Cricket

Sometimes I think it might be a good idea to ban cricket in India. For good reasons. People would not waste so much energy and time over it. We would not have grand ambitions from a spectacular team on paper. And our spirits would not be crushed by a bunch of eleven people crumbling like matchsticks in front of weaker teams. More sponsorship money can be diverted to other games ie hockey, soccer, tennis etc where we have plenty untapped talent. And cricket is so intolerably long a game to watch in either form, it wastes a LOT of productive time of the whole nation. Add to that the demoralization at the end when we loose to weaker teams, it just gives a defeatist mentality to the whole nation.

Another line of thinking is why would a talented team regularly loose to tough games . Is that our national character ? Or is it that once the players get plenty of endorsement money they loose the motivation? If that is so then it wouldnt matter which game you funnel the sponsorship money into, in the end we will keep loosing the BIG ones which are mostly always won on mental toughness and not talent.

Having played whatever sports I have against people of differnt nationalities, I personally feel that we have as much fighting character as sportspersons of other nations, if not more, at least at amateur level. So it looks like there is a break somewhere going from the amateur level to the professional. Maybe we are just not a professional bunch yet. Maybe its the fabric of life in India which really does not encourage sports beyond an amateur level. But we seriously need to do something about it. Its really shameful for a nation of a billion people to perform such poorly in competetive sports.