INCURABLE CRICKET "FLU" OF INDIA

India has beaten Pakistan six times in world cricket cup matches. Is that called a sixer asked a highly over domesticated housewife whose culinary skills are superior to Virat Kohli’s mid wicket boundaries. Among frequent visitors to my house, hers was the latest case of cricket flu.

“Get me a cup of tea” I asked her without answering her question. A flask full of tea with cup is always ready in my room.

It was Digvijay Singh Babu, Balbir Singh of world hockey championship winners of India that captured our imagination and we had many local heroes of this great game consuming more than five hundred calories per hour of play. We too played it and some of my friends could have walked into the present Indian hockey team with more ease than those days when the Indian team had so many talented players. They were the legends we had worshipped them though we played cricket level cricket without becoming crazy.

Outside, Mahatma Gandhi was so powerful that the US journalist John Guenther had said about the Mahatma as early as 1931 that he had only to shake his little finger for the British empire to crumble. Between our love of hockey and the speeches of heroes of our freedom struggle, our heroes were legends of Indian hockey's also.

Came the Indian independence and the cricket craze had yet to reach northern India.

In the newspapers we did read about two Vijays, Merchant and Hazare vying with each other to break Ranji trophy records. And came too the antardasha of Mercury the fifth lord of the lagna in the third house of hobbies and sports and in the fifth house of the dashamansha in the Independence horoscope and appeared De Mello, the notorious president of the Indian Cricket Board who had suspended Lala Amarnath the mercurial and shrewd cricket captain of India.

Lala had handed the ball to Kishenchand when Bradman in his nineties and was about to score his hundredth hundred in first class cricket. Bradman tremulously watched the long hops of Kishenchand and played safe and not even hitting them for a four for sometime till he did score one. On the death of Lala Amarnath , Bradman remembered it though earlier he had paid a rich tribute to Lala in his famous book “ Farewell to Cricket”.

De Mello brought cricket to northern India , to Kanpur particularly by arranging two Commonwealth teams to play unofficial test matches with the great Frank Worrel as the biggest star attraction-- the finest cricketer I have seen play todate, superior even to Sobers or Kanhai who too had come later. And there was the mystery bowler Sony Ramadin bamboozling even Vijay Merchant, Vijay Hazare and Polly Umrigar with his deliveries.

The five day long cricket matches with five hours play everyday and Maharaja Vijaynagaram’s anecdotal cricket commentaries caught us like a contagion. We played hockey but we talked cricket. A hundred runs opening partership of Mustaq Ali and Vijay Merchant in a Test match was a matter of national pride without any victories. Similarly a hundred partnership as tail enders between Sarwate and Shute Bannerji made us feel proud though we had no victories to boast of.

During that period came to India a Pakistani team led by Kardar including in his team Fazal Mahmood the handsomest cricketer I have ever seen. He was said to have been smuggled into the hostel of a famous women’s college during the Lucknow Test match also. It has always intrigued how Imran Khan, whom his elder sister called an ugly duckling according to his own statement , could become the play boy that he was in London’s elite circles. Remember Salman Rusdie had said that Imran resembled late Gaddafi of Libya !

I can trace the origin of the pandemic cricket flu in in northern India to the Mercury antardasha of the Indian Independence horoscope.

I played more than twelve games, indoor and outdoor but gradually saw victims of cricket flu grow in numbers and outnumber fellows like me year after year. I started looked like a piece of obsolete sports lover amidst the multitude of cricket lovers. Then I saw the women of high society, not knowing the difference between a four and a sixer, too in cricket pavilions, who were there not to see but to be seen. And there were, in northern India those days, journalists covering cricket matches not knowing the difference between a googly and simple off break. But then Mercury is mercurial is what I know now.

In Mercury Moon dasha of the early seventies of the last century we heard of Ajit Wadekar captaining the Indian team and Sunil Gavaskar becoming a national hero along with Gundappa Vishwanath. Victories are intoxicating and it worked effectively in making cricket a never vanishing epidemic in our national life as our spin trio of Prassanna, Bedi and Chandrasekhar brought us two overseas victories first in West Indies and later in England. Since then this flu has become a permanent feature of our national life uprooting hockey our great love of teenage years.

Moon is the third lord of the Independence horoscope aspected by the third and the eighth lord Venus in the dashamansha.

No wonder in Ketu Sun in the tenth house of the dashamansha Kapildeo brought the world cricket cup trophy in June 1983.

Let me state very clearly that I never use the national horoscope for our sports glories or ignominies but there is no other way of explaining the perpetuation of the craze for cricket at the cost of other games in India. Mine is a futile attempt is what I am aware of and therefore my apologies.

Now the third lord in the tenth house with the tenth lord in the tenth house of the Hindu New Year horoscope of 1983 (cast for 1983 at 13/28/18 for Delhi) to explain why Kapildeo became a national hero along with his world conquering cricket team and its members. Remember the under 200 cricket score of India batting first and yet getting the powerful West Indian team getting out for a cheaper score in the finals that year.

To a large extent the blame has to be put on the poorest quality of sports reporting in India and the knowledge of the level of sports journalists.

Once I was sitting with a group of people who described themselves as sports correspondents of different newspapers. What did they think of the brilliant top of the table play of Wilson Jones with his famous in offs and pots I asked them. None even understood what I was referring to. These sports correspondents do not know enough games at all and are laughable ignoramuses. One of them claimed to have covered some chess tournament and did not know the difference between Ruy Lopez opening and King’s Indian defence.

But these days you have women anchors in Hindi television channels glibly reeling of cricket jargon with greater ease than the former Test cricket players as commentators and critics in the same programmes of these television channels. The presence of a feminine face is all that matters and necessary commercially. The nonsensical prattle from a feminine mouth is tolerated. None of them ever talked of the defence of his world chess title by Vishwanathan Anand in India or later as a challenger in Sochi against Carlsen.

No one talks of grandslams won by Leander Paes and Sania Mirza and even better the great strides in world badminton of Padukone, Gopichand and now Saina Nehwal and P.V.Sindhu and Kashyap and K. Srikant. I remember what Wong Peng Soon had said once during his Indian visit--- Asians would do very well in world sports if they concentrated on badminton and table tennis because of their physical build and supple bodies.

But then soon in the mahadasha of Venus and came India’s Miss Worlds, the television channels booming cricket matches and commentaries along with series of unstable coalition governments at the center. Venus is glamour and fascination and cricket, an epidemic. Along with Test matches, One Days came twenty twenty and IPL as the Venus dasha was ending. Part of the reason , it is rumored in Delhi, is the big money invested in it, mostly black money , as the death of Sunanda Pushkar suspected of murder through some Russian poison would have revealed if she was alive for just one week more. Then who was interested in getting her killed?

No wonder, the debate and talk is whether India would retain world championship in the Cricket Championship.

I am asked this question and I have no astrological basis to answer this as the astrological techniques I use are from match to match if and when I see them on my television channels. Here prashna kundali helps more and more if someone drops in and ask a question.

But my assessment, non-astrological, is that India would be the first or second in its pool at the knock out stage avoiding clash with Australia or New Zealand, likely top two from the other pool and given some luck may reach the semifinal also. Thereafter it is question mark though the horoscope of Mahendra Singh Dhoni is showing the good performance of Indian team. But then I will not depend on one single horoscope to venture into a prediction.

The top contenders for the title seem to me to be Australia, New Zealand and even South Africa. Remember Imran’s team wobbly performance in 1992 championship during the league stage and  later, at the knock out stage doing better and winning the championship finally. I would have given some chance to unpredictable and mercurial West Indians with their Learie Constantine called their sunshine cricket, if it had Sunil Narine and Samuel Badree in its team. Nikita Miller has yet to prove to be a match winner. Remember Chris Gayle has only to strike form to turn a match upside down. Using my own cricket judgment, I vote for South Africa to win the championship this time.

Yes, but watching the cricket matches is interesting while doing some other work and also attending to people coming to consult me, mostly Hindu women with their long verbal questionnaires. One of them asked “Are Indians hitting sixers?” She was having Chandra astama that day.

I asked her to give me a cup of tea. (1 March 2015)