Sunday, June 13, 2010

So I heard about this today, last night after the Argentina-Nigeria match a bunch of Nigerian students (apparently from JU) who live around my area ran into our complex and had to take shelter in the community hall because they were being chased down by a mob of angry Argentina supporters. Banter then altercation then comment-passing then wrath, the usual story. The police were called and after a while agreed to escort the students back to their residences. I know a man who once told me he'd vowed never to watch a match at Eden Gardens again after he saw the Indian cricket team being booed by the entire stadium all because Ganguly wasn't playing, we've all heard the Greg Chappell-Rahul Dravid issue done to death by now, two years of Bonguly does that. He also said it wouldn't have happened anywhere else, I don't know about that. I don't watch much sports and I might not deserve to have an opinion about it at all, but it's something that's settled in through years of trying to take to it: so beautiful, so self-righteous, so incredibly unsporting, that's how it's always been around here. This isn't a judgment I'm passing. I've heard it from more quarters than I care to name. Merely as an observation, it's slightly sickening but I've never seen people more clueless about where they're really coming from.

4 comments:

rorschach said...

true that.

passionate+unsporting = dangerous/nuisance

Safdar said...

I'm not at all sure about whether that's how it's always been here.I was at the Eden when Graeme Smith scored a century against India and the entire stadium was on its feet, applauding.It's a dangerous thing to attempt to call a City unsporting, it can't possibly be true.It's too huge a group to put into one category.

But ya, in a city which is as passionate about sport as Calcutta is, some of these incidents are bound to happen.What i don't get is, Argentina won toh.

I daresay alcohol might just be the real menace.Who knows these things.

Priyanka said...

@ Safdar: Argentina winning was apparently the deal that started it. But I wasn't really talking about the city.

@ rorschach: So it would seem, again I don't know.

rorschach said...

talking about the city however, i wonder why a city so passionate about sports that it has gained infamy for unsporting behaviour (read eden: bottle throwing at WC semis to booing the Indian cricket team led by Dravid after Dada was dropped) has failed to produce any sportsman of international repute in any game/sport apart from Dada and Paes (who for most of his life has trained outside Bengal) over the last 50 or so years.

maybe we should refrain our passions from being focussed on winning and instead focus on performance. just an observation ...