|
|
| May 23, 2002 | Thursday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 10,1423 |
Only cricket please, we are Indians!
NEW DELHI, May 22: Football is set to replace cricket as the Indian couch potato’s favourite pastime, but only for the World Cup’s month-long duration.
Like the rest of the world, India too is eagerly awaiting the start of the four-yearly extravaganza in South Korea and Japan, even though the national team is not taking part.
India has never qualified for the World Cup, and probably never will till it reaches a level of standard that can match the best in Asia, let alone the powerhouses of Europe and Latin America.
But come the World Cup, millions of television viewers will temporarily give up their craze for cricket megastars Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly to tune in to the exploits of the David Beckhams of this world.
It helps that the Indian cricket team ends its tour of the West Indies on June 2 - three days after the start of the World Cup - and will not be in action again till the end of the month.
The World Cup will be watched, discussed, bet on and then forgotten till it comes along four years later.
“Football will never replace cricket as the most popular sport in India,” said noted Indian football critic Novy Kapadia.
“Football is very poorly marketed in the country and it is now confined to some regions of India only.”
Added Sharada Ugra of the respected India Today magazine: “Beckham may be the richest, most popular footballer in the world, but in India he is not a blip on Tendulkar.
“Football’s popularity is success-driven,” she said. “We are so much behind the rest of the world that it will probably take us 50 years to make a mark.”
India’s best-known footballer Baichung Bhutia, however disagrees the lack of success at the international level has sapped the sport’s popularity.
“We have not won a cricket series outside the sub-continent since 1986, so you can’t say our cricketers have been very successful,” said Bhutia, the only Indian footballer contracted to play in the English league.
“It’s just that cricket is marketed very well in India, football is not. The sport’s administrators are just not interested.
“Give me half the funds that Germany and England put into football, and I will give you 11 world-class players.”
Football in India is an engima. Crowds upwards of 70,000 turn up in football-crazy states like West Bengal, Kerala and Goa to watch local club matches.
But in the rest of the country, interest is confined to watching European teams on television.
“Football does not have a good image in India,” said Kapadia.
“Sadly the nationalistic middle class tends not to identify with the Indian football team as they barely play enough international matches.
“Indians in the urban metropolitan cities root for Brazil or Argentina or the Netherlands but Indian football is scoffed at for being too slow,” he said.
In sharp contrast, cricket is a non-stop soap opera with international matches on television almost every day of the year.
“Of course I will watch the World Cup,” gushed schoolboy Venayak Gupta. “You see, Tendulkar is taking a break in June.” —APP
|
|
|
