Sadly, India has become a nation adept at consuming spectacles. Sports venues have become more of a site for networking opportunities rather than for enjoying the action in the middle

By the time my readers read this piece the signature match of IPL season five would have been over. But the match between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and the Pune Warriors has demonstrated what iconicity can do, what stardom is and what fan passion can come to. Yes, Pune Warriors was on a losing streak, they lost four in a row before they landed in Kolkata. But that did not deter a single Saurav Ganguly fan from not making the Eden Gardens home on May 5. Seriously speaking, the city was divided.

Despite Gautam Gambhir?s KKR doing exceedingly well, Saurav could command the support of half the stadium. It was just unbelievable. The passion was best described by The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, ?The demand for tickets is higher than during the World Cup. I have not been able to look at the stream of messages in my phone. There are close to a thousand.?

The queues that greeted me on a visit to the Mohammedan Sporting Stadium, the site for ticket sales, were staggering. Despite boards sporting the all-sold-out sign, there were at least 10 fans who were inquiring if they could be last-minute lucky, every minute, for the next half an hour or so that I was there. The pickup booth for tickets sold online also saw a huge queue outside. Every person who had come to collect his or her pre-booked tickets were accosted, literally, by fans looking for that elusive entry pass. It was a sight to behold. Tickets priced at R300 were being sold in the black market for R2000-plus and the club house ticket, otherwise priced R6000, fetched a fortune.

The very same Eden Gardens sported a near-empty look when India played against the West Indies last year and will perhaps be only half full when India plays England end of the year. In a nation which thrives on consuming spectacles, a Kolkata Knight Riders versus Pune Warriors IPL game, which was also a battle between Shahrukh Khan and Saurav Ganguly as built by us in the media, was a far more attractive proposition in comparison to a lame Test match. The sad truth is we don?t appreciate cricket in India. Rather we are a nation adept at consuming spectacles.

Sports venues have now become more of a site for networking opportunities rather than for enjoying action in the middle. Watching 90 overs of Test match cricket is considered stupid, a clear case of misplaced priority. Spending a few thousands at an IPL match in trying to rub shoulders with celebrities is par for the course. India, sadly, was never cricket?s true home. Rather, we have been the best consumers of spectacles for the past half a decade and have in turn claimed the mantle of being cricket?s new nerve centre. Such a claim, it is time to accept, rests on fragile foundations, with the future holding out little hope for the administrators.

This is where the The Board Of Control for Cricket In India (BCCI) needs to be proactive. Think out of the box perhaps. Allot relatively smaller centres more matches to start with. IPL matches at Pune, for example, have all been played to capacity crowds in 2012. Smaller centres, starved of cricket action, can do with more one day and T-20 contests. In some of these towns and smaller cities there is still a hunger to watch stars in action, a hunger that has gone out of the system in more accomplished venues. More than rotation, prudence is the way forward with relation to match allotment.

Pedigreed contests should be allotted to more established centres while matches like India-West Indies should never have been given to Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. If such a contest is given to Nagpur, it ought to be played at the Civil Lines stadium inside the city and not at Jamtha, which will mean fans would not have to travel long distances.

And when England comes to India in October 2012 in what is considered the next big ticket Test series on Indian soil, the four Test matches ought to be played in heritage venues, as is now the plan. Venues which have strong traditions of cricket watching are our best bet to save Test cricket in India. This is the BCCI?s best opportunity to getting crowds back to the grounds.

To go back to Saurav Ganguly, he may not have done his bit in this IPL but the passion he still evokes is enough to convey one simple sentiment?that people still endear him for all that he has done for India. Hope the same nationalist sentiment continues for future stars.

The writer is a sport historian