Life after world cup….

World cup is over for India… The team is back at home…
The blame game is over… scapegoats are being searched for…. Chappel quitted…Kumbale retired from one day…Some high level meeting yesterday… to decide upon what to do with this game and now…
Finally all the dust has settled down…


All of a sudden everything is changed…. All those “World cup special’ ads no more aired… All the tigers are gone from the screen… I still remember the news heading on TV after India got defeated by Bangaladesh… it said “Kagaz Ke sher.. Pitch par Dher…” that is “Lions of paper are lying dead on pitch” I think it was inspired by the Pepsi Ad that showed Indian team entering the ground as tigers…

Only player that is seen in ads now a day is Irphan Pathan… may be because he was not part of the team in any match.

All of a sudden all players have become a matter of fun… emails are floating around comparing a photo of Sachin, Dravid and Sehvag with the three monkeys…comments... cartoons… jokes…. All of a sudden everyone seems to have found a target. Security is tight around the houses of the players. Throwing stones… tarnishing, burning images of the players have become a routine now a day.

But one thing makes me wonder… all these protests against players… and other activities are seen on weekdays too. Don’t these people have any job to do apart from protests and damaging houses? Or is this indicator of the unemployment?

In my opinion our country needed something like this t happen…. Even though the event is disappointing; personally I am very much relieved that India is out of the world cup… there are quiet a few reasons…

1. We are in the mid of the summer… there is shortage of electricity in many states… how many megawatts of electricity is saved... :-)
   
2. People would not have worked… how many man-hours saved… this point has two effects…
   a. The people who would be present at work… only physically… but no concentration on work…
   b. People who don’t come to work at all…. In either case we would have effectively lost millions of man-hours…
3. It will help people rethink about all this blind following… and treat the game as a game. Finally players too are human and prone to mistakes…
4. As I can see... One good impact has already happened… BCCI is planning to put a cap on how many endorsements a player can do… that’s a very good thing. Now our player will get some time to practice the game.

Impact of the third point was very much related to my own project team also. Had India continued into the super8… I would have found it very much difficult to keep the project on track. Now things are a bit in control.

We are a country of people worshippers… what we need to realize is that the players are also human… we put such a heavy burden of expectations on their shoulders… they might crumble under that burden itself... and the game will be faltered…

Another thing is that whatever we may think... the players are professionals… they are playing for money.

The game should be treated as a game between two teams. And players as players…. Winning and loosing is part of the game and it should not be linked with nation pride and all those big words…
our nation’s pride is not so cheap that a defeat in a match will damage it. If we agree that the players are representing the nation then even when our team loose a match, we should still be supporting them because they are our representatives…

if they don’t perform… remove them but we should not be treating them as gods… they are players and should be treated as players….