The Time Machine.

Go back in time. To the days when you played Cricket ’07. What do you remember? Hitting Glenn McGrath for 6 sixes in an over? Getting the World Test XI all out for a score less than 10? The messed up names like Murgalideron (Muralitharan) or Dheneir (Dhoni)? Or the magnificent commentary of Mark Nicholas and Richie Benaud? You had a good time. We all did. It was a simpler world back then. Australia were still the undoubted champions. There was no DRS. The IPL was still an unborn baby. T20 had just become this exciting format everyone was eager to exploit. No one would have even thought of a 3-body governing system everyone is talking about.

What went wrong, you ask. Or did it? Is Cricket really that bad as everyone thinks it is getting. The revenues don’t reflect that, one bit. The fan following doesn’t say that either. Maybe the proposed changes in the administration do. But, you have to be too grumpy a fan to care about that. I want to believe I am not one of those, but reality might not depict that. I am excited for the match tomorrow as much as I was 6-7 years ago. But do I desperately want certain results now? I don’t think so. I mean, these days I don’t get upset about India losing. It’s not that I want them to lose. Being an Indian, you always want India to win. But, now when I watch an India match, the intensity of supporting India is almost equal to the intensity of supporting a team with more number of my favourite players pitted against a team with less number of those. It’s not an admirable trait this, not at all. There are too many voices in the head these days while watching Cricket. That’s why I love to watch Cricket with no one around. It wasn’t like that when I started watching the game. Now, I myself reach different levels arguing with different opinions from different perspectives of Cricket that I know of. I don’t get biased on things. For example I don’t love a Ravindra Jadeja. I don’t hate him either. Most Cricket fans would fall in one of these categories. You would have your own ‘tending towards an extremum’ opinion about him. I don’t. These days, I’m more like “The team which’ll play better Cricket will win, let’s hope it’s us”, earlier I used to be like “India has got to win this one”.

I feel like my relationship with Cricket now is more like a marriage into its 20^th anniversary. The honeymoon period is well over. The odd big fights are done and dusted. The kids have grown to a reasonable age. I like to believe I know a bit of Cricket, but yet every now and then it tends to surprise me with its eccentric nature which actually was the reason for me falling for it. I’ve made a few sacrifices and choices, Cricket’s made a few too. Yet, I don’t see another day living without it. When there’s no mainstream Cricket going on, I feel the need to pick up that goddamn phone and check Cricinfo for domestic Cricket scores; my way of texting “I miss you”. This is what Cricket has made me. It has made me poetic, it has made me a drama queen and a wee bit Grumpy as well.

And that’s why, once in a while I like to shut all that up and go back in time to that honeymoon period. That’s where EA Sports Cricket ’07 plays a pivotal part. The Kumbles are there, the Haydens, the Laras, the Pollocks, everyone is there. The old Cricketing rules are there. You know what, there the spinners flight the ball as well! All that grumpiness, the serious critic qualities, etc. take a back seat when I switch that game on. There’s a part of my childhood in that game. It’s something I cherish from the bottom of my heart. I wish life had such a fantasy world too. Where we could go back to our favorite times of our lives, just for an hour maybe, forget all our established principles and be that kid again, ready to take on the world.