The more I think of Indian cricket and English football, the more striking and conspicuous their similarities seem. They cannot be compared as one sport. But the various aspects and features of the sports bear many parallels. They are both the sports of the people and the stakes are high.

Both sports fire up emotions and bring out the worst in people in victory and defeat. For English football it was the hooliganism and for Indian cricket it is the farce we have been presiding over since the World Cup.

The sporting bodies, the FA and BCCI, come under immense scrutiny. Money seemed to be the only agenda for the BCCI, be it rampant commercialisation or the obscene number of games being played at obscure venues around the world. For English football, the money factor is at the league level where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Also the games are not well run. Indian cricket is a mess from top to bottom, international and domestic. English football seems to be stuck in committee reports which recommend a lot but implement little. The bungs enquiry, the FA restructuring, distribution of television money, lack of retrospective punishment on divers, etc. A lot of it falls short of expectations.

The way they choose is a total farce. Steve McClaren and Greg Chappell were both chosen amid a lot of hype and the opposition to foreign coaches is strikingly similar and also borders on xenophobia at times.

Both games are full of prima-donnas. Games become soap operas in the British tabloids and Indian news channels. Players suffer from a lack of private life with reporters camped outside a footballer's house or a journalist asking banal questions to a cricketer. Players are heroes one day and villains another. The transition doesn't take long. It takes only a victory or defeat.