Where is that craze??

I have been an ardent fan of cricket right from the day I was born! naah! Right from the day I realized that there is something called television! Have been following cricket for almost 18 yrs I guess. Have done all sorts of things to get a glimpse of every possible cricket match and am just recollecting some of those.

My school being in close proximity from my house gave me all the advantage I needed for this purpose. We had a concept called "long bell" in our school which basically was an indication for the "end of the day in school" and on the days of matches particularly matches in which India played, I would be expecting every bell in-between the classes to be a "long bell" :). I did not have the guts to bunk classes to watch matches at that age and hence would run home to watch the match in the short-break and the lunch break we had wherein I would finish off my lunch soon and enjoy the match. Every friend of mine till date has been a cricket fan too! So they would also join me with their comments about the match and the players. I was also caught coming late to class after lunch as it was the last few overs of the match and I simply couldn't stop watching the match that day and what more I was the "class monitor" and was setting a perfect example for the class :).Way to go!!! Even during my tuition classes, I would sneak in to watch the match (my tuition uncle was a follower of cricket…luckily for me :)) or get at least the score updates.

I then changed my school and it was no more near my house L. But there too we used to go to a nearby house that was just adjacent to our school and would watch the match. That house would be the "talk of the town" rather than that days tests, assignments blah blah blah! I still remember the days when I set my alarm for early morning as the world cup was held in Australia and hence was aired in the mornings. But that didn't work as I would stop the alarm and sleep. So I would set the "on timer" on my TV and hence would automatically switch on at the time set by me. Again luckily there was my uncle's support for this coz all others didn't like the TV to be switched on in the morning when everyone would be sleeping. He also would watch the matches with me. There was an important "India – South Africa" match and the next day we had an assignment at school too. I tried hard to concentrate on my assignment preparation and was hoping to watch the match once I am done. But it never ended; both my preparation and the match! "What the hell! Let me see the match for a few minutes". In this case the few minutes = 180 FYI and saw the whole Indian innings. I called my friends also to know about their situation and everyone was doing the same. I was so happy that everyone, not only me would flunk the next day in the assignment and indeed we did by just scraping through with the assignment with just one exception! This friend of mine who was telling that he also was watching the match did exceptionally well in the assignment which is quite impossible given the amount of stuff we had to study! Till date, he maintains his statement that he watched it.I can never forget this incident.

It was the study holidays of my 12th board and my mom cut off the cable connection so that I would study without any disturbance. Still I managed to watch it by making our TV antenna to touch the cable passing by and watched the match though it was distorted. Such was the craze. Somehow got a good score in my 12th and it was the holidays before my college started and then came ’99 world cup. Since I didn’t have anything to do at that time, watched every match and so did my friends. Bored of watching alone, I would go to some of my friends place and would watch the match day-in day-out. Then came CAS (Conditional Access System) which restricted the number of channels aired through cable and damn! None of the sports channel was aired. So started going to my friend’s place regularly as they had bought STB necessary for CAS. I still remember the Windies match which would start at 7:30 PM IST and I would very promptly have my dinner at 7PM (otherwise it’s random!) and go there to watch the match. This continued throughout my UG and then at my workplace since I had high speed internet, watched streaming videos of the match live!!!! My company did really well after everyone started doing this :).

It’s now been almost a year since I watched a cricket match completely since I am not in India and just manage to see the highlights from certain sites. I am wondering if I am still having that craze in me????

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