If you are an Indian there are two things you will love from your very childhood, one is food and the other is cricket.
Indians are born foodies and because of the gamut of delicacies that are available to us our hunger is almost insatiable. And so is our thirst for cricket. It is more than a sport in India and it’s in your very toddler days that you enter this drama called cricket and then never leave the stage. Cricket is life for some Indians like Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary who has followed his icon everywhere around the world religiously, whose life revolves around Sachin Tendulkar, India and Cricket. Therefore in a country that is boiling with cricket fanaticism an incident like the one that unfolded in Cuttak needs to be looked at from a different perspective.
On 5th October India played South Africa in the second t20 international of the Gandhi-Mandela series. The match was held in Cuttack and things didn’t turn out as every Indian heart would have wished. India was stumped to a puny score of 92 and South Africa after losing 5 wickets breezed to a victory. India’s dismal performance resulted in an outrage from the crowd which disrupted the game twice.
No doubt that is a very juvenile act and the crowd shouldn’t have acted like this. However Cuttack’s Barabatti stadium is a relatively new stadium that witnessed its first t20 international on 5th October 2015. People came in hoards with the OCA selling 13,424 tickets in just two days of over the counter selling. With thousands of people thronging the stadium expecting a possible comeback from their team and then watching their team fall like a house of cards, a little frustration on the part of the crowd is justified.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni in his post match press conference said that “The reaction of the crowd, you know, we didn’t play well, so at times you get reactions like this. It’s only the first bottle. After that they start throwing for fun. We shouldn’t read too much into it. Frankly, from a safety point of view, I don’t think there was a very serious threat” which points out that such outrages are part and parcel of the game and are not aimed to harm any individual but just a way of showing ones anger and contempt. Furthermore, coming to the importance of the quintessential Indian cricket fan; if we look at the trp ratings of the world cup which showcase that in the matches featuring India the channel acquired the highest ratings as compared to the other teams combined. This is a direct proof of the love and mania for the sport that resides in every Indian.
Most people will have the opinion that it was a shameful act and a disgrace and they are justified but it’s a part of the sport where if love and extreme fanaticism is one face of the coin, the other is extreme anger and discontent on the part of the viewer. (Also Odisha is one of the least educated state in the country and hopefully the incident brings this to light and we actually see ‘acche din’).So let’s take it as the passion of the Indian which hopefully drives the team to fight for respect when they play in Kolkata which is another venue that has its own history of violence and has turned a corner to host the t20 final next year. Surely someday that will be a story of Cuttack; Someday.