Fortunately I stopped watching cricket quite sometime before the debacle of the second ODI of the South African series. But be that as it may, it is hard to ignore cricket in India. So when India was bowled out for a paltry 91 I was bound to hear about it.
A little bit of searching got me the ODI batting averages of the players involved in that innings. When totaled up it added up to a fine 259.56. Mind you there is not a single 50+ average in the team, and if you were to add the 3, yes three, extras that the South Africans so generously bowled, India would have scored 262 without any of the players doing above what is their average.
So what makes a team with a combined average of 259+ so substandard that they are no longer considered a serious threat by even the West Indies at the World Cup?
The answer I feel lies in them being overworked. While the cricketers from around the world need to primarily concentrate on their cricket, the guys from India need to also keep up with their dance and acting classes and of course the various shooting schedules for the advertisements they pop up in – where they sell you everything from soft drinks to cellular operators to motor bikes to fuels.
It is high time we appreciated our cricketers for the all-rounders they are and make things a little more fair for them.
I propose that we cap the number of working days for our cricketers. What I propose is that we take the number of days spent in acting and dancing lesions, and the days spent shooting for advertisements and parties attended as brand ambassadors into consideration when deciding how many matches an Indian cricketer must play.
So if an Australian cricketer spends 100 days playing cricket, we should ensure that an Indian cricketer does not spend a day more than 100 as a total number of days worked.
This will ensure that we do not send our warriors to play the gentle game of cricket worn out and jaded from all the limelight they have been under.
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