by Rare Moment of National Unity Produced by Cricket Confirms Sport’s Status as India’s Most Effective Consensus Mechanism
The Century: Four Hours in Which India Agrees on Something
Virat Kohli reached his hundred on Tuesday afternoon in the third Test against England at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, producing a four-hour period during which Indian social media platforms achieved a state of consensus that political scientists, economists, historians, and professional consensus researchers describe as ‘statistically improbable given the underlying conditions and the range of opinions that the same platforms typically host simultaneously.’ Accounts associated with the ruling party, the principal opposition, regional parties from states with conflicting positions on central government, cricket purists who believe T20 has ruined the game, T20 fans who believe Test cricket is too slow, and approximately three hundred thousand individuals who post primarily about topics unrelated to cricket but make an exception for Kohli centuries — all posted positive content about Kohli’s hundred in a four-hour window between 2:47 PM and 6:53 PM before the consensus dissolved when a journalist on a political talk show mentioned Kohli’s dietary choices and the platforms returned to their standard operating condition.
‘Cricket is the one thing,’ said political analyst Dr. Smita Sharma of JNU. ‘Not every cricket event. A Kohli century is the specific event. There are others: a World Cup final, an away Test win in difficult conditions. These produce consensus. The consensus lasts hours, sometimes a day. Then it ends and we return to disagreeing about everything else. Cricket is the pressure valve. The pressure valve works for cricket. For everything else we have the usual mechanisms, which are different.’
The Kohli Effect
Kohli’s century was his forty-ninth in Test cricket, placing him third on the all-time list and generating the specific coverage that attaches to round numbers and list positions in sports statistics: graphics comparing him to Sachin Tendulkar, analysis of his innings by retired cricketers, column inches in every national newspaper including three that rarely cover cricket, and a statement from the Prime Minister’s office that confirmed the Prime Minister ‘congratulates Virat on this outstanding achievement which fills every Indian with pride’ in language that the Prime Minister’s office deploys for cricket centuries with the reliable efficiency of a process that has been executed many times and knows what it is doing.
India cricket coverage at The Hindu. Comedy: The Poke.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
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