So Bermuda didn’t beat Bangladesh and therefore even the most optimistic of cricket fans in India are now resigned to the fact that Dravid & Co. would be returning home rather than chasing the World Cup glory in Caribbean.

Though I didn’t spend sleepless night following Bermuda-Bangladesh game but trust me am a staunch cricket fan, can’t stand any criticism of Sachin Tendulkar and I did stay awake till 5 a.m. this Saturday morning watching Indian cricket team’s surrender against Sri Lanka although I was dead tired and on any other day would have traded gold to sleep (ok I admit this was a slight exaggeration)

I got initiated into watching cricket when I was 7. It was the year India hosted Reliance World Cup and I remember how I first got attracted to cricket - it was courtesy a colourful weekly magazine saaptahik Hindustan. It was a world cup special edition of the mag with Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and few others on the cover. That mag was full of pictures of all teams, records and lot of other info. That fascinated me and it was going through those pages and reading all the trivia that I first got interested in cricket.

First match of that world cup was India Vs. Australia and those were the days of day cricket in white cloth and long power cuts. And I clearly remember that there was no power that afternoon and finally when power came and I ran to switch on the TV, they were showing replay of Roger Binny getting run out and India losing the game by one run. So I started my journey of following Indian cricket team’s results with a loss.

By the time we reached semi-finals of that world cup I was not just another new found follower of cricket but an obsessive fan. My relatives can still recount the tale of me crying after India lost to England in the semi-final that year (Oh yeah, and am not exaggerating this time).

And what was to follow was my childhood romance with cricket. There was a time when I used to record scores of every cricket match India used to play in my diary and for tournament finals I used to have elaborate score card as well. I think I must have maintained those records very faithfully till I was in class 8. Well, by then my obsession with cricket had started to give way to a more sane form of following the game. As I grew, obsession got replaced by passion and in few more years passion gave way to passing admiration.

And I thank God for the transformation.

These days when I read news clips about burning of effigies of cricketers and stoning of their houses after their early exit, I seriously wonder do cricket fans caught young grow into such uncivilized hooligans? Is cricket so important? Are we as a country so devoid of achievements that failure of a cricket team is being viewed as a national tragedy?

So we lost ? What big deal ? In a game one of the two teams lose and there ain’t any shame in your team having 2 such days in a week. But that doesn’t mean you would burn their effigies and blacken their posters. It’s such a strange and deplorable way of reacting by Indians that it put me to shame sometimes.

I think it’s not our passion for the game but an inherent fear of being nobody that results in such reactions. A country as big as ours is inarguably greatest sporting debacle on face of earth. Forget cricket and our current list of sporting heroes may not go beyond Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Vishwanathan Anand and Rajyawardhan Rathore. May be this is the reason why Sania Mirza who’s only claim to fame is winning few matches in grand slam tournaments is being touted as bets thing to have happened to Indian Sports. And cricket which till now was practically played by mere 8 countries out of 200+ on the globe became our national passion, coz even by law of averages when only 8 countries will play you would win sufficient times to keep up the façade of being a powerhouse. Being somebody.

I think lot of people in India had strangely chosen cricket as a way to forget their miserable existence and when they come out in streets and vent their anger, it should not be seen as a reaction to defeat in cricket but a reflection of a life they would rather live differently. Their failure to chase their dreams has restricted their dreams to victories in game of cricket. I think they just release their frustration by getting together and bringing down brick walls of dhoni’s house but genesis of that frustration is not in cricket.

I don’t think cricket is a passion in our country, cricket is there because of lack of passions in our country.

-sid