You could be forgiven for not realizing this, but apparently there's a huge international sports tournament going on: the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. Being a football man myself, I've never really cared much for following other sports, least of all a sport that virtually no one in this country cares about or even knows the rules of.
Malaysia is a football-mad nation. As I perused the sports section of the newspaper today, half of it was talking about local and international football, while other sports took up the other half. This included the Cricket World Cup, which took up maybe a single page, and even that was nearer the middle of the paper than the back. The lack of coverage in the written media clearly indicates a distinct lack of interest in the event, and, of course, the sport itself.
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| Photo courtesy of Indian cricket legend MS Dhoni's official Facebook page. |
If you, dear reader, are an avid cricket fan, then I hope you can forgive the country's collective ignorance and disinterest in the game. I do not intend to offend anyone, but the fact is just that we Malaysians are simply far more interested in other sports, including (but not limited to) football, badminton, golf and F1 racing. Most of us have no idea who the two cricket players in the above picture are, even though one of them has his name written on the back of his shirt.
I recall a time back while I was in boarding school, when the school decided to start a cricket team to compete in an inter-school tournament involving other SBPs (fully residential schools, for you non-Malaysians). Almost no one was interested in joining and, since all the sporty types were already involved in other games, the school ended up sending a team full of bookworms looking to get co-curriculum points for their CV. They ended up getting soundly beaten, of course, but one would think that they hardly cared.
As for me, I've only recently started opening my eyes to the world of cricket, mostly from having university friends from countries where the so-called 'game of the lords' is a pretty big deal. I now have a rough understanding of how the game is played and how scores are calculated, but I'll never fully grasp cricket until I've actually played it. Hopefully I can do that before I graduate.
I did a bit of reading on cricket last night, and I found an article explaining why the World Cup only starts getting serious in the knockout stages. I found it an interesting read at first, as it explained how in the 2007 edition, India got eliminated early on and millions of cricket fans basically stopped watching, causing the broadcaster to miss out on a serious amount of advertising revenue. The tournament was then restructured to ensure the big guns stay in the competition for as long as possible.
But then I made the decision to read the comments below the article and...well. If I wanted to read internet comments written by angry Indians, I might as well scroll through my university's confessions page - at least there I'd know whether what was written was justifiable or otherwise. Being a distinctly non-cricket and non-Indian person, I had no idea if those commenters were right to be so offended by the article. Anyhow, I guess it's not really my problem, so no point in dwelling on it.
It's true that you learn a lot at university, and not just the stuff you get during lectures. Cricket is one sport that I never thought I'd show any interest in, but the fact that I've written this post indicates that I was mistaken. My interest in this sport, however, is probably just due to my natural curiosity instead of genuine enthusiasm for it. The article I mentioned earlier stated that 80% of Indian males under the age of 25 follow cricket to some extent; I couldn't just let myself be completely ignorant of something that so many people are crazy about.
Like I mentioned earlier, I really do hope I'll get to play at least one game of cricket before I graduate early next year. After that, I don't really see how I'll ever get the chance, unless I somehow move to a country on the subcontinent.
They say love makes you do crazy things. On this evidence, I'd argue that curiosity can have the same effect.
