Over the last two days, more than 30,000 people have been to the Kotla to watch Virat Kohli play. Not Delhi versus Railways, but Kohli. And hardly 500 people have been to the Eden Gardens to watch Bengal against Punjab. May be the same number have watched the Karnataka-Haryana game at the Chinnaswamy. While this is proof of Kohli’s star power, it is also evidence that we in India love spectacles and not the sport. Had it been the other way round, there would have been more people to watch a Vidarbha match at the VCA stadium or the Baroda-J&K game, which is turning out to be a good, hard-fought one.
Take the women’s game, for example. For the longest time, the BCCI was criticised for not doing enough for the women’s game. Now, it has launched the Women’s Premier League (WPL), given the national team enough and more facilities, and left few stones unturned. But has the media done enough? Is the build-up to the WPL anywhere close to the IPL? Will fans back the WPL in the same manner? The many sports platforms who will all do IPL stories day in, day out will do tokenism for the WPL, at best. Some will cite budget issues, while others will say the shows don’t get enough eyeballs. Kohli sells, while the Bengal-Punjab game doesn’t. And it is not about the love of the sport. Rather, it is about consuming spectacles.
Just like many tried to make up for not covering the Paralympics by interviewing athletes after they returned to India – to ostensibly show how much they support para sport – many will sit in their armchairs and start giving expert opinions on the Ranji Trophy over the next few days. This is where we go wrong.
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We continue to discriminate even if we don’t want to. Our actions are contrary to what we say, and that’s where we fail to serve sport well. That’s where we at RevSportz are committed to making a difference. Our reporters covered the Karnataka game from the Chinnasamy, Bengal-Punjab from Eden, the Vidarbha game from Nagpur and, of course, the Delhi match from the Arun Jaitley Stadium.
While it is important to cover the Delhi game, and it is understandable that Kohli sells, it is also essential that we back the tournament as a whole. Only then can India call itself the nerve centre of the game. At the moment we are the financial nerve centre of world cricket. But when it comes to Test cricket, for example, Melbourne with an attendance of nearly 400,000 over five days during the Boxing Day Test or Sydney with 50,000 a day takes the prize.
Even the English venues – Lords, The Oval and Edgbaston – have more fans queueing up for India games than we have at our own stadiums. So while we celebrate Kohli and his Pied Piper effect, it is also a grim reminder that the sport lacks support. We do love spectacles and love to show off, but when it comes to genuine love for the sport, we continue to fall behind. That’s where much more can be done.
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