I'm just back from a few days in India. I could write several blog posts on some of the amazing things I saw, such as the massive contrast between the extreme wealth and the depraved level of poverty on show, or the fascinating way in which Indian people interact with each other.
As I'm still pretty buggered, after the travel and then the emotion surrounding our win over Taupo yesterday, I'll save all that for another day. Instead I'll just mention something I know a little bit about: football.
You would think India is very much a cricket nation. On so many levels it is. But it's also a football nation if the media coverage is anything to go by.
We had six sports channels available in the hotel I was at, and the sports coverage was split evenly between live cricket, cricket re-runs, live football and replayed football. Football was all over the papers, too.
It wasn't just the premiership either. There was a five team international tournament going on in India while I was there and that got primetime coverage, despite it involving football minnows like Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Syria, Krgystan (sp??) and the locals. The standard wasn't terribly high, but I did notice the positive way in which the games were broadcast, unlike here in NZ when it doesn't take much for the media to bag the All Whites.
Perhaps that points to a key difference between our two countries. India is an incredibly ambitious nation and have, quite correctly, identified football as a window to the world. It's a means by which they can progress as a nation. If only we were as enlightened here in New Zealand.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment