The Indian players, once demi-gods, have suddenly become demons, villains, and worse, traitors. Millions of Indians bemoan that "a nation of one billion can't even produce a decent cricket team." But this makes cricket performance a touchstone of patriotism. It's a pity that a billion people's self-esteem should rest on one game.

Excellence in sports has never been a function of population. That's why Australia, West Indies and Sri Lanka have done well at cricket. It's not just individual excellence that counts in the game. Teamwork, planning and strategising also matter. Besides, uncertainty is built into the nature of cricket, including the weather, state of the pitch, order of batting, audience response, etc.

India was ranked number six in the world, and wasn't expected to win the Cup. It hasn't won a limited-overs tournament played abroad since 1985! Yet, many people cannot accept that another team may be better than theirs. It's absurd to impute the vilest of causes and motives to defeat, including lack of "the killer instinct," loss of will, or absence of "national pride."

However, we have elevated cricket into a passion, detached from joy. A cricket victory is seen as affirmation of Indian nationalism -- a sports version of "Mera Bharat Mahan." Nothing excites Indians as much as cricket. Not even politics or divisive social issues.

Cricket claims more loss of social time than strikes and lockouts do in industry. Someone has just calculated that if India were to reach the World Cup finals, fans in India's 81 million television homes would have spent 106.5 million man-days watching the "idiot box." This is more than three-and-a-half times the man-days annually lost in industrial actions (30 million)!

This cricket obsession isn't natural. It has been systematically cultivated through multi-billion dollar marketing, sales promotion and advertising. Our cricket stars are omnipresent -- in advertising for colas, processed foods, cars, ayurvedic remedies, eggs, on Page 3, and in countless glamour stories churned out by the media.

This is part of the corporatisation of cricket and its organising bodies. Last year, the Board of Control for Cricket in India sold telecasting rights for a humongous Rs 2,750 crores! The International Cricket Council sold rights for the current and the next World Cup for an even higher $1.1 billion (Rs 4,950 crores).

Sony Entertainment Television sold advertising at Rs 5 lakhs for each 10-second spot, raking in some Rs 350-400 crores. Dwarfing this is the money invested in betting, estimated at Rs 4,000 crores.

Next come India's top cricket stars. They make Rs 12 to 20 crores a year each for endorsing products ranging from shoes to life insurance.

The all-pervasive, predatory influence of corporations in cricket wouldn't have become possible without ICC, BCCI and state-level boards being turned into commercial entities.

Cricket now has a horrible grotesque side too: international match-fixing. Nothing highlights this more starkly than the murder of Bob Woolmer -- cricket's worst-ever event. International cricket is acquiring the same gangster-dominated character as Mumbai's real estate business, marked by blackmailing, extortion and murder.

We are witnessing the transformation of a sport into an organised, semi-criminalised business. Whatever corporates touch turns into dust, often bloody dust.

The baneful influence of corporate sponsorship is now visible in other fields too, especially "high culture." Patronage of culture was long monopolised by the state. Now, culture is becoming dependent on corporate sponsorship. Corporates, working through event management companies, typically only support "star" events, which generate huge billings or attract high-profile audiences.

Thus, in Hindustani classical music, only a handful of performers -- like Amjad Ali Khan, Pandit Jasraj, Kishori Amonkar, Shivkumar Shama and Vishwa Mohan Bhat -- get top-level sponsors. Others get left out because they don't know how to play the sponsorship-publicity game.

The "Star system" is equally dominant in dance, and to a lesser extent, theatre. One reason is the paucity of good theatres, and their exorbitant rents, going up to Rs 20,000 or 50,000 for an evening.

Unless performers find large-sized funding, they cannot stage events. Unless their art conforms to the tastes of corporations, they won't get funding. "Big" names count, quality doesn't. Nor do serious experimental forms and "non-mainstream" performing arts.

Sponsors are all-powerful. They can cancel performances at the last minute because the audience may not generate enough billings. Often, their nominees flood the audience.

That's what happened when jazz stars Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter recently performed in Mumbai. Ninety percent of the seats were allotted to sponsors. Their nominees ensured that the concert would be a dud. Jazz-lovers couldn't get entry.

In the past, government-sponsored concerts would see great artistes performing to empty front-rows reserved for ministers and bureaucrats. Now, artistes play to equally empty front-rows, or pander to dark-suited businessmen.

The most corrupting influence of corporatisation is to be seen in painting. This art-form has become a big investment source. Its market turnover has ballooned from Rs 5 crores in 1997 to Rs 1,000 crores. Artists now employ imitation specialists to produce "their" work.

Art auction-houses have sprouted in city after city to cater to the business investor --typically, without taste. An especially grotesque form of such art-commerce amalgamation was a recent venture under which 100 artists and 110 "eminent citizens," including ministers and CEOs, collaboratively produced 120 paintings.

So you had Finance Minister P. Chidambaram sharing brush-strokes with Anjolie Ela Menon, Ratan Tata and Laxman Shrestha producing a painting over three sittings, and Tina Ambani and Jogen Chowdhury "creating" a new work. It's shocking that such well-known artists agreed to destroy the integrity of their discipline.

Corporate sponsorship corrupts. It always will. We must rescue art, culture and sports from it.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.