Cricket World Cup 2011

Cricket is a unique sport. Cricket is:

·         A game which can be played for five days as well as for a few minutes.

·         A game which can be played with a book (book cricket), leg(leg cricket) or even with a writing pad(used to play with a writing pad after an examination in school days).

·         A game which can be played on a beach, on a roof top, on a narrow ‘gali’ or on a computer.

·         A game whose rule book can be more amount of information than all what is learnt in RepWri.

·         A game which can lead to stone pelting in player’s houses.

·         A game which can make more than a billion people press the pause buttons on their lives. 

Cricket is perhaps the most complex game possible. Try explaining LBW to someone who has no idea about cricket and you will soon realize that an average Indian must be really smart to call an impact ‘plumb’ in a matter of seconds.

Cricket World Cup is big and it being in India makes it ginormous. This world cup started with India as the favorites, for the first time. India always had a good side(atleast since the start of 21^st century). They always had players who could grab victory from the pits of defeat single handedly. However they never seemed to work in cohesion. There was an unknown missing piece. A lacuna. MSD and Kirsten found that missing piece in the past few years and presented before the country, a team, which could replace the legacy of the Australian team of the post 1999 cricketing history.

Thanks to the generous administration at BITS Pilani, we were privileged to watch the match in the auditorium with two thousand fellow students. I have not seen many cricket matches in the stadium. However, I can still say with some amount of confidence, that the atmosphere in the audi can be termed as The next best thing to Wankhede. With face painted people carrying flags, bottles, hooters etc, it was bound to be an exciting show. Mrinal Manuj with his sticks and drums (“DhaTa DhaTad Tad.. Oye ... DhaTad Dhatad Tad ... Oye ”) made it even more special.

 The match started with a toss drama. On retrospection, I am glad that India lost the toss after that, ‘coz this gave the opposition no excuse whatsoever. The first innings was a typical one day innings with runs coming at its own ebb and flow. Zaheer Khan &Co. did a really good job in initial over. A bowling figure of 5-3-6-1 in a cricket final is every bowler’s dream. Till the batting powerplay of SriLanka, my hopes were riding very high on an Indian victory. They batted really well in the last few overs and the game was poised to be memorable, be it a victory for India or a defeat.

The start of the second innings was tragic. It was as if I took a shot of the bitterest drink possible. Sehwag(btw write Sehwag in MS Word and right click to see the spelling suggestions)  got out on the second ball of the match, without scoring a run. If this was not bitter enough, Sachin followed in the 6^th  over and I tasted bile. My instinctive reaction was to stand up and leave. Some people left and my only motivation to stay was that I wanted to occupy the seats these guys left. Next few overs were torture. Have you ever imagined how a person, who is sentenced to death, would feel minutes before his execution? I was staring at an imminent collapse. However, history was to be written in a different manner. Before going to the match, Narula(Dada) told me that he has a hunch that Gambhir would play well today; that this might be Gambhir’s day. And so it was. Gambhir played one of the best one day innings I have seen. I have seen Sachin hit many centuries. I have seen the NatWest final. But to stand in front of a bowling attack having Malinga and Murali in it, requires courage. This is a bowling attack which can be likened to a shark. They usually smell blood and take the 10 wickets in a jiffy. Gambhir stood his ground and along with Kohli he managed some fire fighting. Kohli departed and to the surprise of everyone Dhoni came in to the ground. Blah Blah Blah(I’m sure you would hear this  tale uncountable number of times in the days to come)…4 to win from 11 balls.

Image Courtesy: Siva Subrahmanyam

When Dhoni hit the last six over long on, I got numb. I realized that this was going to be the best world cup final that I would EVER be witnessing. My imagination fails me in giving a picture of a world cup final which can possibly be better than this one. What followed the victory was a constant joyous screaming in the audi which continued for hours at stretch in the streets of our campus, to be paused only by ocassional crackers. One of my friends Rahul pointed out that people wouldn’t have been as happy when they got job offers in campus placement. I nodded my head in affirmative as I didn’t remove my tshirt when I got my job. As it has been pointed out by many through facebook status messages that 2007 batch saw the T20 victory and CWC ’11 victory, I can just feel lucky. I remember that day in 2007 very vividly and I will remember 2^nd April till my memory lasts. 

Cricket on Campus

Day before yesterday I witnessed yet another nail biter in the common room. It was an addition to the numerous amazing cricket moments which I have witnessed in my last few years on campus. Here is a brief account of three such cricketing moments  which I cherish the most.

YUVRAJ SINGH DEMOLISHING BROAD FOR 6 SIXES:

It was my first year and I was in Krishna Bhawan. The first T20 world cup was going on and Inda was playing against England. The innings was reaching its completion and I decided to peek inside common room to see the score. I reached in the middle of this over where Yuvi had hit Broad for sixes in the first two balls of the over. There was a unique buzz in the common room. It was as if ever y one knew what were to happen. With Ravi Shastri screaming through his mouth piece and Flintoff trying all field arrangements, Yuvraj kept on hitting. By the time he had hit 4 sixes, everyone was standing on their chairs. The shouts from common room had forced the ever curious BITSian to leave his AOE/CS match, his lacha, his ghoting and his what-not to witness something unique. 

And before Yuvraj hit the last shot out of the park, the common room was full and people screaming at the top of their voices. It is an amazing experience to scream at the maximum possible volume and still be unable to  hear one’s own voice.

T20 WORLD CUP FINAL 2007:

The T20 world cup in 2007 was crazy. For the first time we witnessed a super over. We thrashed the mighty aussies in the semis. And we braced ourselves for a faceoff with our arch rivals; Pakistan.

 I was doing Engineering Graphics in that semester. I had to miss the Australia match for the EG test the next day. The match was aired in the audi and it felt really cruel on IC’s part to have scheduled the test in the middle of the world cup. India won a sensational match. The final was on a weekday and was starting at around 6 in the evening. People started pouring inside audi and started ‘reserving’ seats for their wing/club/dept. There were people with empty water bottles, blue jersey, face paint (tricolor) etc. The atmosphere was, as commentator’s often put it, electric. India went in first with the bat. I don’t remember what happened in the innings. All I remember is that the match was evenly poised after the Indian innings.

The innings break came and none of us were ready to budge from our seats. It was the biggest mass mess bunk which I remember (although it was told later that the messes would remain open even after the match, but did we really care for food after the match?)

The match resumed and the balance tilted slightly towards India by the middle of the Pakistani innings. However, the danger was still lurking large. Misbah-ul-Haq was on crease. To give a little background, Misbah is the tragedy king of Pakistani cricket(at least during 2007). He would take Pakistan out of impossible situations and give them hope. And then he would kill that hope in the most merciless and trivial fashion possible.

He comes and shatters the Indian bowling attack by hitting Harbhajan for 3 sixes in an over and tilting the game in their favor. Before the end of last over, Pakistan requires 13 runs to win the cup. Joginder Sharma is given the ball. Joginder Sharma, the slow slow-medium pace bowler that Indian cricket team had discovered during that world cup, starts the historic over with a wide. On the second bowl of the over, Misbah hits a six. The equation reads 6 from 4 balls. Then comes the anti climax. Misbah tries the Dilscoop and finds Sreesanth waiting for a catch. We win.

The audi was screaming at the top of its voice. People started running out of the audi on to the roads. I also ran out. At distance we could hear firecrackers burning. I loved being on campus that day more than ever.

SACHIN’S 200:

It was in my 3-2. That particular day we were having our Database Systems lab. By the time we entered the lab, Sachin had scored his century. I and Prashanth discuss the possibility of Sachin making a double century. For the initial few minutes we fulfilled the formalities of downloading the labsheets and opening SQL server. However, cricbuzz.com and cricinfo.com were where our hearts lay. Sachin kept on making fun of the South African attack. In the lab, there was a visible restlessness. Everyone had their favorite cricket websites open in their browsers(multiple websites for some). It was as if people's cricketing intuition told them that this was no ordinary Sachin innings. By the end of 46^th over Sachin was on 196. By now the lab lost all its respect. People were clapping for every single run that Sachin took. Some people even left the lab (on the pretext of going to the washroom) and went back to their bhawan common room. The less brave sat back and endured the most annoying cameo by an Indian batsman. Dhoni was treating the bowlers as if they were from an under-14 school squad and for the first time ever he was booed for doing that, coz on the other end, the little master was a little away from the historic double century. 

The final over came, Sachin took a single and became the first person ever to make a double century in One Day Internationals. People were clapping and silently screaming in the DBS lab. I was ecstatic.

Watching cricket in campus has been one of the best stress busters. The unique rivalry seen in the common rooms during IPL is worth mentioning. Will miss all this. 

Image Courtesy: www.cricinfo.com and www.planetcricket.net