It is an old Melbourne tradition to organise a series of events leading up to the Boxing Day Test match. This time around too, things are no different. The build-up started with the Melbourne Cricket Club library dedicating the December issue of its magazine, Yorker, to Sachin Tendulkar. The article, a treasure trove of information compiled by library volunteer Ken Williams, documents Sachin?s career visits to Australia. Librarian David Studham has also put together an India-themed display at the library foyer, with books and artifacts from various Indian tours at the museum. It is intended that club members who will be in attendance on Boxing Day will make the most of their visit to the MCG.
The club, in conjunction with Australia Post, also unveiled a Shane Warne statue in front of Gate 2 in the lead up to the Test match. This statue, one of the five funded by Australia Post, brought together several Australian legends on the morning of December 22 discussing cricket at the MCG. It was simply terrific to hear Mark Taylor reminisce Shane Warne?s performances at the MCG and talk about Warne?s penchant for fight, which as Taylor suggested, brought a new dimension to Australian and world cricket. Warne himself made some interesting points about Victorian cricket culture. The people in attendance just soaked every moment of the morning. The build-up was near perfect.
Then, there was my own ?National Conversation? at the BMW Edge in Federation Square with senior Australian academic Brian Stoddart and leading cricket writer Gideon Haigh in conversation with me on issues of Australia India cricket and how the game has changed over the years. It was interesting to track down the changes since Monkeygate, to try and conjecture on the possible changes in the next five years. The conversation, organised by Monash University, helped in drawing attention to the importance of cricket as a subject of serious academic scholarship.
The point of all this is to make Boxing Day special. Make sports and ritual go hand in hand, create a very special brand, which fans love to associate with. So much so that making it to the MCG on Boxing Day is now a national ritual in Australia. It is considered a must do activity for sports enthusiasts and gives the sport a much needed fillip. The same can be said about the Lord?s Test in England. The aura surrounding the Lord?s is unsurpassed and packed houses are testimony to how much it means to fans to be able to come to the ground on the first day of a Test match.
In India, however, we don?t do any of this. The Eden Gardens, for example, is no less steeped in tradition or heritage when compared to the MCG or Lord?s. Yet we had a crowd of 1,000 when India played the West Indies in November. Why can?t there be a similar build up for every Test at the Eden Gardens? Why is it impossible to create a ritual of celebration around an Eden Gardens? Test? Sachin Tendulkar put it beautifully in a conversation at his hotel the other day, ?In India, we should do the same. There should be a similar demand to go and watch a Test match in Mumbai or a Test match in Kolkata. It is upon us to promote our own traditions of watching cricket rather than only celebrating a Boxing Day Test or a Lord?s Test.?
Tendulkar is absolutely right in saying so. Unless the BCCI and Indian marketers are able to make the experience of cricket watching in India special and unless people feel they are being made part of something they will cherish for a long time, Test cricket attendance in India will continue to dwindle and we will continue to look at MCG and Lord?s and gasp in awe. It is time to realise that more than the IPL, Test match cricket in India is in dire need of marketing and innovation. Unless that happens we will continue to celebrate Boxing Day at the MCG and a Test match at Lord?s at the expense of our very own half empty stands all across India.
The writer is a sports historian