Cricket no more for England

It is sad that cricket is not a hot game in England and that may be so because their team is not in the habit of winning, at least its men’s team is not. And in cricket, the women’s game matters as much as one penny does to a million pounds.

No wonder then, a group of journalists had a tough time looking for a restaurant or a public place beaming the matches live. Even hotels don’t have it, though football, even a district game, is live and accessible everywhere.

So, on the day that England was playing Andorra at Wembley, all pubs were full to their gills, spraying liquor, noise and football with the same gusto as England was scoring the goals. Some journalists, out for the evening thought of catching the cricket live. So they went hunting for a place which was beaming T20 matches instead of football.

They asked around and got only stares of disbelief in return. “Go a few blocks away. Maybe some guy may be nuts to show cricket man,” was one response from a pub owner. So they went a few blocks away, again asked and were again redirected. Finally, after half an hour of searching, they were told that there was this one particular pub, run by an old man who loved cricket and, maybe, he would be showing the game at his place.

Fifteen minutes later, they found the gentleman and asked — yet again! He looked quite enthusiastic and even excited to come across people wanting to see cricket. “You want to see cricket eh… Do one thing… Just go straight ahead and there is a station… Catch a tube to Birmingham and then a flight to India… That’s where you can see cricket in pubs,” he said to the stunned trio.

If this was not downright hilarious, it would show you how much cricket has fallen in national eye here. The home of cricket worships football and is sold out to rugby. And when they do get time from these two obsessions, they turn to Wimbledon and tennis. This year, tennis is actually quite high on the Brit agenda, thanks to Andy Murray’s winning streak and his projected high in the upcoming Wimbledon Open.

The media being a mirror of public aspiration and inspirations, there is hardly any column space wasted on cricket, squeezed as it is in between roaring football headlines, big photos of Andy Murray and pages and pages of the rugby campaign. The day Collingwood’s England won against India, it was one page and the day it lost to West indies, one column!

Anyway, back to cricket and there are a hundred stories to tell, not all good ones. For one, the game here is more popular among the sub-continental Asians who have, in any case, become quite a huge force almost colonising the country with numbers. Though cricket fans are no patch on the hooliganism associated with football, they are coming up fast to that unwanted level of aggression. Intimidation by these fans on tubes is not too frequent but has started making a presence.

An indication of this was the warning staring out of stadium notice boards during matches in which either India, Pakistan or Bangladesh were playing. It said: “Alcohol is not permitted in this stadium for this match.”

Cops will tell you how they are on special advisory to handle the crowd and how they double their force on days that the subcontinent is in the middle and on the stands.

One look at how the Pakistani fans behaved at Trent Bridge after their team strode into the finals would tell you how true the perception of brewing trouble is. They blocked roads, honked to death and generally made life miserable for the sleepy little town.

So much for the home of cricket being colonised by outsiders!

Published June 21, 2009 , Sunday Pioneer, http://www.dailypioneer.com/184132/Cricket-no-more-for-England.html