The Saviour of Indian Cricket

     

        Getting up in the morning after a good night sleep has always been a terrible thing, well atleast for me. But last weekend was a bit different. Saturday being the final day of the final test between India and Australia, I wanted to watch the Indian team batting. Every time in the recent past, when I got up early just to watch a cricket match, the team always performed poor. Because of this, I even get a wired feeling that the entire performance of the Indian team depends on me(Yup!). Am not sure if  others get this same feeling. If u really do think you are solely responsible for the performance of  Indian cricket team, give me an imaginary high-five. My imaginary hand is always raised. In case if you wonder if this imaginary high-five thing is insane, trust me -for I have seen dozens of cricketers playing imaginary shots with imaginary bowlers in real matches, right in front of 70000-80000 people. So I guess this imaginary hi-fi'ing is also acceptable in its own kind. Anyway, to cope with Australian Time, I set the  clock at 4:00 am and after wrestling with alarm for almost half an hour, I managed to win. This has always been the funny(dark) side of Indian Cricket fans, when it comes to watching India play in other countries like Australia and Westindies, where the time Zones are entirely different from that of India.

     Watching TV during the early hours can be fun especially when you sneak past the rooms going unnoticed and squinting the eyes while watching, as if you are directly looking at the sun. With no sound on TV, sometimes it would look like watching a reality dumb show(batsmen playing imaginary shots, players sledging each other, captain yelling at the players, umpire warning batsmen etc,etc). Watching the match on Mute can be good sometimes because we don't have to deal with some stupid commentators. Some times I even think this might be one of the reasons why they even have Mute button on TV remotes.

     I'm not sure about what others are up to, but this is how I watch Cricket in the early hours of the day- I lie on the couch, with a pillow supporting my head and a bed sheet that covers the whole body except eyes. With all these accessories on, it was an easy job for the sleep demon inside me to take over.

    I realized I've been sleeping on the couch for 2 hours only when my mother pulled the curtains aside and opened the windows.The first thing I did was squint the eyes to have a glance at the score of Indian team on TV, that was battling for life. It was always a pleasant sight, seeing the good score of the supporting side.

Then it happened.

     All the "me and the performance" theory of the Indian team I put up on the beginning of the post, started to surface from the abyss. The team that played good cricket when I was sleeping started to fall apart like dominoes card, one after the other, moment after I got up. It looked like the Indian players were waiting for me to get up, so that they could surprise me by making a mockery of themselves. One commentator even said Indian team looked like a mule surrounded by bunch of lions inside a cage. Sensing an apparent loss and not wanting to see India lose, I wanted to go sleep again. But I did not. Instead I went out to pay my telephone bills and took the longest way back home just to make sure the match has ended, and TimesNow has put this as their breaking news for the 1000th time, trolling Team India. BBC and CNN shows breaking news once or twice a day, but TimesNow redefined and revolutionized the term "breaking news" by showing so called "breaking news" every 15 minutes, with news ranging from "Dhoni hits a six" to "RG sleeping in parliament". I still don't get why is this alone a breaking news, while Napoleon sleeping on a horseback in the middle of the war is not. Anyway, after they realized they have been trolled, TimesNow changed it to "just Now" instead of "Breaking news". But the news still remains the same.

     When I got home, I was surprised to see India had managed to escape the impending defeat and managed a satisfying draw. So things became clear for me-"Team always perform when am not watching them play". Remembering the commentators words of mule and lion, I visualized the manner in which the mule would have kicked all the lions apart and comes out of the cave. Then I remembered this guy. He could literally do anything(Yes, just anything). StatAlert: He has single-handedly managed to  kill more derrorists(more like it) than the entire universe ever combined. He could even very well be compared to Chuck Norris, or even a step higher.

     Now that it is apparent that the performance of Indian Cricket team depends on me, these guys owe me something..A World Cup next month perhaps?