"Celebration, it surrounds us, every nation, all around us" sang along General Specific.Between 12th March and 16th May there have been like 60 IPL T20 games and 30 T20 WC games. Assuming fairly decent over rates, that results into roughly 350 hours of T20 cricket which is over 20% of the 1500-odd hours between the aforementioned dates. For a sport which some 7 nations in the world take seriously, that's investing too much time in it.
The problem, as usual, lies in our mentality. In a country like ours, time-wasting is something that you can't really make a fuss about. To make sure that a fuss is made about something Team India went ahead and played Ravindra Jadeja again. Much to their chagrin, and possibly because there's no easy translation of "athithi devo bhava" around in Jamaica, the poor chap got carted all around the island. Instead of learning from their mistakes they decided to play scientist-scientist; recreating the same conditions they now tested it against Sinhalese and obtained consistent results thereby satisfying their curiosity and dividing the country into BCCI-haters and Dhoni-haters.
As for the BCCI, it's a shame how something that affects more people than the strength of a constituency isn't elected by the people of the country. Thomas Jefferson manages to say it like no other, “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” Add to that the fact that there are still no quotas for women and scheduled castes in the management or the team itself and you have a most unpopular group of people running the show.
The IPL, by this time, had already taken in two more teams. This move pushed up the number of games up to 94 which would be about 370 hours of IPL which, if you ask me, is too close to 385 to be a coincidence. It also allowed Shashi Tharoor to be in the news once again and gave Bal Thackeray a glimmer of hope that there might finally be a Marathi team with a name that he could support. And then towards the end Chirayu Amin, who was the chairman of some company and likes to play golf, was declared IPL Papa.
And what should be of concern to the Indian government is that during this period the Chinese managed to top the world in Caesarean surgeries, add military bases in Pakistan to their Christmas wish list, start their population control programme at kindergartens, gain more voting power at the World Bank and reach the finals of the Uber Cup and lose to South Korea. And in case you haven't noticed the recent Chinese toying around with India activity, these seemingly unconnected events start fitting together once one incorporates the man behind the IPL.
Did you know that the last monarch of China who was unfortunately killed by the Mongols just the day after he was declared emperor was also named Modi. What an apt codename. Think about how easily Modi made up something up with India and Cricket and reduced the time available to the average Indian by 20% which in turn reduced productivity pushing down India's growth rate for the quarter still more after the recession. China then got Jairam Ramesh to think what he thinks about the Chinese home ministry and say it making everyone waste their time thinking about what he thought of the Chinese home ministry and then saying what they thought about it thereby wasting more time. By then Modi had exhausted 6.23% of India's green cover in his 15000 page reply to the BCCI and made sure India's carbon targets aren't met. And to top it all, next year the parliament will have more to watch and while the Home Minister's watching all the Cricket, the Naxals and the Maoists will move out and kill some more people because the government is being unfair to the tribes which have a right to their own IPL team. India is doomed.
WC 2011 Debacle: The Simlipal franchise's IPL parties left the players tired and devoid of any self respect.Trivia Section:
(Referring to the earlier link (In case you didn't read it it's here)) Running the country doesn't require more than 80% attendance. College prepares us for everything and more.
Google News stats:
~13,000 results searching for 'Cricket'
~33,000 results searching for 'China'
~28,000 results searching for 'India'
~250 results for 'China Cricket'
~4,500 results for 'India Cricket'
This means that over 15% of the news in India is Cricket news which is almost one third of the global cricket news. Now compare this to China where it's less than 1%. Interestingly, the Chinese have a lot more per capita news which might be why China enforces curbs on the press.
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