Fans Turn Experts, Armchair Wisdom Rules

Time was when I stayed up until late in the evening, listening to cricket commentary from England. The year was 1971, and Ajit Wadekar's Indians won India its first series on the British soil. 10.30 p.m. was late for me, my parents would try and drill it into my 8-year-old head. I wouldn't listen.

Ever since, I have heard, watched and read a humongous amount on cricket, and played a bit. I have also watched, with great fascination, the stupendous growth in the number of spectator experts, and also found that a good number of these fan-experts possess a great knowledge of the game, are often an amazing repository of facts and trivia, and have seen the player-experts acknowledge this.

Television has led this revolution, brought the game into drawing rooms and bedrooms, and made cricket an engaging subject of drawing room or dinner table conversation.

Housewives have joined the bandwagon as well, and one has found the player-experts nod in agreement and appreciation at the views expressed by 10-year-old kids and housewives in phone-in programmes.

The purist and the die-hard would dismiss them as armchair experts, people who have never held a bat or bowled a ball, commenting on the folly committed by Sachin as he loses his wicket. Or, for that matter, any other player of international standing.

Comments fly thick and fast on the state of the game, what the captain must do if he wins the toss, the team composition, how the wicket behaves, and so on.

My plea to the purist is simple. Let's welcome these armchair experts, me included, with open arms. Their absence will make the game poorer, and their fervour is essential to the growth of this game that all of us so dearly love.

Let's get them on TV shows, let's get them into commentary boxes, and let them infect more people with their enthusiasm for the game.

And, by the way, I believe that India lost the plot against New Zealand earlier in the day when Rahul Dravid swung his arms at a rank bad delivery from Jesse Ryder. What do you think?