Six and Out - Some Serious Cricket

We are fine with both cricket and baseball. Any probs, Mr. Tharoor?

by Dinsa Sachan on October 16th, 2007

Prologue:

I was going to review Warney’s autobiography and boy, was I glad to present my recent epiphanies about the leggie, but what the heck, something spoiled my mood. And here you have a rant.

————————————————————————————————————

For starters, Shashi Tharoor is a former under secretary general of the United Nations. He ran for the post of general secretary, but lost. He’s also a prolific writer, and some 50-60 year olds (women, obviously) I know have found him very “dashing” and “handsome”.

Prior to the start of the World Cup this year, he had an op-ed published in the New York Times.

With all due respect to him, he’s a respectable person for his achievements, but in all honesty, his NYT stint has hurt many Americans’ integrity. (Indians don’t read NYT, so they are probably unaware.) I couldn’t understand what the underlying message of that essay is. It came off as ridicule rather than raillery. He sounds confused. He’s insulting both Americans and Indians.

Here’s one instance he is hurling insult at the Americans:

As legions of missionaries have discovered before me, you can’t bring enlightenment to people who don’t realize they’re living in the dark.

Another one:

In any event, nothing about cricket seems suited to the American national character: its rich complexity, the infinite possibilities that could occur with each delivery of the ball, the dozen different ways of getting out, are all patterned for a society of endless forms and varieties, not of a homogenized McWorld. They are rather like Indian classical music, in which the basic laws are laid down but the performer then improvises gloriously, unshackled by anything so mundane as a written score.

I am confused again. Mockery and praise coupled together, eh? Are you trying to demonstrate your linguistic prowess with paradoxes here, Mr. Tharoor?

India’s turn to be poked fun at:

Cricket is better suited to a country like India, where a majority of the population still consults astrologers and believes in the capricious influence of the planets — so they can well appreciate a sport in which, even more than in baseball, an ill-timed cloudburst, a badly prepared pitch, a lost toss of the coin at the start of a match or the sun in the eyes of a fielder can transform the outcome of a game. Even the possibility that five tense, hotly contested, occasionally meandering days of cricketing could still end in a draw seems derived from ancient Indian philosophy, which accepts profoundly that in life the journey is as important as the destination.

Someone who seriously follows the game (and I am sure this author doesn’t) knows that toss and pitch conditions do play a role in a match’s outcome. To my knowledge, most Indians usually blame their team’s loss in the players. And in all honesty, the general population gives a damn to edaphic factors. Pitch conditions and stuff is Greek to most of them.

Anti-climax to the essay:

So here’s the message, America: don’t pay any attention to us, and we won’t pay any to you. If you wonder, over the coming weeks, why your Indian co-worker is stealing distracted glances at his computer screen every few minutes or why the South African in the next cubicle is taking frequent and furtive bathroom breaks during the working day, don’t even try to understand. You probably wouldn’t get it. You may as well learn to accept that there are some things too special for the rest of us to want to waste them on you.

So Americans won’t get it. And in a previous paragraph, he went as far as insinuating that Americans have a short attention span. (I agree. Haha)

Cricket and baseball are analogous in many ways and perhaps have the same origin, but there’s a whole story behind their divergent evolution and spread to entirely different regions. Indians won’t stop loving cricket, and Americans aren’t giving up on baseball any time soon. Let that be. Why all this pseudo-attempt at boasting your love for the game? You’ve failed miserably at humor, Mr. Tharoor. And Six had so much respect for you, which has all come tumbling down following your smart alec remarks.

Photo Credit: Shashi Tharoor Official Site

Share This

Related Stories

• Big bucks beaten by big bang
• Inzamam’s farewell
• Harbhajan Slaps Sreesanth : An Update
• Good light stops play. Again.
• Cricket to go baseball style

POSTED IN: Beyond Cricket, Cricket, MeThinks, Off the Field, The Cricket Connection, Weekly Debate/Rant, Whispers and Gossip