Yesterday i noticed that a kind-hearted soul had written a comment to one of my blog entries; the blog entry in question relates to india's pathetic performance in the virtual quarter final with australia in the champions trophy. at the very least, it just proves that there exist people who do go through this blog! Hallelujah!!
there was a question that the aforementioned kind-hearted person had raised, namely, what would be an explanation of india's passion for the game. i am not sure if he was trying to elicit a funnny answer out of me or whether he just left a comment there out of courtesy but i indeed found that a rather interesting question in its own right. why indeed?
i have two answers to this question - a short one and a long one. contrary to literary tradition, i shall deliver the longer version first. a warning, though: all that follows is an elaboration of my notions based on the little history i know and remember. it is of course likely that my high school history exam scores were simply a reflection on my well-formed 'cramming' (mugga) abilities than anything else.
having said that, here we go:
sport, historically speaking arose as a war-like activity. after all, the first sportsmen were the pristine hunters. as there arose some semblance of culture, the same war-like activities took a more moderate form. this is not to say that sport became what we understand of it today because after all gladiators and gladiator sport was a very popular sport at the time. it didn't seem offensive when a man was being torn apart alive by hungry wild cats - rather people loved it. that was the present day equivalent of pro boxing - expensive, violent and moronic.
The first instances of a more toned-down and less violent version of sport is probably benchmarked by the advent of the Olympic games. of course, in the initial days, it still was largely a recreational period for the spartan warriors and so was still quite violent.
Anyway, if we allow ourselves to get back to the real question, my main point is that the history of sport is one, deeply connected with war-like activities and so it is but natural that the countries with a long history of violence have always been the better sporting countries.
IF we accept that point of mine, how do we explain india and india's passion for this particular sport?
of course india or 'the land beyond the indus' consisted of several little kingdoms and it is difficult to say(probably wrong too) that our land didn't have a violent history. rather, it is difficult to conclude one way or another. on the one hand, hinduism encourages vegetarianism which would lead one to believe that we are animal lovers. but we also have violent forms of 'sport' which involve, i'm sure a very long history, a lot of cruelty like bull fighting(especially in tamil nadu) or cockfights.
India however became a country only after becoming a part of the british empire. in fact the real unifying factor in that case was the subjugation of common lands by the imperialists. so, notions of patriotism and indian-ness are more modern-history consequences, as far as india is concerned.
and here, somehow, the influence of gandhi or gandhigiri is unmistakeable. i am not saying that indians are incapable of violence(there are several counterexamples here) ; rather what i'm suggesting is a certain acceptance of non-violence and soft-naturedness that have become a part of the psyche of the huge middle class, who were always survivors as opposed to becoming martyrs. the bloodshed in our lands have been largely cleansed, so to speak, by large doses of gandhigiri.

the game of cricket has always been called the gentleman's game. you accept the authority of the umpire even if it is erroneous. you applaud a great shot by the opposite team, or a terrific unplayable delivery, and you lose gallantly, in other words, the game though a british invention is tailormade for this indian psyche i have been referring to, although only in mental terms.
so, was cricket the most popular game in india at all times? perhaps not, because hockey was dubbed our national game(though of late, i have become sceptical as to who really does all this name-calling. is it declared in the constitution? if not, what sort of claims are made that hockey is india's national game?considering its present day condition, are we to allow a change of our national game? if that is the case, considering how few tigers survive in our lands and how the common crow seems to represent india in a very real sense, should we declare the common crow as the national bird/animal? these are vexing questions, but as always, i digress). anyway, hockey was popular at one time because we were rather good at it. seems ironic but not really. at the time, field hockey was played on surfaces which were far from even. so a long pass invariably led to an interception by the opponent. the game therefore favored those who could skillfully make short passes and dribbles and this was something indian players managed quite well. in fact so well that in the 1936 berlin olympics, we beat germany 3-0 in front of adolf hitler!
i think the real resurgence was with india winning the prudential world cup. somehow to the common man, it gave a glimmer of hope that indians could succeed even in a hostile environment. we were huge underdogs and a miracle won us that game(never mind that shortly afterwards the windies came to india and thrashed us 5-0 in a one-day series). it is exactly that feeling of coming on top that probably drives the common indian to so much passion for the game; it no longer represents just a game. it becomes a sort of belief that (s)he can compete with the best and come out on top. this is well reflected by the fact that we as indians don't make a fuss over the rather ignominous reality which is our olmypic record or involve ourselves in any other sport -mentally or physically.
to give the simpler answer, all i need to do is call your attention to a little statistic: even if i suppose that india's population consists of about 30-40% average or above average intelligence, it still means that a whopping 60-70% of us are dumbasses. and when the number of dumbasses can rival the third most populous conuntry in the world, what 'reasons' can we ascribe to their behavior?!