Cricket and Parochialism

The omission of Sourav Ganguly first from the Indian One-day team and then the Test team has been a big news. The behavior of the fans in Eden Garden during the India-South Africa match was horrible, it was not only parochial and selfish but also unpatriotic. Time changes quickly but the character of people changes very slowly. The Britishers took advantage of the same parochial tendencies of Indians in their Divide and Rule policy. The crowd of Calcutta demonstrated why it wasn't hard for them to do so.

What is now even worse is that this issue will be discussed in the Indian parliament. It seems the left parties and in particular Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee (both from West Bengal) played a big role in bringing this issue to the parliament. It is really unfortunate that this is happening, first of all they are not qualified and capable enough to decide the selection of Indian cricket team, and more importantly they are there in the Parliament to do their jobs and it is none of their business to decide what happens with the Indian cricket team. I agree that the current selectors are idiots but in spite of this, only they and nobody else should decide the team composition.

Another, sad thing is that omission of Ganguly has drawn so much attention, but the Indian politicians and governments hardly care about the state of India's national sport, yes hockey and not cricket. The bas***d *** Gill has completely ruined hockey. His whims and fancies decide everything in Indian hockey, besides whenever Indian hockey team goes on a foreign tour he takes a junket. What is his business to follow the team? I doubt if he has ever played hockey even at domestic level, and unfortunately such a person is controlling hockey in India for now more than 10 years, or is it more?