Indian Cricket 4.0

Fireworks. Jubilations. Oh, how gleeful one can be!

From an obscure horizon, India has finally bounced back. Never before has Indian Cricket been so impregnable and dauntless. An irrefutable force to reckon with? The world knows better now.

On the night, after the India-Pakistan game, as I shook hands with the zealous revelers waving the Indian flag and engaged in a light holler signifying India's triumphant win in the Twenty20 World Cup finals...I felt proud. That quaint feeling in one corner of my heart was never felt all these days. It returned that day, yet again. To be frank, I have never been an ardent follower of the game, in the viewing sense per se. And with India's ever swerving fortunes, my cricketing loyalty has shifted endlessly. Now on, now off. And I, for one, prefer undertaking the physical rigors of the game. Whenever, wherever.

Well, so it was Monday night. And the big game was on. While the entire nation sat glued to the idiot box watching the Indian heroes sweat out in the greens, I was sitting in my near empty office. Glued to my machine, engaged in a never ending blitzkrieg of 0s & 1s, I rambled over my pending tasks and crucifying deadlines (Phew! The less said about my workaholic self, the better). Checking the score at intermittent periods was the usual norm all these days during the Twenty20 World Cup. I did catch a fleeting glimpse or two of some of the significant matches though. As I said, I had never gone gaga about watching India playing. But somehow this time, my attention was transfixed on the way India was performing of late. What I heard, and a bit of what I had seen in the past few days, India was definitely on a roll and how! Infectious, to say the least. And then at that moment, I couldn't resist the rising urge. I gave up.

DAMN! TO HELL WITH THE DEADLINES.

Within minutes, chucking aside all official hokum, I scourged for the live streaming of the ongoing match over the internet. And there it was. Right there. Cricket at its very best. Faster, zippier and gripping than I could ever imagine. With the onset of the new format, Cricket was now high on thrills. A revolutionary approach to the game, in which one has to hit right at the word 'Go', can never get a purist's nod. For he believes that this will ruin the technique and the very finesse of the gentleman's game. Those cover drives, long drives, late cuts and fine leg glances would be a thing of the past now. For him, the new rules of the game can spell doom, not to mention rewriting old ones.

But we care less. Fact is...with Twenty20, cricketing boards are raking in the moolah, world over. Real big money. There is no denying this fact. More so, every die hard cricket lover on the face of this planet is going ballistic over such an edge of the seat entertainment. So the question is...will anybody pause and muse over what a purist thinks? Oh, Puhleeez!

Not even for a moment, I could take my eyes off such an adrenaline packed sport. The usual technique for batsmen to hit the ball along the ground was tossed right out of the window. In fact, the ball persistently following the long trajectories as a result of incessant hard hitting displayed by the Indian batsmen, all over the ground. Those murderous onslaughts over the cow corner, reverse sweeps over the keeper's head and swift hoicks over no man's land, made sure the ball was kept busy all the time. In such a short version of the game, the perfect connect between the bat and the ball coupled with some brawn, is all that is required to keep the fours and the sixes raining. The crowd definitely needed some headgear to ward off 'injuries', I felt.

Guffaws. Lol.

Led by the gutsy and intrepid captain Dhoni, the new India is an opposition team's nightmare. It showed clearly in the players' body language and the dotty approach to the game. Pathan, RP Singh, Sreeshanth, Yuvraj...each and every one in the squad was a live wire on the field. The usual lackadaisical approach was long gone. Such an overnight transformation was tough to digest. (I reflected over Yuvraj's 6 sixes in an over during the India-England Match. Whoa! What's gotten in them? I pondered). With every passing moment, the Pakis seemed to be burdened with the relentless Indian attack and not long after, they crumbled completely. As Misbah lofted the ball over the wicket keeper's head straight into Sreesanth's hands, the cacophony & fervor amongst the crowd was remarkable. Truly, the win was a much required shot in the arm.

Sigh...An arduous wait of 24 years was finally over. The entire nation rose to applaud the new world champions. This was all that a cricket crazy India cared for. A long cherished dream fulfilled.

As for me, it's a new found craze to watch India play again...and yet again. And with a format such as Twenty20, I know rather well....cricket will never be the same again.

Guess it's time I kept aside my 'Die Hard 4.0' DVD for now. Action has a new name. Call it Twenty20 or India. I choose both.