Time travel to the old days....

If cricket was a religion, India will be called a “Cricket Nation” in place of Hindu nation. Right from our childhood, cricket becomes an indispensable part of life. Some of us might avoid the trap by opting for other sports but in real sense, we can’t just avoid cricket because our friends, family member, fellow bus passengers, chai walas or our boss; atleast few of them will turn out to be the followers of this undeclared religion. And as in the case of Hinduism, here too we have multiple Gods. And co-incidently, like Brahmha , Vishnu and Mahesh- the three pillars of Hinduism, Indian cricket too has Sachin, Saurav and Rahul as the trinity , the one considered to be the base of this foundation. And I dare not say it but the truth is we will find more fundamentalist and extremist cricket fans then we will find such intensity towards the religion. And commercialization, as in the case of religion, has taken a hit on cricket too. Sadly, the joy derived from worshipping this game has decremented immensely. I will like to recall my childhood. Being a native of small village in Agra, I did not have the luxury of watching live telecast of cricket matches unless telecasted on Doordarshan. Everytime Indian will tour overseas; there will be no medium to check the scores as matches were aired on ESPN-Star mostly. Mobile phones were meant to be for richer section of the society. So I will stand by road side at 5.30 in the morning and wait for the newspaper vendor and turn through the pages quickly and find the sports page. What followed was 1 hour’s bus journey to school with constant chatter. Match analysis, expert opinions and predictions for the next day will be the flavor of the day. And if match was being played in Australia or New Zealand, half of our predictions would have been proved wrong already as match will be underway (it begins in the early morning hours as per IST). But we will get to know this next day at 5.30 only. Everytime school bus will pass by a tv shop , all the necks will come out of window , some getting a glimpse of runs scored, some getting a count of wickets fallen. And then there will be a discussion, all detectives presenting their findings and thus, we will get an update on the score card. Those days cricket matches were not so frequent. Everytime a tour was over, we will wait desperately for the next season to begin. And I must say, this wait was no lesser exciting than the one for Diwali, Holi or our birthdays. Life was fun during those days, cricket was cherished much more than it is today. Today in the age of Twitter, cricinfo and Akshay Bhai, one does not have to put in so much effort to get these updates or wait for next match does not last for that long, but somewhere the fun is missing. I don’t know whether it’s our daily routine that has made it this way or something else, but like rupee, value of joy derived from cricket is all time low. Something that’s a matter of concern. And unfortunately, BCCI, unlike RBI, seems less potent at handling this fall. If time travel ever becomes a reality, I will like to go back in time and witness the same era of desperation and excitement about cricket. Time has proved time and again that nothing lasts forever. But we can certainly prolong the life span. But when it comes to cricket, I can see soul and the body are at the verge of parting ways… Someone there to take a note?