Hilal Bukhari

Games and sports have become an indispensable part of our lives in this modern time. They provide a lot of benefits to our youth and help in making them more witty and active to live better lives. Cricket has become one of the most played games in our localities. In fact, in some of our rural areas, it is the only game played through different tournaments which are being organised at the local level.

However, we witness a lot of grave issues with these local-level rural tournaments. Most of our village teams are not sponsored by any business venture or any other person who would support them financially. The local level tournament organisers often charge a huge fee for the cricket tournaments which leads to a great burden on our young cricketers. Many of the young cricketers are not able to contribute financially to their teams due to a lack of financial autonomy. Their talent often remains untapped and hidden when they do not get the proper chance to show their abilities at the local level. There is no proper mechanism to audit the organisations of these local tournaments. They charge a massive fees and provide few facilities only to play these cricket matches. For example, we witness that the organisers who charge four thousand or five thousand as the fee for some tournaments do not even provide a good wicket or the pitch to play a proper contest. The players are forced to play and show their talent on the rough and very ordinary pitches.

We must know that these local-level rural tournaments are not a mere means to make the money for these organisers. These must rather be the means to provide young talent the chance to prove their skills at the local level and entertain the masses. There must be some proper audit mechanism for these organisers whose only aim is to amass a lot of money from these tournaments. No doubt, the organisers have the right to make some profit for themselves too. But they must think about the poor players who cannot afford to pay huge amounts for these matches. Further, if the organisers have charged a certain fee for a tournament they must make sure that they provide proper and comparative facilities for better and more attractive contests.

KR Desk