Well, if games or activities can be nominated for Nobel prize then cricket should win the Nobel peace prize ( this can be backed by real case studies unlike the Obama case). Cricket actually fits the bill as a Leader, Mediator, Visionary, and so on..
Leadership- It can unify an entire nation irrespective of religion, age, caste and creed. This nation constitutes 1/6th world’s population, so it is sizeable for a peace prize quest. Cricket inspires patriotism in any Indian, recently in Shiv Sena’s paper ( Samna) there was an editorial against Sachin’s remark , now that was real bad publicity for the paper.. the bad publicity was not for being against the " indian first remark ", but for going against " Sachin’s remark.
Peace Mediator – Warring countries show their zeal to peace by playing cricket. There have been umpteen cricket matches between India & Pakistan towards this nobel deal. That is cricket displaying its mediator role
Networking Role – It is an immediate conversation starter in India. Any 2 strangers who otherwise dont smile can start talking about cricket and be friends.
Visionary – Most kids have wanted to become a cricketer and emulate Sachin or Ganguly or Kapil sometime in their life. In most cases this is the first ambition / vision that they have had.Cricket is also in line with the modern biz adage of change and evolution to match the market. There have so many versions and evolutions in the gentleman’s game with the newest being T20
Charity – With the shorter version of the game in practice, matches for charity are bound to increase and cricket has always been a money making tree
Having written all this gyan let me admit that my knowledge of cricket is limited. It does ignite the patriot in me but I simply fail to understand how you can watch repeats & re – repeats’s of old matches while completely knowing the outcome from a ball by ball perspective.
I got educated in test cricket very recently, till then my definition of test cricket was " to be played in white sportswear for a long long time".
But even people like me with less than primary education on the hallmarks of cricket fame sit addicted to TV and net sites while India is playing which proves the unification role of cricket..
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