The Indian Cricket fan

I love cricket and until some time back I had stats of most players in the Indian team on my finger tips. Yes my parents wished I had my Chemistry at my finger tips. Not that I disliked Chemistry or science but I just love cricket. To me it does not matter if the game is a 20-20 or a 50 over or test cricket. Till I was in school I would even watch matches between Netherlands and Bangladesh. I just loved the sport to such an extent. I remember watching all the bowlers and practice their styles in my garage. My extent of wanting to copy my cricketing hero’s styles was even their facial expressions. I have dreamt of playing numerous matches for India and actually winning matches from unbelievable positions. While playing with my friends I always wished I could bowl as quick as I could, to just make everyone who faced me be scared of me. Those battles would be tough. But even if I never even played for my school team I had fulfilled my ambitions of being a good player among the small set of friends I had. I would come back from school and start planning of how I would go about playing today.

It was fun playing on streets fighting for the ball with neighbours, breaking their windows and you always harboured the thought you could be the next Sachin or Akram. So when I would watch a cricket match and watch a bowler bowl a bad delivery I would know what mistake he made and probably be reading the batsman while setting the best attacking field to get him out. The most amazing feeling would be if what you thought happens and it works. Well it happens if you watch the number of cricket matches I have watched. Watching cricket on TV is a lot of fun. The commentators with their comments, infact sometimes the pre-match shows where they would teach some batting or bowling skills were just as much fun. I remember this one time when in one pre-match show they explained the importance of the non-bowling hand and I was just so amazed at the new idea given to me. I watched so many bowlers bowl and noticed their non-bowling hand, how that almost insignificant movement of the hand actually was such a crucial aspect of bowling. I remember Sunil Gavaskar explain the bat position the 12 o’clock position the 2 o’clock position to play certain shots. I learnt most of my cricket through these small shows. Of course hearing interviews of various players got you the entire feel of the sport. I would love to watch cricketers being interviewed. Even today though the generation of players I grew up watching and loving so dearly are slowly fading I would love to watch how these players went through the hardships to become cricketers. You are almost everytime motivated by those interviews.

So probably it helped that i was never a whole-hearted supporter of anyone player. Though I had a soft corner for Rahul Dravid in the Indian team but my favourite players are from so many other countries and while I could never get down to liking the Australian cricket team more because they would beat the Indians and were surely the stronger team. Still knowing their strength i always supported India. The Indian team’s winning many times gave me the strength that I would do well in my exam the next day. I am sure the Indian cricket team would not even care if I failed but their winning surely affected my performance in a particular exam that followed. So I would usually wish there would be no India match on two particular days.-my birthday and the other the daybefore an exam. Ofcourse if India lost and I failed I would just think to myself,’I was destined to fail because the Indian cricket team failed as well’. Unfair yes but then I am the fan. An Indian defeat has made me have major fights with my friends. Obviously the problem with friends is that each one would support a different player and so if the blame of losing the match was on Ganguly, the Ganguly fan would probably put the blame on Sachin not giving Ganguly the strike and so on. Those would be pretty hot-blooded fights and arguments. Yet if India won the match these differences would be set aside and the joy would be shared. Its amazing how most of these greats to whom almost none of us even exist played an important roles in our lives. Yes I agree it is unfair for us, as just spectators to rest our happiness or sadness on these people who at the end of the day play to for themselves. Yes no one should care if they do a few ads to make that extra money because while we forget them after a few years they would still need to continue with their lives. Also yes they are the one’s who fight it out on the field put in the ours the effort that they put behind before the games are not even documented yet we judge them by their performance on the field. We get upset at the fact that Sachin plays a bad shot on a particular day not really knowing properly what is going through him through that time. We probably have not even achieved 1% of their achievements in our life so far yet we judge them so blatantly and shamelessly. As my parents would tell me what is there to watch in cricket when someone else is making a life out of it by you putting your life at a stop. Yet despite of all these unfair situations, disappointments and constant parental taunts, I still feel glad at watching a Sachin score a hundred or a Dravid play an amazing defensive shot or a Zaheer Khan getting a wicket or just a wonderful piece of fielding and at those moments I am glad that I still love the sport despite me never making to any level of the sport or fighting with a friend over a decision. I just know irrespective of the fact that I am part of those undeserving judge to players, at times frustrated and demotivated fan club, I will still at the end set my next day’s achievements on my Indian cricket team’s performance.