Cricket bowls over E-2004

Dump the has-been actors. Throw out the iffy social butterflies. Here''s an idea for the political parties casting around for sure-shot winners for elections 2004. Draft the Men in Blue as a package deal.
The writing''s on the wall. Political parties can campaign till kingdom come but no one''s listening when there is cricket. Take L K Advani, the one man who had seen it coming. He has been touring the country for almost 15 days, but has been able to grab some attention only now: with a will-he, won''t-he on a dash to Lahore for the final ODI.
The wily Advani knew the score when he embarked on his Bharat Uday Yatra. Only a few weeks before that there was a concerted move to scotch Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee''s great goodwill game of cricket with Pakistan. The bogey of security was raised and no one was buying. Cricket happened and the rest is history.
Advani''s yatras have traditionally been big deal. Usually a trail littered with loaded speeches, packed crowds and the odd controversy. This time the BJP''s journeyman has had to resort to gimmicks like announcing the cricket score while talking to the crowds.
On match days, TV sets were installed at meeting venues as an opening act to Advani. And the only ones religiously hanging on to the yatra''s progress are the ones tailing the leader or then the BJP.
Why Advani alone? The Congress has had to share its ''stop-press'' moment with cricket too. Any other day the political debut of the fourth generation Nehru-Gandhis would have swept the headlines. Alas for Rahul, he came in second to his namesake. India won the fourth ODI, Dravid was the Rahul that registered and Congress managers had goofed again.
Election planning - ask the BJP- is an obstacle race this time. You plan around the games. To schedule an event when Sachin may be batting is to ensure no one will turn up. So when the BJP''s second list of candidates was taking time in coming, the party chose to rush it through rather than put off an announcement. The next day was a cricket day.
So authoritatively have Sourav & Co taken over, a casual query on the buzz at the local neta''s office will get you the cricket score and not the political update. In any case, when you can''t beat ''em, appropriate ''em. So cricket analogies abound and Vajpayee wonders aloud why UP cannot give the nation more men in the national team when it can churn out PMs. And while Advani tells you the score, his minions conduct a concerted battle with the rivals to send the fastest, wittiest SMS congratulating the Indian team when it wins.
Incidentally, the last round was won by the Congress, which sent Sonia Gandhi''s felicitation message far and wide from every conceivable number at hand. So each recipient had four or five identical messages beeping on the cellphone within a minute or so.
Passion for the game is equal to patriotism in the times of Indo-Pak cricket. The best place to be seen and heard right now is Pakistan. Politicos are more likely to be noticed by voters if they are caught cheering wildly in the stands of Karachi, Pindi or Lahore. Ask Priyanka Gandhi. Or Arun Jaitly to right of her.