And thats cricket for you.

Had been to Bombay last year to attend a friend’s daughter’s wedding which was in Juhu. As there was time to kill, I sneaked off to the beach with my camera (while others were in the hotel room watching TV as the program was to start at 8pm)
My idea was to get some good snaps of the sunset. I realized two things while I was at the beach. One is you cannot get good shots of “the beautiful sun set” with a simple ordinary camera. The second is that there is a lot of activity that goes on at the beach which is worth watching. Like the chana walla who sells his wares with his light weight stand and the basket. He has to keep shifting from place to place to avoid the eyes of the cops and to get new customers.
And then there was this cricket team (probably the locals) who just enjoyed the vast open space and the frenzy with which they shout when the ball is “up in the air” I kept clicking and intermittently showed them the result through the LCD screen. Soon it became the routine. After every over, all of them would flock around me to see the “result” I found that I was enjoying the match as much as they loved playing it. “In the next ball I am going to hit a sixer, and you better click that” said Shankar. Later on I wished they had some e mail or there was some way by which I could send them the prints of what I had clicked.
The only other time I enjoyed watching a cricket match was in the movie Lagaan. Cricket in the rawest form was its best when the British handed it over to us knowingly or unknowingly.

Let us face it, Cricket was a game invented by the British to kill time. The weather is pleasant (there in Britain) and playing with a sweater on does not make you sweat. Drawing parallels here in India, we still wear sweater and play in the sweltering heat. Ask them why and pat comes the reply “its part of the uniform”
And when 22 players play there are 2 billion umpires in India. Oh yes every body is an “expert”
I think my aversion for cricket started from the days when there was no TV and it was only the radio and Test Matches. I mean just imagine you play for 5 long days with no result. (a draw is no result right?)
And then came the transistors. Oh boy every body had one. Come cricket season and you can see one popping out of every pocket. Once I was listening to Radio Ceylon on my home made transistor and one guy asked me for the score. I was brazen enough to tell him that I don’t listen to commentary. I can still remember the dirty look he gave me. (he did not talk to me for a long time, a if I insulted him)
Once upon a time cricket ball had to be red, the wide screen white and so was the uniform. Then came the ODI and the twenty-20 and all that went for a toss. Now we have multicolored dress and every nook and corner of the dress, pitch, bat, hat, helmet, shoes, gloves, is a good enough place for advertisement. “Hey Sachin is your left arm sleeve free for the fourth day of the fifth ODI ?”

I am more impressed by the umpires. They look more and more dashing. Talking of umpires, I think their job has become easy with action replay. If in doubt just ask the third umpire.
It’s a “crying” shame about match fixing. So lets not talk about it.
For me only one person stands out from the cricket fraternity and that is Sunil Gavaskar. And why he stands out has nothing to do with cricket !!