Confused Loyalties

Watching sport with friends is always a pleasure because you get to see your friends raging with frustration over his/her favorite team’s dismal show. Is there any better way to derive sadistic pleasure? Be careful, some times the hunter becomes the hunted especially if you support a team that is habituated to go down. Luckily my teams have been on a winning trot or I have been with winning teams. I support Brazil in soccer and my roommate roots for France, in tennis he simply adores the grace of Federer and I love Nadal's brute power. He is a big fan of Sharapova’s game or that’s what he says whereas I go with Justin Henin, sadly I need to find another player as she bows out.
But in cricket it has never been a question.

With the invention of the Indian Premier League that has changed dramatically. When ever we sit together these days to watch cricket I hear a strange word. Hitherto never heard, as alien as a flying saucer, by the way have you ever seen one? The word is ‘your team.’ When I heard for the first time I was amused rather than shocked, now I am getting used to it. Till now it used to be 'we' or 'us' or 'our' team. We had won together, lost together but stayed together.

Now the fans first identify themselves as the Kolkatans, the Bombaites and the Bangaloreans than a collective term Indian. Markedly the city pride has overtaken the Indian pride. My friend, Dipankar, proudly breaks into conversation with three Benagali words Korbo, Lorbo and Jeetbo which means work, fight and win, that’s his home team the Kolakata Knight Riders’ anthem, that’s not the end of mania he often shouts Hoog Lee, catchphrase of his team.

“I don’t see it as a new phenomenon rather it is unfolding now or may be taking it to a higher plane,” says Kranthi Kumar, a journalist with one of the largest circulated vernacular dailies, Andhra Jyothy, in India, over phone. Expounding further he adds “we have had state and zonal teams before and this is a step further.”

Interesting thing about this phenomenon is flares of passion and loyalty can be seen in an alien land over nearly ten thousand miles away. The IPL has mixed everything up, throwing many questions about one’s loyalty. It is hard to find a true repository for your frenzy where players are bought and sold like race horses. Initially we decided to enjoy the individual brilliance of Sachin, Symonds, Murali and an assortment of players. But over a week that proved us entirely wrong. Then we decided to go with a team, for me it was a straightforward decision the Deccan Chargers as I have spent all my life in Hyderabad. But Adarsh pondered over a couple of teams as he had lived in many cities—Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi. At last he decided to stick with the Bangalore Royal Challengers, his hometown team.

Famous cricket historian and the Guardian columnist, Mike Marqusee, argues this frenzy and loyalties are not sustainable his reason is “the new franchises, unlike the English football clubs on which they’re modelled, are not the creations of history and community; they do not belong to the fans the way Manchester United or Liverpool belongs to the fans. They have been created from the top down and sold as a finished but ephemeral item to a passive audience.”

But for time being his argument pales away as everybody is firmly rooting for his team. The holistic Indianness has made way for regionalism for the first time in overseas. Spill over has been evident elsewhere. For the first time cricket teams at the Kent State University, unofficial though, were drawn on regional lines, “Yes, it was for the first time and it was because of IPL. Even we played truncated version of cricket like IPL,” agrees Karteek.

Everybody is ready to wear his heart on his sleeve; I am a step ahead planning to wear across my chest come my new imported jersey.