“Life is a game, cricket is serious”
Posted by Guhan | Filed under Sport
“Life is a game, cricket is serious”, eloquently quoted by a good friend of mine, Venugopal. It pretty much sums up how cricket crazy we are. A good cricket match can bring any busy city to a stand still.
I am actually writing this post while watching the India vs Srilanka 4th ODI. I am a huge cricket fan ( pun intended ) and have had a fair share of cricket in my life. The excitement and interest for the game remains the same, whether it was professional league cricket or the fast paced Corporate cricket.
I tried to think about why cricket is such a craze in India and how the game comes naturally to many here. Many times all you need is some thing that looks like a ball and a long enough plank that is used like a bat, Gully cricket it is called. But what is it that is so exciting about a wooden plank whacking a small sphere.
In my mind its the bully in all of us that draws us to the game, the feeling that you can spank a weak little thing with a stick or hurl a projectile as fast as you can at someone in front of you. Its the bully in us that forms a mob of 11 people all hell bent on sending someone away from a marked territory. Its a place where well disguised taunts and provocation is greeted with loud applause. Sport is generally a let out for built up energy and aggression, cricket is no exception. Its also a great leveler, no matter who you are and what you do, when are on the cricket ground, bully or be bullied is the single rule everyone swears by. Even watching a cricket match either in a stadium or on TV is like watching a good play or action movie. It has something in it for everyone, the emotions of a player dismissed, ecstasy of snapping a good catch, evil pleasures at injuring a player, sense of achievement on reaching a century, intricate plans, intelligent strategies, well groomed heroes, patriotism, flashy equipment and lush green well maintained grass :-)
A cricket lover will never say the rules and format of the game is complex. But I realized how complex it actually is when I tried to explain the game to a friend from the United States, the land of Baseball. A person who knows cricket and baseball will argue that both the games are similar in some ways, but my attempt at explaining cricket actually made me realize otherwise. People new to the cricket concept find it hard to digest the fact that a single cricket game can stretch for 5 whole days and still have no result at times. It gets funnier when you try to explain that the same game can also be played for one whole day or even for 4 hours during day time or night. The discussions about the game can be really funny and will usually end with the “Non Lover” completely confused :-)
