I am happy to see Sachin Tendulkar at his zenith. He is a great player, judged by the world of cricket. Me judging his performance won't be cricket. I know nothing of cricket. India is the country of my ancestors and birth. I love it. It is the mother that gave me birth. It nourished me and nurtured me . It educated me for eleven and a half years. I decided to leave. Then field hockey was its game. Others stayed. Struggled and fought to make it a better place. I was and am its fugitive from the battles it has confronted ,won or lost. So I give myself no quarter in arguments about India.
But India is a great and humongous country driving itself crazy over a sport of its former colonial masters only played by its former colonies and not many others. Even for itself for the former colonial power, the most important sport is soccer. Not cricket. And Indians drive themselves crazy about cricket.
Not to take anything away from Tendulkar. He is a great guy. And no , cricket should not be rejected by Indians. And it is not about rejecting everything colonial. If that was the case , as an Indian I would not know how to write and speak English. It is about the country and how it sees itself. Even more importantly how it measures itself. What it gloats over. How does it measure up with the world at large? Cricket is fun in India. It is money for those that own and control it. Even for politicians it is a battle ground. I would have thought Shinde and Pawar being Parliamentarians are in a conflict of interest presiding over any associations that are responsible for a profit making venture like the Mumbai Cricket Association. What conflict? Most Indian politicians have not met a conflict that they have ever understood or recognised.
I wish Tendulkar well in his life after cricket. He is a humble man . Good to the core. I wish most politicians in India were like that. I wish it was corruption that drove Indians nuts. I wish they would force corrupt politicians to retire. I wish most Indians told their politicians" Being corrupt is not cricket