June 25, 2006: Apologies for the slightly long break in mind game musings. Perhaps none of you missed me, as the biggest sporting extravaganza is on night after night. Well, I can see some eyebrows raising. Is the soccer world cup bigger than the Olympics? Well, it’s a matter of perception but I personally think that in terms of pure viewing pleasure, the soccer world cup is a better option than the Olympics though the latter packs pride, national honour and sporting glory.

Why does the West Indies cricket series suddenly seem so off-colour, so insignificant? After all, India is not in the football world cup and what’s the point in cheering for Brazil or Germany? Well, to me, there is a lesson in it. Cricket is big in the country because of the TINA (There is no alternative) factor. I can think of two examples instantly. P.T. Usha in her prime was bigger than any cricket star. She even started figuring in advertisements. Remember the Southern Railways ad? But after that ‘missed bronze’ she started fading away and the public began to lose interest in her.

The media coverage of little Budhia is also proof enough of how starved we are of sporting stars. If Budia goes on to win marathons, he will definitely give the Sachin Tendulkars and Mahendra Singh Dhonis a run for their money in terms of endorsements. Most other stars who have achieved something has got endorsements. Vishy Anand got a few and Sania Mirza is still getting a handful. Male tennis stars like Ramesh Krishnan and Vijay Amritraj also figured in ads even though they were really not world beaters.

This is not to suggest that you have judge success by the number of TV ads. But then, that is an indicator of how much money a player is making. After all, the number of ads is directly proportional to a player’s performance on the field. One just has to look at how Sourav Ganguly has just gone out of our TV once he was shown the door by the selectors. I think it is Ganguly himself who observed recently in a TV discussion that Mahendra Dhoni’s hairstyle will remain in fashion only as long as he can hit those luscious sixers.

The predictable course for any writer at this stage is to veer off to the subject of how we are failing to nurture football players and what we can do to solve the problem. I don’t want to do that for two reasons: I have no magic solutions and second, this is essentially a cricket column. But then, it is not entirely correct to say that children take to cricket only because there is more money in cricket. In fact, there is enough money in football to make a decent career out of it and some of them are earning around Rs 25 lakh per year/season. I think the main reason is, cricket for us has become the all-season pastime while football and Olympics is an occasional diversion. We’ll get back very soon to cricket.