Indian cricketers-- A robotic bunch?

Brett Lee, apart from sending down thunderbolt yorkers during his heydays, also puts his fingers to good use to strum guitar with his band Six And Out. Curtly Ambrose, the giant all time great former West Indies fast bowler, plays base for the band Big Bad Dread & The Baldhead. Matthew Hayden loves to fish with his former Queensland colleague Andrewy Symonds, besides being a more than a decent cook. Andrew Flintoff tried his hand at professional boxing soon after quitting Cricket. Mark Waugh loves to put his money on his horses during Derby in his country.

These are just a few examples of cricketers having a versatile personality and their life not being restricted to Cricket. Do we have similar examples in India? I am afraid not so. When i was small, i came across an audio cd of Sanjay Manjeraker's album. He is the only Indian cricketer i can allude to who we know has a good talent for singing.

But what about many Indian cricketers, past and present? Why don't we know anything else about their life than may be a famous celebrity girl friend whom they are dating or their favourite food? Are our cricketers simple robots with a single minded track of playing cricket or do they have a more colourful off the field personality? On the evidence of what we are made to see via  media, unfortunately the answer is not very impressive. We just do not see Indian cricketers having any other interest, serious hobby or any other serious creative talent. Let me make it clear that i might be totally wrong, but the point i want to bring home is that our media just does not cover those aspects of a cricketer which could reveal more about the person. We are provided with that perfect image of a cricketer who has no other mission in life than playing cricket and only cricket.

Even when we see our cricketers being interviewed, they come across as dull, monotonous, robotic individuals with readymade answers to readymade questions. Cricket presenters on sports channels are also not too good in terms of the way they present their questions. Our cricketers just do not showcase any kind of intellectual acumen during press conferences, there are absolutely no statements of disagreements or contradicting points of view.

This begs the question- are pur cricketers just a bunch of insecure serious cricketers who know they cant possibly do anything else in life but play cricket? Andrew Symonds was once interviewed by Harsha Bhoglen and Bhogle asked him a question with an extremely surprising look on bhis face as to why did he quit something that he liked most? Andrew Symonds' reply was that priorities in life change. Here our cricketers keep playing and playing until we find them being forced to leave.

In the past many Indian greats have retired, the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath... Can we know if even one of them is involved in any creative activity or having any other talent? No.

It is true that in a country where millions and millions of people want to become cricketers and play for India, the ones who actually get the chance are indeed extremely fortunate and truly treasure their chance to be an Indian cricketer. I believe this is where it all stems from. They are just not encouraged to hone their other skills and end up being monotonous robotic cricketers. It then reflects in the way they speak--absolutely bland and devoid of flair. We have flair on the field but off the field there is absolutely no flamboyance. I guess this is an indictment on the system that produces these cricketers. 

FIRST TEMPT, THEN CONTROL

I am no internet activist but reading something yesterday on the front page of Times of India made me feel quite agitated. Yesterday's front page carried the headline "Local calls on Whatsapp, Viber and Skype may no longer be free."

Yes, the ruling BJP government at the centre recently came up with some recommendations made by its high-level commitee in which, while it has upheld the concept of net nuetrality, has quite smartly come up with the idea of charging calls made through applications like Whatsapp and Viber, which are as of now free (barring negligible data charges). The Department of Telecom (DoT) has favoured a policy regulation that would put curbs or tax these popular messaging services. As famous American author Neil Strauss had said once:

"When the Internet first came into public use, it was hailed as a liberation from conformity, a floating world ruled by passion, creativity, innovation and freedom of information. When it was hijacked first by advertising and then by commerce, it seemed like it had been fully co-opted and brought into line with human greed and ambition"

It is interesting to note that this is not the first time a government policy has come up which regulates something of daily use by the common man. I do see here some deep nexus between government and corporates who while enticing customers with cheap features of their products, then smartly up the ante when the customers have got used to them. Well, this is the flip side of consumerism which we as customers just cannot avoid. Right from daily services like Direct-to-Home (DTH) providers (like TATASKY) to dependence on private transport, we are being controlled by services that corporates provides. And them very smartly, when we are used to those services and can't do without them, these corporates, then raise the prices of their products and customers are indirectly forced to continue with them.

While i don't intend to portray myself as anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, i think time has come for us to realise how increasingly we are being controlled without us even realising it. Our increasingly changing life styles demand consumption if many things, and corporates are happy to provide them. They not only charge us by first selling us their products, they then help other corporates through the massive source of Ad spaces. We think we are consuming what we want, but do we think that is the case?

Popular music app Saavn came up some time back with the promise of ad free songs. Initially it felt good, listening to songs without ads, but soon after they started making us here to snap-deal ads. Well, we should thank them because they don't air those ads after cutting short a song!!!

Yes, that's what most of the private radio channels in India do. Have you ever realised that you would never get to hear you favourite song completely on such channels? They invariably cut out a para of the song and then air ads for a good 5-7 minutes, before giving us the crumbs of two more incomplete songs. Do you think apps like Gaana.com or Saavn would have come up if we were satisfied with Radio Channels.

Most Hindi language TV series, whose stipulated time is 30 minutes, in reality show episodes of 20 minutes only. And the really cruel part is that before taking the last break, they show which scene viewers are going to see after the break, then show ads of 5-6 minutes, come back only to show exactly that scene which we saw before the break and boom!!! The next show starts. Even funnier is that we viewers are foolish enough to continue watching them.

In this huge government-corporate nexus, the aam aadmi is sandwiched. He cannot do away with it completely. Niether do i propose anything of that sort. All modes of entertainment are important in our daily lives as they provide a succour to us, albeit temporarily. But what i do suggest is that let us be more aware of how increasingly we are being controlled, choose only what we feel is good for us and yes, LET US FIGHT FOR INTERNET RIGHTS.