Wisdom of the crowd!

The middle-finger salute by Greg Chappell has had the entire media agreeing on one issue. That it was brought upon by the crowd & that the crowd deserved it. Suddenly “Wisdom of the crowd” and “Customer is the king” thoughts have been pushed to the backburner. People are all convinced that the entire Eden Gardens crowd was unruly & that they brought it upon them. None of them have asked Chappell to apologize or be reprimanded. The general feeling has been that the crowd got what they deserved and the storyline has been that the crowd incensed by Ganguly’s absence, heckled the coach and the coach unbearable at the crowd’s behavior…showed the finger…poor coach, pity the poor coach!

If you looked hard at the facts, an alternate storyline existed, it was just that the media did not want to pick it up…how about “Standing in the queue for 24 hrs waiting to buy a ticket, forgoing all your hard earned money for a ticket, watching a game in the hot sun, watch your side thrashed by 10 wickets, and then the coach to be showing you the finger”?

The purpose of the new storyline is not to sympathize with the Eden Gardens crowd or justify their action; instead it is to present alternative viewpoints and whatever be the viewpoint, Greg Chappell cannot justify his action.

The line of thinking that I have seen till now has been that the middle-finger salute is common among the western world and Greg Chappell just did what he had to do (it was almost like his birth right!). To a football (soccer) fan, all this must look like drama; I am sure anyone who follows football is thinking, So what? This is a daily situation in the football field, when a team does not play well, or if a person does not play well, they heckle him, boo him…why the heck….the great Sir Alex Fergusson was booed & heckled by his own supporters this month when his team lost to Lille in the champions league…had Sir Alex shown the finger, that would have been the end of his career! Anywhere in the world, this would have been a serious issue, so let’s not give Chappell the benefit of doubt, thinking that it’s an accepted practice worldwide.

The crowd is within its right to do what they want, as long as they do not do anything illegal. Don’t bring up words like ‘loyalty’ or that the ‘team is playing for the crowd’ sentiment. Its rubbish! In the world of commercialization, loyalty has no meaning! Just because I keep buying tickets to all ODI/Tests for 10 years, BCCI does not make me an honorary member!

Agreed, that Chappell has done almost everything right since he took over, but this unfortunately is not one of them. To let him off easily because he has done most things right would be sending a wrong message. Chappell needs to apologize to the Eden gardens crowd or the people to whom he showed the finger & BCCI should definitely reprimand him for this.

Eden Gardens has a mind off its own; no one needs to take classes to the 90,000 spectators on how to behave. They have been doing this before Saurav came to cricket (Sunil Gavaskar episode) & they have been doing this when Saurav was playing (Test match; India vs Pakistan) and will continue to do in the future. We just have to accept that Eden Gardens is different and get on with the game. The beauty of India is its diversity; let’s not try to make everyplace look similar. We might end up with a very boring world!