Cricket World Cup, A Life Changing Experience

There are less than 100 days to go for the cricket World Cup. Discussion is rife whether India should boycott its World Cup match against Pakistan in view of the Pulwama attack. The following thoughts come to mind in this connection.

As an impressionable schoolboy, not yet 13, and newly introduced to the magic world of colour television, on June 25, 1983, I saw Indian Captain Kapil Dev lifting the World Cup. It was a glorious win versus the mighty West Indies who were expected to win with ease. Commentator Farok Engineer screamed “Mrs Indira Gandhi, give the country a holiday” and the PM duly obliged. Since that day, I have been hooked to World Cup cricket so much so, that I can say that the cricket World Cup has changed my life.

How? As an event, the Cricket World Cup is eagerly and expectantly looked forward to. No sooner than one edition of the event is over does one look forward to the next. While the waiting period is one of eagerness, the period of the actual tournament when it happens is one which is actually life-changing, in more ways than one. This statement may sound preposterous to non-cricket afficionados but will appeal to all cricket lovers since they too will be going through similar situations.

In my own case, I can easily identify how the Cricket World Cup has changed my life. For instance, during the World Cup, my normal hours of sleep decrease since the matches are often at odd hours. This may sound strange to non-sports lovers but one cannot bring oneself to waste time on mere nocturnal rest when one can watch one’s favourite sport.

Apart from sleep, the next serious casualty is conversation. One actually talks less to family members, friends and relatives during this period except for suddenly saying something like “brilliant ball” or “wonderful shot”. One also has lots of arguments with friends and relations during this period on topics such as who among Virat or Kane or Root is the better batsman, who is the better bowler, Starc or Boult, will MS Dhoni be an asset or a liability and so on.

Arguments can be on Facebook, Whatsapp and via exasperated texts usually continuing until the wee hours of the morning, almost until friendship breaking points, until sanity dawns on one of the “boxers” who hurriedly says good night. The next day, after a few hours of sleep, sheepish realisation dawns that most of the discussion was more in animation than for any other reason.

How else has the World Cup changed my life? Yes, it has probably made me more statistically conscious. I go in for more number crunching. Apart from delving deep into memory, I unhesitatingly accept that I Google for interesting statistical details. My personal belief is that one cannot disregard statistics as they often bring us back to reality from emotions. At the same time, the surfeit of statistics has made commentary very statistics based, which has taken away the sheen from an important aspect of a cricket match i.e commentary. Also, statistics can never replace the joy of watching an exquisite cover drive or even an “aggressive” well-left. Hence in my view, a balance has to be met but well, isn’t that true for almost anything.
The World Cup has also revived and maintained my avid interest in quizzing. Twenty five years back, I used to run a weekly quiz named Quiz-quest in a popular newspaper in Bhubaneswar for as many as three years.  With every World Cup, the interest in quizzing revived and maintained itself and I found myself popping quiz questions to my friends off and on. This is a nice learning experience in itself as for instance a quiz question on Rodney Hogg can start an interesting discussion on say, Australian fast bowlers and one comes across several other enthralling facts and trivia. In the process, one comes into contact with other cricket lovers and one can exchange notes and learn from each other.

Currently, I stay in Mumbai, which is a busy metro involving long commuting hours between home and office. World Cup makes the commute better as one can follow the current match going on in cricket sites such as Cricinfo or Cricbuzz. Even if no match is going on, one can read the analysis and newspaper reports of previous day matches and previews and forecasts of the next day’s matches. One wonders in fact, how much the World Cup will contribute to the revenues of cell phone companies and it will be an interesting comparison in itself, to compare the sales/revenue of cell phone companies and internet service providers in the month of the World Cup and the previous and next months. The same goes for television companies and cable service providers.

This is only an illustrative example of how the World Cup has changed my life. It actually has in many more ways, not just mine but of millions of people all over the country and throughout the world. There is no doubt it is a very important event and the best example, I can think of is the Guwahati High Court in 2015, ordering the Assam Government to provide cable TV connection to inmates of the Central Jail so that they can watch the cricket World Cup.

I have told you all how the cricket World Cup has changed my life. Has it changed yours too?