When I heard that the India lost to Bangladesh, and later Sri Lanka, in the Cricket World Cup, I must have been only Indian who was actually happy.

India is a nation crazy about the "sport" of cricket. You find kids playing cricket in every street in India, dreaming of becoming the next "superstar". But I find it very hard to think of any reason to like the sport. For sure it's not the fast paced action. And from an athletic or physical point of view, it certainly doesn't do any wonders for the people playing the sport, at least not the lazy way the Indian cricketers play. I was watching women's football the other day. Okay it wasn't as good as the men's football but still then these women had better physiques and ran faster than the players in the Indian cricket team (the men's one that is). And when you have kids in every street emulating and idolising these people, the result is obvious - struggling to get even one medal in the Olympics. Only good thing that can be said about cricket is that it's meant to be a tactical game and increases strategic planning. But when you watch the Indian political scene or its Soviet-inspired bureaucracy one finds nothing tactical or strategic.

To begin with, cricket is an elitist game that takes place leisurely over the course of the whole day (and sometimes five days). A game like football or hockey which lasts an hour and a half is something that a common person can watch, sometimes be moved, other times be in tears but then they can go on about their business. Cricket however turns people into lazy couch potatoes glued to the TV sets for hours and hours. The end results of this is people calling in sick to miss work while the economy suffers, teachers not turning up to take their lessons, students bunking classes and police officers sitting with their feet up watching cricket while criminals roam the streets (they probably watch the highlights) amongst other laziness induced problems. The only people who seem to get the best of this are all the multinational companies that get to repeatedly advertise their "products" all day and hypnotise the people while the rest of the country comes to a standstill.

Not to mention the fact that cricket is just a colonial hangover left over by the English. However even in England it is a Sunday afternoon sport on the village-green for the upper class, not too far from crocket or polo. The rest of the country has football. But India seems to have turned it into a mass sport at the expense of more competitive and physical sports.

The hypocrisy that accompanies cricket is yet another thing where you have all these countries like England and Australia that refuse to play Zimbabwe because of their human rights issues but are more than willing to play countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh where some of the worst violations of human rights take place on a daily basis. At least this is one place where the Indian cricket team has shown consistency, which has said they will not let the internal politics of any country interfere with profit and that they'll play and make money wherever their security is guaranteed and where they can come out alive with their image intact.

The saddest thing is that so much publicity and money is pumped into cricket that other major international sports like football or even hockey, in which India actually has the potential to be quite good, find it quite difficult to gain prominence. It's a sad day when former Hockey players have to sell their Olympic medal to feed their families. And then we wonder why India fails to produce any medals. But if you think (like many Indians) that this is simply not possible just look at the Chinese who are on course to win more Olympic gold medals than any other country in 2008.

Perhaps the only way that other sports can get a chance especially in face of the apathy they face by the government and sponsors in promoting them is if the Indian Cricket team does so bad that eventually the people of the country get so fed up with the game and discard it from their collective psyche, just like in England. And in the country such an event is bound to create a vacuum which can hopefully be filled by a more worthy sport.

All in all, the only good thing to come of the world cup is since Pakistan lost to Ireland and is now out of the tournament, we'll be spared another of the unending India-Pakistan matches and the religious tension that usually accompanies this pointless fixture.