A City’s Love and vice-versa

Not many of us have been a big fan of the IPL this season. Not giving us cricket-buffs even a week’s gap between the World Cup and the IPL was blasphemy, especially after India won the World Cup. Probably, the commercial and the glamorous elements of the IPL eluded the organizers from giving us more time to rejoice, after all this is a multi-crore extravaganza with very little cricket remaining in it.

The lines were drawn. There were 10 teams. Most of us vouched for the team from the city/region we belonged to, or the team that had a star player. #ForSachin was a big key for a majority of us to support the Mumbai Indians. Dhoni’s World Cup triumph was a huge factor for people to support Chennai Super Kings. The recent addition of ‘Dada’ into the Pune team was a reason for a few of us to get back to watching this season of the IPL, and he sure didn’t disappoint.

For me, IPL has always been about the support for The City. Whether the team is playing well or not, whether the Liquor Baron had players from The City in the team or not, or whether the team was disjoint/disorganized or not, didn’t seem to matter to me. At the beginning of this season, I seriously thought if I really had to support this disjoint team, whose whole was lesser than the sum of its parts. My love for The City forbade me from doing so. If you call it lame, please read the PPS below.

It’s amazing what your love for a city can do to you. It turns you back into being a fan of the game once again, after you gave up following the match-fixing drama. And not to mention, my sleep-vaas still continues, but it’s rather a forced one, thanks to the unearthly hours that the matches take place.

And the team strikes back! The team with the Gayle-Kohli effect had found something in itself. Better late than never. And whether the team makes it to the play-offs or the final or wins the IPL this season, or not, is quite immaterial.

And I can’t wait to wear my jersey soon! Go RCB!

PS: If you think that the games are fixed, you have a supporter in me too! But, ‘who cares?!’

PPS: If you think this support is lame, then why you shed tears of happiness when India won the 2011 World Cup semifinal and the finals? Tell no, tell no?

World Cup and my Sleep-vaas

There have surely many many posts about the Cricket World Cup 2011 in the desi Blogosphere. Capturing the attention of cricket fans nationwide and worldwide for more than a month, the biggest match happened today. India played Pakistan in the semifinal today at Mohali. Being a jinx factor, I chose to sleep all through this match, as with the previous matches that India played (except for the India-Ireland match, which I thought India would surely win, but the bad fielding by our team was exposed then too!). And I surely didn’t want to incur the wrath of a few folks on Twitter.

Here’s some of the Twitter junta’s reaction on this self-imposed/forced sleep-vaas:


And I wake to the news that India won against our (so-called) arch-rivals to meet Srilanka in the World cup final. With the cliched ‘It doesn’t get bigger than this!’ pre-match hype to ‘This was surely fixed’ post-match analysis all over Twitter (and probably Facebook), this match surely caught everyone’s attention. And a cliched answer to this, ‘In the end, cricket is the winner!’

Well, here’s hoping that Dhoni’s men bring home the cup for ‘Him’! Thank you God, I will assure you that I will sleep through the final too!

Update: I might end up watching the final on the big screen. Don't spit on me.
I followed the ritual of my sleep-vaas during the final too. And look what happened! :-)