Why you should not have confessed Lance !!

They say that Life in itself is a spectator sport. Sports are in essence all about spectators and their belief. We cheer losing causes and we celebrate miracles. When nothing is going right in our lives we look to our teams, our stars and our idols. We win when they win! We cry when they lose and most importantly we believe in them. We believe that they are playing for us and fighting for us. You are threatening to take away that belief from us.

belief is the only thing that makes us get up at midnight and switch on TV. belief is the only thing that makes us angry when something is said about our idols and belief is the only thing that makes an otherwise boring life bearable. Trust us, it hurts to know that our idols lied, cheated. It hurts much more than loosing a close match or a disastrous performance.

As a cricket fan, I can tell you that I was deeply hurt and almost gave up on cricket when Cronje confessed and Azar was implicated. I still get worried when I hear rumors about matches being fixed. I feel cheated. You might think that I represent sports fans who are unforgiving, trust me I am not. I can safely say that majority of sports fans are forgiving. We are ok in our idols getting arrested, being politically incorrect, cheating on their wives, showing signs of cannibalism, going bankrupt, changing loyalties for money among many other things. There is one thing we as sports fans cannot tolerate is you as our idol cheating while representing us. You went one step ahead. You cheated and made us believe that you did not. You achieved greatness and became a role model for so many with your inspirational story. You let all that happen while you knew you were cheating.

You should at least have had the decency not to go on world television and confess. I would have been better off not knowing the fact that you were doping. At least I had a reason to believe in something that seemed too good to be true for a long long time and believe me I want to believe in miracles. I want to believe that Bolt, Woods, Thorpe, Phelps, Tendulkar are results of dedication, application and talent. You were one of them and now you just told me that it was not the case. You told me that you could not have done without doping. You are taking my heroes away from me.

If ‘Sachin Tendulkar’ was to come on the Opera show after retiring from ODI cricket and announce that his bat had a gadget fitted that always attracted the ball to the middle of the bat, I would almost consider committing suicide.You are making me replace my belief with doubt. You are taking a part of me away from me and that is just not acceptable. That is the betrayal of the highest order. You cheated is one thing but you had the audacity to keep doing it and then admitting it. For everyone’s sake you could have at least not confessed !!

Surendra Phatak
A stupid sports fan