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Confused Yuvraj

Internet, undated
In his team's away fixture against the Mumbai Indians, Yuvraj Singh's most memo-
rable moment of inspiration came ri gin at the end. He ran, desperate, hungry, towards the non-striker's end, tearing up the turf before diving onto the stumps, to beat Mumbai by a single run in the IPL's 45th match.
Having robbed the raucous Wankliede Stadium crowd of their breath and all dreams of victory, at the presentation Yuvraj then acerbically thanked spectators for their "support" and drove the knife in, "It was pretty one-sided for Mumbai. Just don’t forget some of the Punjab boys also play for India."
Adrenalin pumping, it was clear Yuvraj was speaking not as captain of King's XI Punjab in the IPL, but as an India cricketer used to playing befo re adoring and supportive home crowds. The otherwise confident left-hander was struggling to fully comprehend life in this parallel cricketing universe. But as with everything connected to the IPL an instant larger symbolism was constructed around his statement. It is now being taken as proof that, by the sheer power of its entertainment value and a carpet-bombing media campaign, the IPL has succeeded in creating city loyalties in a sport previously driven by national allegiances. This issue was considered the competition's biggest hurdle but the message going out now after the Mumbai-Mohali game is that it has been tossed aside by the IPL juggernaut.
On that tumultuous night, Yuvraj probably needed to take a calming few breaths. It would have tempered his words, but by letting rip he did turn some attention on the Wankhede crowd which is fast becoming the personification of the ugly face of "city loyalty". In recent weeks, more than one IPL team has felt that Wankhede's hostility, which may begin with meaningless chanting about the opposition sucks but soon degenerates to boundary fielders being viciously and relentlessly abused by spectators looking for victims and not at the cricket.
Booing, once heard only as disapproval for bad conduct, is now considered the routine way to
greet 'opposition' players in Mumbai, both IPL and international. Tendulkar too got the treatment here in 2005. Last year, the two idiots who made money gestures at Andrew Symonds were sitting in the Wankhede's once-educated North Stand. Of course Pakistan can't still play in Mumbai. All over the rest of the country, IPL matches have been played before boisterous but fair and appreciative audiences who have robustly backed their team. Eden Gardens, which once had to be emptied out after Shoaib Akhtar ran out Tendulkar, shrieked in joy when the Pakistani removed Virender Sehwag in the Kolkata - Delhi fixture. Mumbai, for some reason, cannot get the balance right.
Mumbai was once the spiritual home of Indian cricket. Once it was the most cosmopolitan city in India. Today the country's cricketers will tell you that its ultra-aggressive and vocal crowd is closer in nature to those found in the trouble spots of Kanpur or Ahmedabad. The worst possible way to treat ugly and objectionable crowd behaviour is to legitimise it by using some spiel about club/city loyalty.