The game in our country had never really caught up with the modern time, but the revamped I-league did inject a fresh belief that there would be a resurgence. Now that the season has ended, cricket has once again captured the center-stage as it always has with the people regardless of other achievements by Indians in auxiliary sports.
The survey taken in the football mad city of Kolkata is astonishing. Looks like it was a ploy to form probably the most hip-hop team in the IPL, the Kolkata Knight Riders under the stewardship of Shah Rukh Khan (SRK). He has a demi-god status and it is no surprise that the people of Kolkata capitulated under his magical charm. The team has the backing of the entire city and here comes the ominous fact.
The attendance of the AFC Cup game of East Bengal was meager compared to the crowds that pushed in for the cricket game at Eden Gardens. Now what is happening here? A club with a history of 80 plus years and such a strong fan base has fallen prey to something that has been established only a few days ago!
It just shows that the monster of cricket in its latest avatar is eating up football even where football is the top sport. It looks like a planned gimmick, because if not for SRK would the team have become as popular as it is today? That people from other cities are supporting Kolkata just because of SRK shows the credibility of the man.
Football is on the verge of becoming a perennial shadow of cricket in our country. It always has been so but the IPL has widened the gulf to an alarming extent. The blame has to be put partly to the people and organizers. Most I-League matches are held on weekdays at times around 3.30 pm, the kick off time thereby becoming unattractive for the people who are stuck at work.
The schedule of the season should be changed somewhat. If the I-league is moved in the months of the monsoon then it would attract a greater following since people somehow associate rainfall with football, hence the massive following of the World Cup and European championships. But moving the time span would affect the AFC scheduling since most leagues around Asia begin during last months of the year.
The people, the major cause of the failure of football, have to deliver. Yes, we have inadequate facilities, ancient stadiums, foreign players having more quality than their Indian version, low financial budgets and the like but it’s the people who are to blame for a major chunk of the failure. It’s in our tradition to follow cricket; our parents push us in the direction of total cricket, barring few of us that is. So when you’re brought up only under the influence of cricket you don’t care about other sports.
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