Indian cricket

None but a few shall be found to know the accounts of the first cricket match in 1721, if we embark upon a discussion around the topic of Indian cricket. Since then, Indian cricket has traveled a long way; has faced ups and downs but nevertheless, made way into the heart of the Indians. But it took a long time; to be precise, it was 1932, when the first test match was played between the Indian national team and England at Lord’s.

Indian cricket, now, is a much bigger phenomenon that crosses the boundaries of religion, wealth or similar other boundaries we come across in the society. It is because the game of cricket has now become a religion by itself and the players are demigods; if indulgence is to be witnessed in its truest form, one needs to have a glance at the passionate, cricket fans of the Indian team who are to be found not only within the country, but also in abroad.

Simple statistics:

* The Indian cricket team is a tough team when on home grounds.

* Legendary figures such as Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev made the Indian cricket team a prominent one in the international scene.

* The first big achievement of the Indian cricket team in the international scene was the winning of the World Cup in 1983.

* Indian cricket has a glorious past, a large part of which depends upon the 1960’s and 70’s spin-quartet (Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivas Venkataraghavan, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Bishen Singh Bedi)

* The former glory has been tainted by the current Indian cricket team’s dismal performance; however, losing the 2007 World Cup has not been a bar to the popularity of the Indian cricketers.

The above five points define loosely what the deal is all about, but did you realize why the love never died? That’s because Indian cricket is always unpredictable and nothing can excite more than inconsistency. It is this unpredictability that gave rise to the love/hate relationship between the players and their fans; but then again, no one wants to win only 35 matches out of the 196 like it was against Australia and England during the first fifty years of Indian cricket. We only want them (the players) to understand this simple equation; if the fans are crazy about them even when there is so much of tumult, just think what would happen had the team been successful in the majority of matches.

Lawrence