If baseball is America's favorite pastime, Cricket is India's. Multiplied by about a thousand. Cricket stars (alongside film stars) are the closest thing to gods on earth that you will ever encounter in India. In fact, people hawk their phone numbers for millions and billions of rupees.
Today was my first cricket game. Thanks to Ruben (who “knows people”), we were able to get club seats for our students for only Rs. 100 and they were pretty darn good. Sid didn’t sit with us at all; he was up at the gate, his fingers interlaced with the metal, watching the game like a kid on Christmas. I, sitting in the stands….fell asleep. Who can blame me, though – I slept for just a few hours on the train, waking up around 5:15, hadn’t taken a nap that morning, and was running on minimal sleep from a night of staying up way past my bedtime in Koppal (it was so worth it though). Plus, I didn’t really understand the game.
After teatime though (yes, in India the game stops and there is a break for tea time…both in the morning and the afternoon) somebody explained the game to me and I started to really get into it. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration. But I started to enjoy it. Additionally, the feeling in the air was electric. It was only day 2 of a test match (look at me talking like a pro) but the fans were STOKED. And they did the wave better than I have ever seen at a U.S. sporting event.
The one thing that gets me, though, is that you can play all day long, 8 long hours, and only get 3 wickets down. And then come back the next day only to do the exact same thing. I would get so frustrated. If you think that baseball is a long game…just give cricket a try.
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