The unbelievable cricket match on Thursday...

Before I start, let’s get some facts straight. I am not a cricket fan. I won’t die for cricket or even lose my sleep/ food over it. And my knowledge on cricket is as much as your understanding of the theory of relativity. Or why the Mayans suddenly disappeared. Or how the universe and life began. But having said that, I can’t believe what a wonderful match it was.

Thursday’s match made even a non-cricket buff like me shiver with excitement and anticipation… with a score of 350, the challenge faced by the Indians were truly commendable and the odds seemed against us (based on my very limited knowledge of the capability, availability and “form” of the Indian players). But what a showmanship by Sachin! I finally understood why Sachin is considered the God of cricket. Here is a guy, 20 yrs into playing cricket, chronologically quite senior in the game(read: old), making records with every run and then going and breaking them himself and still goes ahead scoring half the required runs on his own. On the other hand, we have 9 other players who together couldn’t get the other half of the scores.

I am not sure about India, but Sachin definitely didn’t deserve it. His disappointment was quite evident during the award ceremony. And he should be disappointed. There is only so much that a man can do (considering the responsibility he has on his shoulders and not to mention, the expectation that everyone has on a single person from a team of 11 players!!!)

But what is truly so endearing about Sachin is that he may play lousily in 4-5 matches but in a match that he plays well, he plays so well that everyone forgets the previous bad performances. I think he is the only one capable of such a love-hate reaction. And I think we can all learn a little about humility and humbleness from the way he responded when asked about his driving force to play like he did.

The match was narrowly lost by very bad playing by the others and especially one or two in particular who have consistently proven that they can’t handle the pressure (I am sure you know who I am talking about. Here I would again like to bring your attention to my negative GK abt cricket and hence the avoiding of names)

But, like it was said in Wednesday (and in the tamil version – unnai pol oruvan) the country is plagued by bad memory and irrespective of whether we forgive anyone, we do forget… and life conveniently goes on. After all, India is a country where cricket is given more preference than its national game. And ppl will continue cheering… and continue expecting even more from Sachin… EAT CRICKET, SLEEP CRICKET, LIVE CRICKET! No thanks… I will continue doing other things till I am bitten by the cricketing bug and get the cricket fever…