I love MY CRICKET!

The other day in the opening match of the Champions League T20 when Kieron Pollard, after smashing 16 runs in the first five balls of an over, got clean bowled at a crucial juncture, a definitive statement fell on my ears from a corner of my home's drawing room which said, "It's all fixed, why the hell are you so serious about it?" It was said by my brother and I was irritated to say the least. I retaliated, “Come on, those two murderous shots over midwicket cannot be fixed and neither can that awesome Yorker which got Pollard or Tendulkar for that matter!” But my protest was in vain.

When everyday at least a couple of articles on match-fixing go from under your eyes or an explosive half-hour episode on some channel like India TV( which just takes pride in applying the word “exclusive” to any and every good-for-nothing masaledar story ) is shown over and over again, any diehard cricket follower can also be convinced into believing that “it’s all fixed!” But I was never convinced. Just because some a**holes named Mohd Aamer or Asif bowl a front-foot no-ball, you can’t say it’s all fixed. Even if the three accused were playing in that match, it doesn’t mean the other eight players are also guilty. After learning this news, my mind just rushed back to the most awesome jaw-dropping chase I had ever seen on the cricket-field. In the semi-final of 2010 World T20( in which, unfortunately, the above two were playing ), I had seen 70 runs being scored from 30 balls in an intense pressure situation in an extra-ordinary fashion when Aussies were six-down and Michael MAD Hussey had came to the party and ran like his life depended on it and struck sixes in a super-human effort. It was one of those days when I was glad that I enjoyed cricket. When somebody said that this match was fixed, I was plain angry. You can give up a match through match-fixing, but sorry, you cannot snatch a match from the jaws of defeat through fixing. It takes planning and single-minded effort to do what Hussey did.

Also don’t sell me the theory that IPL being the $4 billion enterprise, it is rigged too. The captains of each of the eight IPL teams have not got the captainship only due to their playing credentials, they are the captains because there’s respect in our minds when we take those names. Names like Ganguly, Kumble, Sanga, Gilly, Warne, Tendulkar, Gambhir, Dhoni are respected not just for ‘what’ they have achieved but also ‘how’ they have achieved. I have watched these cricketers close enough to know that they will never play to lose. If you give me a hundred instances to prove that a match is fixed, I can give a thousand instances to show that it isn’t.

This brings me to the point- Why do we play sports in the first place? Why people like me are mad about it? What is the essence of sports?

Sports is competition. Sports is watching two humans compete trying to outdo each other through the skill they possess. Sports is about “Unpredictability”. It is about knowing that even a great like Muttiah Muralidharan can be frustrated for his 800th wicket by a rookie like Ishant Sharma (hadn’t our excitement reached a crescendo when Murali was denied his moment of glory for almost 20 overs on the last day of 1st test between Indo-Lanka). Sports depicts human life at it’s varied best.

So when sports is robbed of it’s most crucial factor i.e. unpredictability, then we as sports-lovers are bound to get disappointed. But for the fault of a few rotten apples, don’t claim all are rotten. They may become rotten, but they don’t deserve to be branded as guilty at the start itself. When we love someone or something, WE GOT TO HAVE THE FAITH..!

And by that definition, I have grown up playing, watching, reading, following cricket. I can’t stop myself from following even a Zimbabwe-Bangladesh match going on in the middle of Africa. The earliest memory I have of my childhood is searching a cricket ball in the bushes near my home with a friend when I was maybe 3 years old or my little brother smashing the bat into pieces for the n-th time out of anger when all others claim he was out, only for him to be thinking otherwise (and after that smashing episode, invariably we got a new bat without asking which shows that the love for cricket was genetic).

At the end of it all, what I want to say is, I believe my cricket is clean. No Aamer or Asif can break my belief so easily. I had loved this game whole-heartedly and will keep loving it till maybe somebody brings me the evidence of a Kumble or Tendulkar being involved in fixing. And I know this is impossible. Some things are indeed impossible. So, just for the sake of my love for cricket, for the first time in my life, I am cheering Pakistan. I desperately want Pakistan team to win in their tour of England and in their future matches except when they face India. GO PAKISTAN GO….