We aren't the champions

Cricket is no longer followed with the same passion.

Your columnist — on leave and trying to be a good son in the boondocks of Bihar — spent Thursday evening over a carrom board with a few loveable losers. It has been raining here, spawning unruly shrubbery and impudent insects. Many of them — the insects, not shrubbery — fly and love to show off their skills under the CFL hanging low over the carrom board. After every unsuccessful shot, we had to flay our arms in defence. Yet the biggest distraction was a long-distance SMS from a pretty girl to “play the queen, my dear!”. We could not be more oblivious that the Champions League, the so-called beginning of a revolution that will redefine international cricket, had opened that same evening.

Saharsa, this little nook close to where the floods did their dance of death last year, is caught in a time warp. If people want to go somewhere, the obvious thing to do is to walk, but they make it a point to carry a flashlight after sunset, because the roads resemble an obstacle course and street lights do not exist. A shopping trip is a series of mini-social events, since most shopkeepers are friends first. The chaotic traffic — cycle-rickshaws, a few motorcycles and the odd tractor — stops when a woman with a child raises her hand. And people buy rings made of the horseshoe of a black horse to treat piles.

The one link to the modern era is satellite television, which would be the first thing you see when you enter a household. The cable from the dish antenna is kept company by another wire than runs into the house from a tumultuous and noisy generator that provides power backup to the entire mohalla. As the men of the household get away with barking orders at their beleaguered wives, the purpose of the television and the not-so-cheap power backup is just one: To beam cricket matches.

Or so it was. The men still bark orders that get obeyed, but the cricket matches are no longer the draw they used to be. Even as recently as a year or so ago, the tea shops, which line the road going out of town to the West, used to lose their clientele in the evenings when a match was on, and their patrons would be unusually aware of the status of teams and the latest statistics, and vocal in expressing their opinions. Last week, as the Champions Trophy ended and Champions League began, they were barely aware of who was playing.

The last year or so is also the period when the amount of cricket played increased manifold, and spread from national teams to international clubs. If Saharsa, where Umpire’s Post learnt the first fables, is any evidence, the goose that lays golden eggs may be close to being killed.