Cricket World Cups - As I remember them

As the cricket fans of the nation (not the whole nation watches cricket) gets ready for another cricket treat, this will be about the world cup. The world cup being so special and the 4 years gap between successive world cups made us watch each edition with different maturity levels. I am never good at playing cricket, not even at the technicalities theoretically. A short trip down the memory lane about world cups

1999:

The first world cup as far as I remember. Everyone around me was talking about World cup cricket, something which I have never heard before. Some good hearted soul took time to explain curious kid like me the concept of the tournament. Since all my cousins and uncles are big fans of cricket the interest caught me and started watching the tournament. As ours were one of the few houses which had TV in our village there was no trouble witnessing the matches.

The world cup brings the marketing spree of various brands. There were some new ads for Hero Honda bikes. Britannia came up with a campaign to collect 100 points from its wrappers to have a chance to win a trip to watch the finals. Our consumption of Britannia biscuits increased manifold but didn’t manage to collect the 100 runs as our grandma threw the collected wrappers mistaking it for garbage.

I only remember watching two matches by India, one against Pakistan and other against England.
During the match against Pakistan I stayed up late (on those days standards, might be 9 or 9.30) to watch till the end of the game and received scolding for not sleeping early. During the match against England we had a challenge with our grandpa who had no hopes for India in that match. If India won the match he had to buy and give us a cold drink bottle, which he eventually did. Celebrations were so simple then.

2003:

This was the time around which I knew players of the Indian team other than Tendulkar.

People showed equal interest on pre and post-match talk shows “Extraaa Innings” on the TV. One reason was Mandira bedi and her card predictions. I was allotted the TV time only for the game, so never got chance to watch those shows.

There commercials with different ideas. We witnessed the  ‘Mak makes it possible’ and the ‘Hoodibaba’ advertisements in the entire tournament. The drive to collect the 100 points from Britannia wrappers was less than that in the previous World cup.

The game telecast had added entertainment with funny animations in the bottom of the screen for important events in the game like six, four, bowled out, caught out, catch miss etc.

There was a circular in school stating “Students will not be allowed to go home for sick reasons after lunch” on the Ind-Pak match day.

This time staying up to 1 am to watch a match was accepted during the India-Kenya semis. During the finals I cried first time for the loss of the Indian team.

Days after finals were filled with rumors such as Australian players used drugs and that there would be a rematch for India.

2007:    

The just missed opportunity to win the world cup in the previous edition gave necessary hopes for all.

Presence of two small teams in the pool India was allotted made everyone confident that they would qualify to the next stage easily. After the shocking loss to Bangladesh and tremendous win over Bermuda by scoring 400+ total (Missed this match due to Board exams on the next day), we hoped that Bangladesh should lose to Bermuda in order to qualify for the super-eight. After India was out of the tournament I didn’t care what happened to the tournament. Due to bad weather in West Indies there were problems in the transmission. Even the final match was not telecasted.

2011:

This time the world cup was conducted in the subcontinent and there was no problem in the timings of watching the matches.

This was the time one need not stick to a TV or listen to a radio to stay updated about the scores.

There were mobile phones with internet connections and thanks to cricinfo for the live scores. We were following the matches even when we were roaming and the interesting comments by fans got posted in the cricinfo website. We even followed the articles by experts about the tournament.

Studying in a college where people from whole of India studies gave an opportunity to witness how people from different part of the nation react to India’s victory or loss. Shouts of joy and anger from different languages filled the rooms. On a particular occasion when a fielder dropped a high catch and the replay was telecasted, the viewers near me shouted the usual Hindi cuss word and coincidentally camera zoomed to the bowler speaking something and their voices synced with his lip movement. Without those people I would have never noticed the use of those bad words.

Even social networks played their part in making the world cup more interesting. There were funny statuses by people in the friend list and also views of celebrities about the world cup in the social media.

Many presentation ceremonies ended with the words “At the end of the day cricket is the winner”

Eventually Team India won the world cup and we lost our voices due to shouting and running in the hostel.

2015:

The most recent one and none of you would have forgotten even the minute detail about this edition.

The one observation I made was that there were some things more entertaining than the game itself. The “mauka-mauka” series of ads by the Star network went viral. There were many fan made videos of such kind either to support the original or against it.

This is the first world cup meeting the trolls and memes from such a high number of creators. I came across tons of memes and trolls in different languages. For the past two years I enjoyed memes from the famous Facebook personality “Shashank Thala”.  In this world cup people circulated the memes and the funny messages via whatsapp and such things became hit even among the people who were rare to social networks. According to me one concept which was a great piece of creativity like mauka-mauka was “Pacha satta potta adippom”(based on the famous vadivelu comedy). Whoever created it can be proud that his idea is a hit. The number of the memes that were created following that concept and the reach of that funny concept is the proof for this.

This is the world cup I had no problem in watching all the India matches. This can be told as another advantage of staying at home. And this is the world cup I enjoyed watching some matches with my mom. There was this instance when I got bored of the match and switched off the TV and started playing games in laptop. My mom came from outside and scolded me,”What are you doing in mobile without watching the match?”

Another thing this world cup had for first time is the fantasy league played by the friends and discussions about match with friends settled in different places.The modern connectivity gave the feel of watching matches with them.

Many other things made this world cup memorable but definitely the loss of India was not saddening. There are much more things to be worried about the condition of the nation rather than a mere loss in a tournament.

               

Note:Everything that has a beginning should have an end. I wanted to follow this rule for this small piece of mine. The plans for this started almost two months back and never progressed due to the laziness and diversions. I wish not to add one more entry to a short list of regrets. Tried to complete this even though the topic is already out of trend and all have lost interest in it. Thanks to the friend who reminded me of the words ‘Better late than never’.