No more cricket
The Hindu : y>Anupama Gopalan feels that Indians must abandon cricket and play a sport followed by the entire world
Our obsession with cricket seems never ending. In the recent one-day series featuring India and Australia, all the centres were packed with spectators. Even if we were to become world number one in the sport, why should we as a country be so obsessed about this game? The ‘world champion’ in cricket has no meaning at all. Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are the only countries that play the game on a professional level, unlike soccer and tennis that is played and followed by millions across the planet.
Most of the planet is unaware or not interested in this sport. When we say V. Anand is a world champion at chess, he can stand up and say that he plays a game that has a fan base across the planet. Football and many other sports manage to evince much more support across the globe and boast of a duration less than a t20 cricket match.
Should we not encourage youngsters to become interested in football than cricket? If we start to provide professional training to young footballers, we could produce the best football teams on the planet.
We should play the sport the world plays and try achieve greatness in that sport, rather than being too concerned about rankings in a sport played by a very small section of the world.
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