after Indias dismall performance in the carribean there was a recent discussion with friends and fellow cricket buffs ... , many were of the view ... wht a waste of time following cricket .... especially the way we follow .... ball by ball till the last ball is bowled :) .... the general view was that cricket is for retired ppl who dont have anything better to do !! ..... logically speaking sounds pretty true ... who in this fast paced world can afford to put in 8 hrs often bunking work ... sitting in the canteen or even goin to the extent of taking an off from work ..... to watch this stupid game !! ... and in that respect India crashing out from the super 8's has indeed been a blessing in disguise for a atleast a few who can now do that “somethg better”.
After that discussion which led to a surprisingly unanimous conclusion ....i just thought for a while ..... what can that “something better” be in my case , which i'll do instead of watching the next India Pak ODI whenever that happens or even the 17 or so ODI' s India is supposed to play against Aus this year of which I am pretty sure we will lose a min of 15 ...
Only then I realized that if there is anything near what ppl call “passionate about“ .... cricket beats the 2nd second most by miles ... and it has been that way atleast since 1987 when I was 7 years old ... my big bro told me that India will play pakistan in the finals of something called a cricket world cup .... I didnt know much about cricket then ... just that India was the world champions having won the last world cup and also the world championship .... off which I have faint images of seeing Shastri winnig the champions of champions trohpy and along with that an Audi ..... with the complete cricket team on top of it after the presentations ..... India never played pakistan in that final with both losing in the semis .... and Inidia been done in by one Graham Gooch century ... that was the first time Australia won a world cup and for sure it wudnt be their last !!
actually cricket was not the first sport to have captured my imagination ... it was sometime in the summer of 1986 when we had recently got a new - second hand color TV ... my bro and father were quite excited about the prospect of a 16 or so yr old lad taking on one Ivan lendl whom i distinctly remember my brother calling him the best in business at that time .... I really had no real idea what this sport of tennis was all about .... but since my entire family was glued to the TV set that evening .... i was witness to history, I still distinctly remeber the setting that day ... in our pali hill flat , with the TV at one corner of the drawing room and me lying on the diwan at the opposite end , and believe me I had just turned 6 then ! I have imgaes inscribed in memory of Boris Becker flying all over the court taking impossible volleys and generating non geometric angles on them .... that very day i fell in love with the sport and Boris becker was my hero and he still is .... I remember playing against the wall with piece of wood and a tennis ball .... something I quite later realized resempled squash more than tennis ... but for me I was then the invinsible Becker and the wall were all his comtemporaries :) ... my love for the sport later bloomed following another great ... steffi graf , her calm demeanour and composure and that deadly forehand over the excrutiatingly noisy Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and later monica seles ... whon i hated from the bottom of my heart !! .... and this love affair culminated at the wimbledon of 1989 when Boris Becker and Steffy graf won the singles titles in the same year ....
But once my heroes were gone .. i hv never been as passionate about tennis as i was once upon a time ... and the sheer dominance of federer has further eroded the charm ...... my Passion for cricket has lasted longer and today if I lose that, there will surely be a void .... difficult to fill .... and the dominance of Australia over the last decade akin to that of Federer ... and Indias reluctance/inability to move ahead .... has all the ingredients to bring an end to what can easily be said as my only love today !! ...
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