Yeh Bhi Mauka

[Now when I’m sitting down to write this post, I assume that everyone who’s going to read it has seen the ‘mauka maua’ advertisements that Star Sports has come up with in the cricket world cup season. These ads have gone viral and well, in a nation that’s nuts over cricket, why wouldn’t they?

Image Courtesy: Google Images.

Its World Cup season so there’s a little bit more fervour than usual floating around especially with Dhoni becoming the only captain of the BCCI cricket team to win nine consecutive matches; one more than ‘Dada’ Ganguly. Impressive stuff! (I say BCCI and not the ‘Indian’ cricket team because the team is not sponsored by the government of India but by a private organization.)

In any case, this is not a rant about why cricket is given SO MUCH importance in this country; it is more about why football isn’t given ANY importance in this country. This nation chooses to support a supposedly national team playing for a private organization in a “World Cup” featuring just 14 teams selected out of the 106 countries that actually play the game. At the same time, it refuses to even acknowledge the existence of a ‘National Team’ that’s playing for the country in a 32-team tournament that starts out with a qualifying round that had 204 countries participating in the year 2010, making it a ‘REAL’ World Cup.

Now, India plays Nepal in the home leg of its qualifier round tomorrow and no broadcaster in the country is ready to telecast this event.]

[This is my article for the Youth Connect magazine. You can read the entire article here: India is Playing A FIFA Qualifier Tomorrow, But No TV Channel Will Broadcast It. Why?]

Go on twitter to voice your concern at no channel broadcasting football matches with the hashtag #yehbhimauka