A Schizoid Dreamz

kirkit fever!

with the ashes takin' center stage... i couldn't but help look into some old writings of mine that used to be bigtime musings!
diggin' them out ... i publish them here :) (pray don't laugh!!)

Women and cricket! (my erstwhile colum lol! this was the first write up)

Why the difference

Through my life, being from a country like India where cricket is celebrated as a religion, and from a home where cricket is an in-built passion, I’ve been a cricket aficionado, if I could call myself that. With watching all the important matches that have been played in my lifetime till now, and keeping myself updated with most of the facts that i could gather, I’ve kept up my bit of being loyal to this interest of mine. Being a quizzer through my school and college life, I’ve taken part in various sports quizzes where it came first to my notice of how I used to get a raised eyebrow when it used to come to me winning and speaking, because of my being a ‘girl’.
This led to me questioning whether it really is very ‘un-girlly’ if I could call it so, because of my interest in sports and games more than the commonly regarded hobbies for girls. But, I do not know whether it was I, or just a casual growing-up attitude that made me not look at this as a big deal.

Whatever this case was, I did not give it its trifles worth and just carried on with this interest of mine in life. It was later this interest in the sports which introduced me to the cricket room in yahoo chat, which brought me close to many individuals, including girls who did share a similar passion like mine to the sport. So this room became a getaway of sorts to me where I could speak with people who liked cricket and also getting to know more about their other interests as well.

Here I met people, who led me on to different sites online that gave more info on the sport, which was ‘neat’, as I say casually. And here again I countered a raised eye-brow many a times among the guys especially, who would give a second thought especially that of a condescending look as if I had invaded their private sphere of sorts. A sceptical, yet sincere question would always be that of what exactly are you doing in this room, are you interested in friendship because I know a girl cant like cricket. Which is according to me, valid because of the stereotyping of the so-called appropriateness of choosing interests and hobbies according to your gender. Also another common fallacy taken is that of the girls showing interest in cricket only because of them finding a particular cricketer hot. I do not deny that there is fondness or attraction by the part of women to good-looking cricketers. But hey, that’s human, and we can’t deny our human senses can we. (Haha!)

When in one of the trivia’s set up by my friend ‘exclusively for girls’ I scored 8 on 8, he exclaimed that you are different, usually girls don’t do well. I question, is this inborn premise that girls are supposed to be genetically dumb in their knowledge and interests towards cricket and other sports valid? How much of this suppositioning can be questioned as arrogance? Is this arrogance valid as our social trends are supposed to be in this way where we women are to show no interests in sports and even if we do have interests, they should not be stated openly? Why is this so-called difference in interests supposed to be blindly followed even today as we have entered a new millenium?

posted by Sue @ 2:04 AM