Cricket- The illogical Game

As you might know, I actually have a very diversified blog with posts covering almost every conceivable topic, ranging from Cricket, Art- drawings, poems, Martial Arts, Spirituality, reviews of books, games and movies, Politics, cooking, interesting websites, Computer games, my musings and experiences etc etc. It is infact a fun exercise because anyone who knows about my blogging like my friends, family or relatives, I tell them that I have a new post and see if they can guess on what topic it is and it is so difficult for them to think about because I am so unpredictable that I can write on any topic and it might be a totally different topic and might have no connection with the previous post. And as someone who had analyzed my blog said, this might be my strength or weakness or both!

But one of my pet topics is definitely Cricket and so far, under the topic of Cricket I have written about particular matches, or about a tour, or the various formats of the game or about a Cricketer. But this time I decided- Why not write about the game itself?

So here it is - a post on the game of Cricket.

(below is a small description of a funny event of Cricket that would take place if The Gods, enlightened Masters, Scientists etc took part in it)
............

What is it about this sport that drives the whole nation of India mad? What special does this game have that has given it the unique distinction of being elevated to the position of religion in India? What is it about it that drives most of the subcontinent countries, unites people across religions and places?

If you take a look at what the game is simply, it is actually quite illogical and might even look stupid. If the intellectual, logical people like Aristotle and Socrates had known about this game, they would have simply laughed at the people who play it and would have laughed even louder at the stupidity of the people all over the world watching it so keenly and getting all worked up over it and yet they would have missed something very beautiful because this game, as indeed other games are not for the intellect. It is not logical and it is not productive indeed. Just see- a group of around 22 players on a ground doing something as stupid as one of them at a time hurling in a ball and another one trying to hit it and and rest of them so focussed on it, just running after it so desperately! For what? It is simply counterproductive. It is just like the joke on football that someone who saw the sport of football for the first time saw so many people going after one ball and wasting so much energy just for the want of kicking it, he remarked- Why not have one football for each of them so that they can all kick to their heart's content!

If you see from one point of view, it is simply a waste of time for those players and even greater wastage of time for the people watching because at least the players are getting paid for it and it is their livelihood but the people who are watching, they are infact not even getting anything! These groups of players against each other is just like a person wrestling with his left arm and right arm. He is simply wasting his own energy no matter which hand wins.

In this game, it is the rules that make the game and it is the final result that decides all. No matter how well a player has played, if the team has lost, even by 1 run, everyone of that team and its supporters will be sad and someone from the opposition even though he might have not played well at all, if he is in the winning team, he will be happy. So it's not how it was played that matters but what the final result is. The journey is more important than the destination but in sports it is not so. If a team has lost, it will be sad and if everyone realizes that there was a mistake in calculation and infact it has won, suddenly the mood will change. That is one thing that is not very good about the sport that everything hangs on the final score. Games are meant to be played for enjoyment and enjoyment should be derived from the very process of playing.

So, yes this game is illogical, meaningless, nothing productive is coming out of it and there is no point to it but yet in spite of all this or because of these, there is something magical about the game.

This game would be even more meaningless without the rules of the game. Just see that if there were a group of players who came together to play but did not accept any rules, than anyone would bowl any number of balls, batsmen wouldn't run, everyone would do whatever they wanted and of course there would be fights too. And I have a feeling that if the enlightened people were to play this game, this is how they would play it - without any rules. And they would enjoy it as well.

Also recently, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev was present at the IPL match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai SuperKings at Port Elizabeth, South Africa. And he was also supposed to present the a prize to the batsman who hits the maximum sixes. The Sadhguru, a swashbuckling spiritual leader known to roam the Himalayas barefoot and in jeans with the same ease as he zips down international expressways on superbikes, believes that Cricket is beyond religion."This sport brings people together and is a spiritual process." he is reported to have said. Thinking about this gave me an idea and thus below is a small description of a funny event of Cricket that would take place if The Gods, enlightened Masters, Scientists etc took part in it.

Here, I will pick up various famous people from various fields though - you a particular reader might not know all of them. Readers from India might understand about the Indian Gods and not about the western famous people and vice versa. I am tempted to put in a reference of all the characters that I will be using with a small background but it will take up too much space.

And I will actually match one of the main feature or characteristic of each person to this game.

FUNNY CRICKET SCENARIO

* Disclaimer- This is just a work of fiction and is not meant to make fun of any religious or well known figure of any other field. No religious offense is meant and people whose religious or other sentiments might be hurt should refrain from reading further.

- Moses would declare himself the captain of the team and give 10 commandments- one to each of the other 10 players

-Gautam Buddha would be made the third umpire and he will go on looking with his half-closed eyes, sitting in the lotus posture and every decision referred to him would be 'The Middle Way'- neither out, nor not out

- Mahavir would come in to bat naked with no protective equipment either and deliberately let the ball hit him as a means of self-torture.

- Edited

-Krishna would steal the player's clothes from their dressing rooms and cover up the stadium light towers with his 'Sudarshan Chakra' to delay the match and bring in Duck-Worth Lewis in the favour of his team.

-Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev would turn out professionally dressed and would be the fastest between the wickets but would be given out wrongly by the opposition because they would know that he can't get angry

-Osho would play spoilsport and disrupt the match any which way

-Swami Sukhbodhananda would enthusiastically be the captain and coach and use various jargons to explain the strategy to his team

-J.Krishnamurthi would oppose all traditional methods of playing

-Mahatma Gandhi would refrain from hitting the ball as it would be violence and when a bowler will uproot one of the stump, he will show him the other stump.

-Bruce Lee will take a nunchaku instead of a bat and since one bowler would be nothing for him, he will ask multiple bowlers to bowl at him at the same time, and still he will hit all those balls out of the boundary.

-Rafael Nadal will ask for a clay pitch whereas Roger Federer will ask for a grassy pitch

-Isaac Newton would be stationed on the boundary and as the batsman would hit the ball in the air and it would be coming down towards him, instead of taking the catch, he would start explaining the concept of Gravity acting on the ball to the audience

-Edison would be so engrossed in his bowling that he will forget how many balls he has bowled in the over and go on to bowl 10,000 different deliveries without success of getting the batsman out and finally remark that he has not failed but he has found 10,000 deliveries that don't work!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interesting Fact- It is said that in India, If Cricket is a religion, then Sachin Tendulkar is God!