“The subcontinental cricket fan,” writes Mukul Kesavan, “is a lazy, pampered know-nothing who thinks he owns the cricket teams that he supports.” Kesavan compares the Barmy Army to subcontinental fans:
Why are they [the Barmy Army] different from desi couch potatoes who never leave their rooms, never exert themselves except to find their remote controls and yet treat every Indian defeat as a conspiracy against the Nation Recumbent? They’re different because India is a nation of losers: its teams win at nothing but cricket. Two, because cricket fans from outside the subcontinent have generally played some outdoor sport, they have some practical experience of how difficult competitive sport is. If you’ve never played cricket and if the reason you watch it is because it’s on television, your expectations are radically different. You’re a voyeur: the sort of person who watches other people do it. It is a ‘virtual’ condition, unmediated by experience or empathy.
Well, I must point out that finding the remote control can sometimes be quite a testing sport. In my living room, as I look around me, I see cushions, stuffed toys, books, newspapers, magazines, handkerchiefs, DVDs, CDs, a discman, a mobile phone, a laptop, many wires and a blanket lying around. I suspect Kesavan has a tidier living room, and has clearly no understanding of the skill and endurance that goes into finding a remote control, especially when a particularly irritating commercial is on. Compared to that, Dravid’s got it easy.
No, but Kesavan is spot on about most subcontinental fans, and I’ve expressed my own thoughts on this in my essay, “Do We Really Love Cricket?” As we speak, I am at work on my next essay, “Do We Really Love Remote Controls?” On reading Kesavan’s piece, I am forced to conclude that perhaps we don’t. Alas.
(Link via SMS from PrufrockTwo.)