before the commencement of every match we played.  In essence, he averred that every ball we bowled should fetch a wicket and every ball we faced should be hit for a boundary, no less, opponents be damned!!  Very simple rules to play by, eh?  He knew it was a tall order for any team, but that did not prevent him from laying it thick on us every single time. And, if you thought he was just kidding, forget it. He had the gall to admonish us whenever we failed (time and again, obviously) to implement his carefully crafted, straightforward strategy!

But he was/is not alone.  I know many other seasoned cricket aficionados, otherwise known to be mature,  balanced and serene individuals and judges of life, consistently exhibiting rabidly one-sided views when India is involved in a match.  Such people cannot bear to watch the best batsmen of the opposite team cobbling together a reasonable partnership against the weakest links in the Indian bowling attack; they cannot sit patiently and watch three overs in a test match pass, if India does not get a wicket.  Some of them are known to switch off the TV in a real huff, when what they want to see is not happening on the pitch.  Once a friend, frustrated by the unsatisfactory proceedings in an Indian innings, actually threw the remote accurately enough to break the TV screen and had to go into hiding for the next week to escape the wrath of his cricket-averse father.  Others scream at the Indian team members from the comfort of their homes and condemn them summarily for their inability to get the upper hand.  It is almost as if the opposition does not exist or is just waiting to be rolled over, swatted aside by an Indian team, which is not really at its best.

My own dear father, who is otherwise the quintessential guru for us in life, is a personification of such an India fan.  He is normally so judicious about everything else in life but unfailingly indulges in this strange behaviour when things do not go well for the Indian cricket team.  He just shreds all those in the team and their ancestors for their past and present, real and imagined `sins' mercilessly (he readily activates his mental archive to cull dates of abject batting and bowling failures, recall pathetic fielding lapses etc) and petulantly shuts off the TV (earlier it was the radio), forcing others to scurry in search of alternatives. This phase is momentary, as one can guess; when someone informs him of an Indian success sooner or later, he rushes back to the TV like a kid and transforms into the vociferous supporter again, having no qualms being all praise for the batsmen and bowlers he had abused earlier.  Cricket does that to Indians, I guess; nothing rational about it.

If one pauses to think about it, one would find the above credo echoed by about 80% (may be more?) of India's cricket crazy population, with reference to the performance of the Indian team.  The general expectation seems to be that India should thrash any opposition in any condition anywhere in the world, despite empirical evidence staring in our face to show the team is struggling, rebuilding and is in fact near the bottom of the pile in terms of capabilities. Put it down to the manic fervour generated in India for the game or sheer irrational partisan behaviour of the followers, but that is the way it is.  When India struggled and lost against England recently at home, it was amusing to find that all those fans, including some former players-turned-pundits, did not spare a thought to the collective departure of Laxman, Dravid, Ganguly, Zaheer Khan and Kumble from the team in the recent past, the startling decline in the form of Tendulkar, Harbhajan Gambhir and Sehwag and the consequent impact on the overall balance of the team as well as performance.  Even the most pollyannaish supporters of the team should have realized that the newcomers were not a patch on the experienced campaigners India had lost and it would take time for the fresh combination to mature and transform into a winning one. That India was expected to roll over a resurgent England which had a couple of top spinners who could exploit Indian conditions was in itself indicative of the madness prevailing amongst Indian fans; but the chorus of wails that rent the air when the inevitable happened was nothing short of comical.

Why else would we have this spectacle of Dhoni's credentials as a good captain being questioned as soon as he loses a few tests, only to be restored with greater fervour when his team hammers a limp Aussie side, which is itself going through a major transition? Or take the case of Sehwag.  Whenever he goes for one of his expansive strokes early in the innings and gets out, hordes of arm-chair critics vilify him for not being paitent enough to build an innings.  These are the same people who usually applaud and urge Sehwag in a frenzy, expecting him to complete a triple century in one day.  When he fails to click, their verdict is `lack of patience'.  Cruelly ironical, is n't it?  Or how else would one explain Ashwin being celebrated as a worthy offspinner when he takes wickets by the bucketful against a lowly New Zealand side, which has historically and consistently displayed a woeful inadequacy in dealing with spin, only to be reviled as a third rate bowler when he fails against a much better equipped England team?  That all these flip-flops happen within a three month period should tell us there is a serious dearth of `balance and equity' in what the fans think and do.

Then there is a similar extreme behaviour provoked by personal  biases, carefully nursed over many years with utmost irrationality.  The most recent demonstration of this came through today as we were watching the second day's play of the Mohali test between India and Australia.  This friend of mine, probably one of the most passionate and clear-headed analysts of the game generally, was all over Dhoni as a wicket keeper or batsman or captain for, well, everything he did or did not do!  No exclusions here, even though the friend did grudgingly concede that Dhoni is indeed a decent, albeit ungainly, batsman.  Improbable nudges going through gully or short leg became `very easy chances' for the wicket keeper when Dhoni was keeping and the vehemence with which he was pilloried was simply frightening.  To drive home the point, my friend kept telling me `even you would have taken that in your heydays' without realizing that it did not come through as a compliment.  The hyper-critical state deprives one of tact, I guess. To bolster this point of view, time and again, he brought in his mother-in-law into play, a la Boycott, saying she would have done the job better than Dhoni, as if that good woman had an extended wingspan of twenty feet.  The withering looks his wife gave him from the next seat did nothing to stop him.  I guess he has done this before and reaped the consequences when he goes home!!  Quickly I banished all attempts to defend the poor skipper (no point, really) and asked the gentleman why he disliked Dhoni so heartily.  Dinesh Karthik is or was a better wicket keeper, so Dhoni is a usurper, was the answer.  Aha, as simple as that!!

The question that hounds me is whether football enthusiasts from Argentina or Portugal are as abusive of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo if either does not score in a match or occasionally fluffs an opportunity. Is this kind of behaviour something all pervasive regardless of sport and country or is this something insanely unique to Cricket and India??