AamAadmi Dissects CheerGirls & Finds No Cheer! :-). Review on General Tips on Cricket Cheerleaders

I was calculating Req. run rate on my cell for Kolkata team. I heard a familiar voice “since when did this become cricket?”. In one nanosecond I came back to reality from maths world & realized I was home & it was my mother. To check why she said it, I turn to TV, where I see some flashy, bouncy things. Thanks to my sight & knowledge of biology I quickly reckon it as the female human mammary glands very much uncovered. (Are clothes designed to cover or uncover, I wonder) Also shaking along were shiny pieces of paper/plastic alongside. As the camera moved over them, their owner gave a seductive smile, as if to seduce the cameraman & us viewers too. The cameraman at this stage was floored, literally. Yes, he was on the floor, but still didn’t forget his duty of covering..or rather uncovering! From his fallen level he started again, starting from the girl’s heels, onto her toe, calf muscles, knee, thighs. But his plans to reveal urino-genital organs came to a halt –thanks to another couple of pieces of small cloth! We too were saved blushes! My friends also shared similar stories of embarrassment while watching cricket as a family – Welcome to a new unnecessary evil that has entered India – Cheerleaders – Courtesy IPL.

Whats Cheer? : if you didn’t know in Sanskrit/hindi Cheer means cloth as in Draupadi cheer haran. Its easy to see these girls have less of cheer. Coming to the English part of cheer, haven’t Indian spectators been noisy & involved all these years? Do they need to be cheered by some white skin who doesn’t know ABCD of cricket? Like item songs all that these cheergirls manage is some momentary excitement in the male urino-genital organ. Aren’t our spectators always cheered up & making noises. Just look at the way they go berserk at the sight of camera. Cricket crazy ppl do not need any prompting enjoy the game.

Also besides the skimpy clothes & suggestive dances look at the way brand names are strategically placed on their chest & pelvic regions. This amounts to using women as hoarding & denigrating to them. Over the years we have seen that women were first magnetized by the ad industry (she will get attracted to the brand of undies u wear) & then films itemized her & now thru cheergirls they are objectifying women. A true cricket fan/spectator doesn’t need to be cheered least by a firang girl. Here I must give credit to Mumbai & Chennai teams for having decent Indian clothed cheerleaders – both boys & girls!

Since I studied science I don’t go by emotions, but by equations! Tell me how does a scantily clad firang girl dancing generate cheer? Whats the unit of cheer? How much is generated by the girls, how much by the shining papers they hold? How is it transferred to the spectator? By radiation, conduction or convection? How much cheer does each girl generate considering there are 20000+ ppl in stadium? Why does a white generate more cheer? Are the cheer generated by white & black different? So far I haven’t seen anyone who came to stadium to see them, all came to watch cricket. Also few frontbenchers in the stadium do enjoy doing the cat calls at cheergirls, taking their pictures as Srinidhi noticed when he went to watch a match. Afridi went on to say these girls were a distraction. Tell me which player or genuine cricket fan can take his eyes off the cricket ball & look for some white flesh in a thrilling match situation. Also we have seen all captains, players thanking the audience for support & not once did anyone thank the cheergirls bcos they are not adding value to cricket nor have any effect on the game, its outcome. Since cricket is watched by families & also a lot of budding cricketers watching the game from the ropes we certainly don’t need this distraction on budding talent.

Theology of the Body says body is to be covered not bcos its ugly, but bcos its beautiful. How can a body without cheer generate cheer? ;-) Our bodies are an important aspect of our self & if we are to truly respect anyone including ourselves, can we do it without respecting their/our bodies? In short dignity of the body is dignity of the human. So when a cheergirl is presented in skimpy clothes in front of us there is a danger of ppl seeing it with contempt. This explains the many comments they received at stadiums. IPL was advertised as ‘entertainment ka baap’ but with cheergirls it was reduced to ‘entertainment ka paap’ as it officially allowed ogling at scantily clad girls! Also on a philosophical note can a man ever be entertained for long?

Culturally also this concept is against basic Indian moral sensibilities. It is no secret that cheergirls in western countries are ‘used’ by the team to meet their ‘needs’. In fact in a interview a firang cheergirl complained that no IPL players showed ‘interest’ in her, while back home players wud try to ‘woo’ her! Isnt this whole business a form of prostitution? If this concept isn’t nipped in the bud, in the coming days we will have to read of more such scandals & our channels like Roz-tak, Headless today or Stir news will have a ‘good’ time reporting them. Do we want our future cricketers to be losing focus getting into arms of them?

Also some teams were found vacating their players to cut costs, why cudnt they have thrown out the cheergirls instead like the Delhi team did. Even without cheergirls delhi team reached semis, while Bangalore & Hyd having the ‘costliest’, ‘skimpiest’ girls ended at the bottom of the table. Also lets get real, wat matters in a cricket stadium is not how loud a fan screams, or how long a girl dances – it’s only the performance of the 22 men on field that matters. So why waste on unwanted glitz? Whats the need to import girls when our own Preity, Katrina are around? Also Shatrungan sinha fired a shot saying ‘bar girls shud be rehabilitated as cheergirls’ ;-) Why shud the firang girls be paid more ? for the more skin they show or dance which is the same? Isnt this disparity trying to impose the colonial mindset that white is better?

When the cheergirls controvery erupted there were people like Rajeev Shukla who took a morally permissive stance saying ‘whats wrong, let ppl have entertainment’! This kind of ppl in power who are siding with wrong are a wrong trend. My guru taught me ‘There are 2 kinds of ppl in world. In everything they do 1st ask whats wrong, the 2nd group asks whats right – it’s the 2nd group who make the world a better place”. People started putting arguments like ‘in movies there is more vulgarity’ etc, but how evil it is to defend one wrong using another wrong. I am sure this moral relativism is affecting our very social moral fabric. IPL/BCCI washed hands saying it was franchises who are bringing the cheergirls. Arent they the once to ensure its all conducted in ethical ways. I am waiting for IPL 2nd season, but earnestly hope its without this baggage called cheergirls. Even if it has to be, I wud prefer a Mumbai/Chennai approach where they use local talent considering our own unemployement numbers!