Of losses, excuses and SPAM!;)

So India or team-India like they fancy calling themselves, finally did the unthinkable. Kicked themselves out of World Cup 2007 in the most ignominious way. Well, what can we expect. I wasn't thinking they would go through anyway.

So that was the loss. But that was not the only loss. I don't want to write tomes about their incompetency, their staid game, their total shamelessness etc. I think enough has been said and written about that. But I know of more material and emotional (yeah, can you believe its not just a sport anymore!) losses. Of all the all-inclusive packages that fans bought, hoping we would go that far into the world-cup which turned to be not-so-inclusive in the end, thanks to our great heroes;)

When people ask me if I follow cricket or if I was watching the match the other night, I just say, man, I stopped watching cricket in 1999. In Eden Gardens, Kolkata, our "boys" were losing so pathetically in the semi-finals of the World Cup that audience had to take it into their hands (literally) to throw bottles and the works! I was so ashamed that night, that cricket just snapped out of my system. Till date I haven't watched one full match of cricket after that. Nothing by design, I just snapped. I was like, this is not even worth wasting your time on...

This Friday, I was working from home, told my boss that I wanted to see if I could revive some of my lost interest in cricket. But with one final swoop, it fell completely, with the blue-shirts going home with pathetic expressions...

Then come the excuses, and the different ways in which people try to console themselves. It was an interesting thought, and I hadn't thought of it myself. After our loss to Bangladesh, we were having dinner at a friends place and one of the company said, you know all these matches are fixed. And the expression was close to certainty, like having some real inside information. Then this other person started to refute it by saying, yeah I know you are hurting, so whenever we lose we try to pin it on something to console ourselves, let betting be your solace. Very thought-provoking. If we win we never think about maybe we "bought" this victory, but if we lose, oh yeah, someone else definitely fixed this match, yeah!!!!

Then comes the SPAM. Endless jokes on cricketers. They are fun to read though, especially when you are fuming about why we lost. After a while, they start getting monotonous at least to me.

And yet someone else was saying, we still have hope, maybe Bermuda will win vs Bangladesh, and I am like, well if its come to that, where we have to rely on Bermuda's performance to piggy-back into the World Cup, then thanks, but no thanks! We don't deserve to go that far only to lose more humiliatingly to some other brilliant team...

But then I saw the Australia-RSA match. And there was some cricket that reminded me of the days when I used to follow it. Excitement, action, fun, adrenaline!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Of course it fizzled out in the end too, but, it was still 2 -3 hours of pure entertainment) I think I might start watching cricket again after all, I know "who" to follow now to revive interest in the game, but the India team's "boys" won't have an audience in me, no no!