During “Ramayana” period (not Satayug, I am talking about Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana), when most of middle class was not having TV, there was Reliance world cup 1987. This is when, we (our generation) started understanding and enjoying international cricket.
After just a year, we have got new face of cricket, named Sachin Tendular. Until then, century in one day cricket was very rare. I remember Gavaskar hitting his first (and last) century in Nagpur
BCCI was not “super power”ed by Dollar-miya by that time.
I always compare Sachin with Amitabh for some reasons. One of that is they started their popularity among younger generation first. Amitabh’s movies were popular due to his action and comedy among us at very young age. Similarly, we started liking Sachin as he was a stock player. He used to hit back-to-back boundaries to any good bowler. That was the time, when ODIs started becoming neck-to-neck games. Each ball wasted becoming costly. We used to call dot ball as “maiden” ball as we call “maiden over” for run-less over. I used write ball-by-ball scorecard on last page of my college note books.
Rest all is well known to us that how Sachin was promoted to attack first 15 overs and how ODI became high profile sport with lot of money involved in it.
Then and now, every time Sachin hitting runs we feel as if our “bank balance” is increasing by that many. Each century scored by him makes our day. When he gets out cheaply, we show our angers to someone else for no reason.
Personally, I lose 50% of interest in the match when Sachin is not playing. When I check score, I check how many Sachin scored before checking if India
You know what, I sometime thinks that why any other sports hero is not as popular as Sachin? E.g. Vishwanath Anand or Pace is also very good in their games. Then why only cricket? I have my own thoughts on “Why cricket?”, will share with you very soon.
Sanjay Sonar
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