Monday, September 24, 2007

'Not Cricket'? Is too!

I remember a time when cricket meant watching 22 white-flannel-clad men do nothing much for hours on end. You could wander away during a match, take a good long walk around the neighbourhood, and come back a day later to find that somebody had made two more runs. It was an age of leisure and the teams believed it too, standing around on the field, adjusting their cod-pieces and occasionally, very occasionally tapping the ball so it calmly rolled about ten feet away. On good day, there even used to be some running.

Now I wasn't much of a sportsperson even back then but I had a feeling that if something is called a ‘sport’ there definitely ought to be more activity happening than in say, Embroidery 1.1 – Lazy-Daisies Made Easy.

So you can understand, perhaps, why I – fresh from a country where football was the dominant religion – didn’t quite get it. Where was the excitement? Whither the adrenalin? Why was nobody screaming at the television screen? The most excited I ever saw people get while watching test matches, was when someone in the Indian team bowled a wicked yorker - there would be genteel applause and murmurs of ‘good ball, good ball’. I’d seen more excitement on my granny’s morning walks.

So for quite a long time, cricket did nothing for me and since the male-female ratio in my household was roughly 1: 50, no-one really cared.

Then, about two weeks ago, a sports-crazy BIL visited. He, of course wanted to watch the match and by dint of living in a 1 bhk, I was forced to watch it along with him. Only this time, after the first over, I was hooked. For the first time in my life cricket was interesting and more than that, it actually made sense. People were running around, that cork ball was hit to within an inch of its life and it rained sixes and fours. This? This was edge-of-your-seat stuff! Bite-your-nails, pray-to-gods-never-believed-in stuff!

Cricket purists complain that 20 / 20 matches are pale, watered-down versions of the game. “It’s ‘not cricket’!” they collectively moan.

Me? I’m going to fetch a chilled beer, a bucket of popcorn and cheer till my throat gives out.

13 comments:

Tabula Rasa said...

given the way things turned out, we assume your throat has given out and the only way you have left of communicating with the outside world is typing. i.e., lots of posts.

snap to it.

...

we're waiting.

Pri said...

see this is how you're drawn in. then you begin to watch and understand and appreciate. then you want more. you watch the odi's and then the tests. its the same game. the more you love it the more you want to watch. and all those wickets will mean so much more when you see [over the span of a couple of hours] all the strategy and effort that went into it and you'll begin to see the difference between the slog shots and the pretty shots that sound right. plus the men in blue are way hotter when they're in white.

Ravi said...

Then, about two weeks ago, a sports-crazy BIL visited.
It was the BIL??
Are you saying that Sports Bar didn't influence your interest in the game?
I am so upset that I want to throw popcorn!
:-)

??! said...

easy-pleasy populists.

J. Alfred Prufrock said...

T20 is too tiring to even watch. Test cricket for mine, preferrably with Boykoot and Mudassar Nazar at bat.

Pri is a very wise young lady.

J.A.P.

Pri said...

the old man has spoken

Anush said...

next we wil have matches decided by a toss... [:)]

Unknown said...

Ha! stumbled in from smithy's page, and boy am i glad! good one! *murmered with genteel applause*

iz said...

I'm like the world's most uncrickety person but was quite caught up in the euphoria of teh moment. Think watching chak de India twice had something to do with it!

Revealed said...

But of course it isn't cricket. Noone said it wasn't fun! Hmmph.

Sougata said...

What does someone have to do to get a post around here?

??! said...

hellloooooooooooooooooooo...... sigh. still no post.

Anonymous said...

I spoketh once thusly: What does someone have to do to get a post around here?

Well, since asking stupid questions doesn't seem to be the ticket, let's try this:

Uh... Miss, yes, this table over here.

HiI'mwellhowareyou?

Yeah, um... I'll have the biggest Post Au Poivre you can scare up. Yes, deep-fried... er, I mean, well done.

Oh, and something cheap for the wife and kids.

Thanks.