What if the FIFA World Cup 2010 was organised in India?

What a year it has been! The T20 World Cup, the FIFA World Cup and now we have, the Commonwealth Games coming up. For sports fans this year just can’t get any better.

The CW games will be hosted by India in the capital city, Delhi. The authorities there are leaving no stone unturned to make sure that this grand event is celebrated with great pomp and pageantry.

The authorities have even gone on record to say that India is ready to host the Olympics. Ahem! Are we speaking a little too much too soon? But this ignited a few thoughts in my generally idle mind, thoughts which turned into pictures and pictures which turned into words and came out in the form of a question. What if, the 2010 FIFA World Cup was held in India? Wouldn’t that be brilliant? If a developing nation like South Africa can organise it, why can’t India?

So let’s have a lighter perspective of how the World Cup would have been organised in India.

1) All matches would be played in Kolkata. As the Salt Lake City ground is by far India’s best football ground and probably the only ground fit to play football on, well at least international football on.
2) Instead of Paul-the octopus, we’d have Appu-the elephant (clichéd, but there’s something about Elephants and us).
3) The football wouldn’t be a Jabulani, it would be a “Made in Jalandhar”
4) Vuvuzela’s would be replaced with hooters (a la the IPL) and instead of the ruckus being created by the fans, the organisers would blare the hooter every 10 minutes and fans would scream each time the cacophony was heard (a la the IPL, again).
5) All announcements would be made in 3 different languages i.e. the local language, in Hindi and then in English. This means, we would have longer matches as it would take longer to announce substitutions. So more added time. Woohoo!
6) Assuming, our general bad luck in sports we are generally bad at continues, the Indian team which would qualify for the Cup by virtue of being the hosts, would land in the “Group of Death”
7) All matches would also be screened on Doordarshan and somewhere around the 70th minute of the match, telecast would be halted for the daily “Samachar”.
8) The opening ceremony would be the same old set of dances from the 29(..or wait is it 30?) different states of India.
9) Seats in the stadium would be reserved and there would be a special quota for OBCs, SC/ST, etc.
10) No hot chicks with painted bodies :(
11) The person heading the Football body of India (if there is one) would be caught in a scam after the Cup would end.
12) Pakistan immediately announcing, soon after the Cup, that it is also ready to organise a FIFA World Cup and that the country is safe for sports. *cough cough*

~ Karan Bhatia