If selectivity, whataboutery and hypocrisy were diseases, we might be in the midst of a great global pandemic, where almost everyone is inflicted, with neither a drug to cure it nor perhaps a vaccine to prevent it.
In the social and digital multiverse, which now resembles a cosmos collated from a set of parallel and independent universes, controlled only by algorithmic precision and uncontrolled vitriolic hatred, spewing of nefarious lies and mendacious half-truths, building on biases, networked together through common phobias and fear, and indulging in the world’s most favourite sports — cancellation, censorship, lynching and abuse — we hardly resemble a healthy humanity. We are neither fully human, anymore, nor healthy.
And our sickness has now, after corrupting most human endeavours, almost every area of life, defiling and debasing every facet of living, is now brazenly invading the cricket pitch.
While two sets of near-perfect god-like sports champions take on each other in Olympic spirit of excellence, of demonstrating what humans might become through dedication and pursuit of greatness, we, the audiences, the gladiatorial spectators, have unleashed our secret fantasies of hate and mistrust into a collective orgy of a demonstration sport, a performing art, of trolling and challenging, of daring, of shaming, of declaring our disease marked by ignorance, hatred, selectivity, whataboutery and hypocrisy.
A Pakistani cricketer, Mohammed Rizwan, offers a religious prayer in the playground and dedicates his century in a previous match to Gaza. A man holds a placard saying he stands with Israel. Stadia in different cities are drowned by different kinds of slogans resembling war-cries, based on their chosen spot in hell where politics supersedes everything else. The only thing sacred left, worthy of any respect, is the line dividing us; everyone upholds it as sacrosanct; and questions everything about the other side, and nothing about one’s own.
Should a player do a religious prayer on the cricket ground? Should we see only an enemy in a cricket team from a country with which we have had a difficult history, and have fought wars? Should we respond to religious one-upmanship with more of it? Which side should be the first to consider shifting to a plane of sanity and rationality, of humanity? Neither wishes to do so. Twitter (now X), Facebook, YouTube, Insta and the rest have programmed us really very well. We can recognise our friends and enemies well. We like and share and comment with precision, and along planet-scale predictability.
It would be impossible to persuade anyone to eschew hatred or control impulses set on long-held biases and crystallised hatred, of othering larger sections of people. It is hard to expect such a pandemic to recede and disappear.
But in a strife-torn world cruelly turned red by terrorism, war, divisive politics, communal riots, arts and sports were two clean realms which allowed us a fleeting escape, which still had the power to make us feel human and experience joy and pain as humans. For Indians, art and sports largely meant movies and cricket. The various woods where movies sprung from have long ago fallen into divided disrepute, and now cricket seems to have fallen too.
The fight against hate must start somewhere, and the 22-yard pitch is perfect for the truest war of liberation. Let us try to save cricket from politics and communal hatred.
