I write this while watching the Lahore India-Pak one dayer like millions of other Indians. When you have cricket on air, "news" in the conventional sense seems boring, even irrelevant. Twenty years ago, I might have seen myself as just one of a handful of cricket nuts, someone who would line up hours before a test match at the Wankhede stadium just to catch a glimpse of my heroes. Today, it seems that the entire country is filled with cricket addicts. More importantly, cricket is no longer a seasonal sport. Switch on your television set, and there is a good chance that there is some international cricket match being played somewhere in the world.

This proliferation of the game has had its impact, not just on the way the game is played but also on the manner in which it is covered in the media. Sports, and cricket in particular, is no longer back page news. More often that not, an Indian victory will find itself on the front pages of the newspapers, with even the venerable Hindu (whose sports coverage remains the most comprehensive), now choosing to place cricket as a front page lead story. On television news channels the cricket deluge is even greater. More and more news channels are investing in cricket programmes, in cricket guests, in cricket trivia. Sports channels may cover the match "live", but news channels also want a slice of the action. Indeed, for many ex-cricketers, the news channels are now a bonus, a chance to make extra money and, in their own way, contribute to the game. Some like Ravi Shastri, Navjot Sidhu, and IBN's very own Krish Srikkanth have become "star" analysts, experts whose every word is latched onto. The current players are also much sought after, even if all that some of them have to offer is a rather banal soundbite after the game. There are some international players who will charge you a 1000 dollars just for a two minute interview (flashed on the screen as an EXCLUSIVE in capital letters). At one level, the cricket punditry is valuable. Would you rather listen to someone whose played 50 tests or someone who has never scored a run or taken a wicket in his life? Indians are obsessed with the game, can you deny them the opportunity to participate in the national debate on the sport, which is now part of the entertainment industry above all else?

And yet, you wonder: is there a cricket overkill? Alongwith the "dumbing down" of the media, is cricket too becoming caught in the trivia trap. One particular channel seems to spend almost all its prime time programming analysing who is the better captain: Rahul Dravid or Saurav Ganguly or worse still, what Chappell and Ganguly said to each other on the breakfast table. Another channel starts an sms poll on whether Tendulkar is finished as a batsman after a couple of relative failures. A third holds public debates where you have to decide which player is the "mujrim". A player can be a hero one day, the next day he can be lambasted as a villain. A lot of idle chatter passes off as intelligent comment. But when you have 24 hours of news time to fill, then chatting about cricket is sure to get you more television rating points than talking about whether the left will withdraw support to the UPA government.

Let me clarify: we at IBN are part of this cricket mania. Given half a chance, we will plaster our prime time with LOC (love of cricket, which I do believe is the most intelligent cricket programme on news channels at the moment). And yet, I must confess a tinge of regret. We cover the cricket, but barely pay attention to the crisis engulfing other Indian sport. Knocked out of the Davis Cup by Korea, languishing in hockey and football, do we really care? Its no longer enough to blame these sports for failing to do enough to "market" themselves, or not throwing up stars. The fact is that these sports are caught in a vicious cycle of anonymity today, and we in the news media are contributors to the exclusion of certain sports from the public consciousness. I plead guilty. Maybe, the world cup football in June this year will be an opportunity for redemption. Till then, enjoy the cricket.