March 30, 2011
India beat Pakistan to reach World Cup final
From Times of India:
Twenty-eight long years after that magical Indian summer in England, the Men in Blue are one victory away from proving that India is truly cricket’s superpower, not just commercially but also on the field. One victory away from being world No.1 in ODIs, in addition to Tests. One victory away from giving the ultimate thank you gift to the greatest cricketer since Don Bradman, and a fitting farewell to a coach who has contributed so much to their rise. And one victory away from giving millions of young Indians born after 1983 - including several members of the present team - the joy of knowing what it actually feels like to have your squad lift the Cup that counts before your jubilant eyes. Kumar Sangakkara - Sanga to millions of fans - is waiting with his formidable Lankans. But so is the opportunity of a lifetime for Dhoni’s Daredevils.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 07:55 PM | Permalink
Comments
I watched an entire match for a change and thoroughly enjoyed it. And while India was the better team and the better team deservedly won, Pakistan did not go down without a fight. I just want to say that this Pakistani cricket team clearly outshines any other Pakistani institution at this time. What Pakistani General staff, bureaucratic cabal, business group or politician can boast of being among the best in the world? Unfortunately, the media personalities who blew up this clash into a clash of civilizations are not going to lose their job while some scrappy and determined cricketers may lose theirs. Allah, as usual, is not going to be fair……
Posted by: omar | Mar 30, 2011 9:31:53 PM
On our email group the question of why Allah let Pakistan down has been seriously discussed today.
I think the Indians obviously have more gods on their side. Maybe monotheism was not such a bright idea?
I am, of course, kidding. Not about monotheism being the dimmer idea (logically, it does have more problems than polytheism) but about this being a clash between monotheism and polytheism. It was actually a clash between West Punjab and the rest of the subcontinent and West Punjab lost…but went down fighting.
Posted by: omar | Mar 30, 2011 9:35:40 PM
"Wow, I couldn't give less of a shit" was my first thought. Then I realized that approximately one billion people watched this match and became acutely aware of the limits of American cultural hegemony. Holy crap! (or in polytheism 'Holy Craps!)
That being said, I don't think there is a single 3QD reader that didn't come across this information elsewhere. You guys are much better at filtering the more obscure and, dare I say, intellectual flotsam drifting around the internet.
Posted by: DrunktankDan | Mar 31, 2011 3:42:55 AM
"It was actually a clash between West Punjab and the rest of the subcontinent ...."
A few I checked Afridi, Umar Gul, Younis Khan do not seem to be punjabis.
Posted by: gaddeswarup | Mar 31, 2011 4:44:01 AM
Afridi and Yunus Khan; "token caucasians"...
I was kidding, but it IS mostly a punjabi team.
Posted by: omar | Mar 31, 2011 9:06:49 AM
Now that the token Bengali Saurav Ganguly is long gone, the Indian team is heavily Punjabi too, with the exception of the "best batsman ever" Tendulkar, and a few others. But it is still mostly a north Indian team (didn't used be this way in my days when the Indian side fielded several cricketing stars from Maharashtra, Andhra and Tamilnadu). So perhaps, the match can be loosely described as West Punjab vs East Punjab?
@DrunktankDan: Did you feel the same way about the World Cup Soccer last summer? Or perhaps not because the US did participate in that one. And I believe the audience far exceeded 1 billion. That number is in India alone. Throw in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, Britain and the subcontinental diaspora all over the world and you will be brushing against a number closer to 2b, perhaps.
Posted by: Ruchira | Mar 31, 2011 10:42:01 AM
Why not cut to the chase and denote it as a clash between Muslims and Hindus? Because that is how the majority in both countries, especially those in Pakistan, viewed the match.
Posted by: Sam | Mar 31, 2011 5:30:26 PM
@Ruchira
I heard approximately 1 billion on NPR. I cannot imagine there are enough television sets in the former empire to justify a 2 billion viewer figure. Either way though, it's pretty impressive.
The penetration of soccer, sorry 'football', into every corner of the world seems to be mostly a factor of economics. How hard can it be to set up a couple of rocks as goal posts and build a ball out of whatever junk you have lying around? Is cricket similarly inexpensive? I recall seeing some Dominicans making baseball mitts out of old milk cartons. American style football would be virtually impossible to do on the cheap without serious risk of injury. We used to play on the fields growing up and someone would inevitably separate a shoulder or bust a knee. That wouldn't be particularly useful in a subsistence agriculture based society.
Posted by: DrunktankDan | Mar 31, 2011 6:10:47 PM
For somebody like who grew up in Indian villages in the forties and fifties and never saw cricket until I went to university, the popularity of cricket in India is a puzzle. Part of the popularity may be due to how some countries define themselves against other countries: India against England and Pakistan or Australia against England. In Australia Don Bradman is still the most popular figure. It is not a cheap game. The new economies probably made it affordable to large sections of people.
Posted by: gaddeswarup | Mar 31, 2011 7:53:47 PM
@DD: Indian children do improvise the game of cricket with bricks, sticks and tennis balls. But it is true that to play the game of cricket in a more organized manner is more expensive (more equipment needed) than playing soccer, another fairly popular pastime in India. As for television sets not being accessible to the multitude of the subcontinent, you would be greatly surprised. Almost every hovel and shanty in an Indian slum or a humble rural home in India boasts a television set. If one doesn't, fans will gather at a place where there is one. Don't count the gadgets, count the viewers. But I agree. 2 billion was an exaggeration on my part, counting the total number of people who could potentially have been interested. Of course, not everyone, even in the Commonwealth nations is losing sleep over cricket.
@Sam: Is that so? Perhaps. Except that the Indian team fielded two Muslim players and one Sikh. But who knows? They too may be crypto-Hindus.
Posted by: Ruchira | Mar 31, 2011 8:19:34 PM
It would be interesting to compare cricket and field hockey. At one time Indians (India-Pakistan-bangladesh together) excelled in hockey though a number of the original players were British or Anglo-Indians. It was popular for a while after independence when India and Pakistan fielded the best teams in the world. With the rise of Holland, Germany, Austalia the popularity in the suncontinent waned. For some of us oldtimers Dhyan Chand is still one of the biggest sport icons.
Posted by: gaddeswarup | Mar 31, 2011 8:31:07 PM
In our village too there was no cricket in the "good old days" but there is a daily game going on now, so I guess the unwashed masses have taken to it. Is that bad?
I suspect there is an element of left-wing snobbery in the notion that soccer or hockey and not cricket is the appropriate working class game. Popularity shifts. Hockey has gone down, cricket has become more popular, so what? its a game, it can be played with fairly minimal equipment until you get to serious competition level....our jihadi brothers used to play cricket in the open fields of the pir panjal range in the good old days before Israeli technology made such displays a bit difficult. Afghans took it up in refugee camps in Pakistan and now have a national team. Field hockey is actually a more difficult game to organize and play without a good level ground and some relatively sophisticated teamwork....
I am not saying cricket is better than hockey or soccer or vice versa, but I notice a recurrent pining for soccer (and in some cases, hockey) as the proper socialist game in some quarters and I don't really get it...btw, I hope this is taken as light-hearted banter and not a serious attack on anyone's politically correct or incorrect views..I am not being very serious here.
Posted by: omar | Apr 1, 2011 11:48:08 AM
I am not pining for hockey; it is another game I did not watch when I was in school. I was just wondering why these fashions change. Is it to some extent determined by success in the game and how nations define themselves in termsof other nations?
Posted by: gaddeswarup | Apr 1, 2011 4:02:00 PM
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