South Asia: The splendor and misery of the gods of cricket

South Asia: The splendor and misery of the gods of cricket

Last year, we Germans surrendered to the intoxication of the World Cup summer fairy tale. But that's nothing compared to the mania triggered in South Asia by the strange sport of cricket.

The World Cup was dull, South Asia's frustrated cricket fans complain in unison on the Internet, tepid and flat and a huge failure. For example, a blogger in India's Economic Times writes: "The Indian team let down millions of fans in a big way."

Yet there is no sport on the entire subcontinent that stirs up more passions, causes more suicides and heart attacks, conjures up more fervent patriotism, or lures more betting money in pockets than this oldest sport of the former colonial power, Great Britain.

Forty-nine days of cricket mania are behind us. On Sunday, the World Cup in the Caribbean ended with the victory of the Australian team - ending a period of collective fever in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. As the editor-in-chief of India's The Day After newspaper wrote at the start of the World Cup, "The passion of the people of the subcontinent for cricket makes it more than likely that we will see bleary eyes and diminished output in workplaces from now on." At the same time, our countrymen will be praying in their own way for the success of the Indian team."

At all, pray: Cricket has become a new religion, with victorious players hailed as gods and worshipped like heroes. All doors are open to them. Pakistan's victorious captain Imran Khan, who led the team to the 1992 World Cup, went on to become a politician. However, if the players fail to deliver for their supporters, they plummet: Hysterical fans torch their effigies and spit on their glossy posters. Less radical supporters merely mock them on the Internet on Indian cricket websites.

But thousands chant hate slogans, and not infrequently the hapless athletes are showered with death threats and imprecations so that their homes must be guarded around the clock by police - as happened at this World Cup after India, the favorite lost miserably to Sri Lanka.

The mysterious murder of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer in March, a day after that team was also ignominiously eliminated, may have been the work of a crazed fan. Police in Jamaica is still in the dark. It's also possible that Woolmer was a victim of the betting mafia, as he is said to have been working on a "sensational" tell-all book about the machinations of the sport's multi-million dollar "underbelly." "Bob Woolmer knew everything," says Pakistani player Sarfraz Nawaz in the "Indiatimes," speculating wildly about team members involved in dirty betting deals whose "body language already gave it all away."

Because cricket is business. Its fans are among the poorest of the poor, and yet up to 30 billion euros are gambled away every year in India alone - even though betting is officially only allowed here for horse racing. It's such a lucrative business that the competition between sponsors, organizers, and publicity-hungry politicians before the championship almost trumps the real competition on the field.

When amnesty international recently tried to use the general cricket enthusiasm for its own purposes and linked Sri Lanka's human rights situation to cricket in a campaign, the fan community responded with an outcry of indignation: "This hypocritical campaign is disgusting," writes one reader in a commentary on "Global Voices Online," "it will certainly not help improve the human rights situation, but rather alienate the people of Sri Lanka from ai."

Another writes that the campaign "discredits the country in the wrong place" and a third berates the organization: "If you need donations, organize your own event, don't push your way into the World Cup. You will not convince anyone with this. Let the people of all races and religions in Sri Lanka enjoy the only thing they agree on. To ruin this is to violate their human rights."

Why doesn't all this happen in other sports? asks Bhaskar Ghose in his column, "Cricket as Mythology," and answers that question himself right away: "Cricket is different. It has moved, with its players, out of the world of sport, into the ultimate world of fantasy. They fulfill the dreams and fantasies representative of all".

In four years, it will be that time again, reported https://cricket360.bet/free-bets-in-india/. The next World Cup will even be held on the subcontinent - and then, experts estimate, up to two billion fans will follow the war on the pitch - and take part in it themselves.