Cricket-an Obssesion?

Cricket-an Obssesion?

CRICKET HAS become the most powerful force in sports as well as entertainment domain in India. Although cricket does not enjoy the official status of being the national sport in India, it commands much more excitement and a greater fan following than the other sports including the national sport, Hockey. You can’t find a single sport in India, which could boast of being even in contest with cricket when it comes to popularity and revenue generation.

The current nexus of Bollywood with cricketing fraternity in itself speaks for the popularity of this game people of the country enjoy watching and playing. The great interest for the game on the part of bigwigs of Bollywood like Shahrukh and Preity Zinta, to name a few, shouldn’t be merely discerned as their love for the game. There is a lot that follows this symbiotic relation between the two-name, fame, and above all monetary benefits.

Cricket rules the roost and this could be easily perceived in the candid, but dejected remarks of the newly appointed Youth Affairs and Sports Minister of India, M.S. Gill, who seemed quite perturbed by the stature of cricket in the country in contrast to other sports. He painstakingly says, “Television, commercialisation and the advertising world have promoted cricket to an extent that it has become a Mount Everest, which is badly affecting other sports in the country.”

The sports minister, in his own rights, may be genuine in claiming the fact that there is no space left by cricket and forerunners of the game for other sports, but one can’t deny the fact that where cricket stands today is a result of foresightedness and perseverance. All these dominance and money pouring in hasn’t come to the game in a fortnight. In fact, other games could take a leaf out of cricket’s chapter for enhancing their power and existence among the sporting fraternity and masses.

The sports minister even urged Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan to invest money and adopt some other sports to...

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