Chak diya INDIA...

( Time check: Requires atleast 3 minutes of your time :-) )

To be frank, over the years I’ve almost stopped watching LIVE Cricket on TV or to express it even more candidly, I have learnt to control the fanatical, quite hysterical habit of getting glued on to the TV sets when a Cricket match is going on. Call it maturity or the lack of time of a not so care-free guy in his early twenties, I’m nowadays more than content with the online score coverage brought out by sites like Cricinfo.

But, even in my case, Sep. 24 was not going to be just an ordinary day. Not that it’s a dream-come-true Final with our arch-rivals Pakistan. A sense of inner feeling suggested me that after all these years of choking at the last hurdle, our boys, the Men in Blue would finally lay their hands on a coveted trophy. A trophy which has eluded their hands for over two decades and I was certain that this was surely going to be the day of reckoning.

So, as soon as I got to know that India won the toss and elected to bat, I didn’t take a moment to call it a day and headed home straight away. Keeping myself updated with the latest scores through S(weet)MS, after an hour-long journey aboard the crowded city-bus, I literally gate-crashed my house to save for myself atleast the fag end of the Indian innings, only to see my dear Mom watching the obvious ‘soap’ on the obvious channel at that hour.

If you think getting hold of the remote would have simply done the job, save yourself something more. Doomed we are, to come under the select regions of the country that come under the CAS system, which resulted in ME frantically racing with my remote in search of the frequency where i can get atleast the slightest of the slightest signal of the channel, telecasting the match. Thank God, my cablewala was shrewd enough to sneak in atleast the picture of the channel and doing so, saved the day for many a fan in our locality.

Getting to watch a match without the sound would look like nonsense. But, given the fast-paced nature of the 20-20 game and the way the match had shaped up, there was literally something happening every delivery and I had no complaints watching this edge-of-the seat ‘thriller’(quite dramatically) under ‘silence’. And with every dot-ball and with every wicket, guess who was at the receiving end of my delirious emotions… Being the only child, it was obviously my Mom and with her being busy with her cooking, I should say I was quite lucky to escape her vociferations after all those stuff.

As the climax neared, my parents joined my lonely bandwagon in watching the nail-biting finish. With the sudden turn of events, as sixes started puncturing all over the park, I wondered if we were, after all, doomed to see the anti-climax. Not to blame our guys, they did the give their heart and only because of that, were they rewarded with crucial wickets especially in the last few overs.

With Harbhajan not finding his line, the last over fell upon the young, inexperienced Sharma, once again. And when he started with a wide, with just 13 more runs needed, a hell would have surely broken in everyone’s hearts. But the talented lad followed it up with a neat dot-ball only to give it away in the very next one with a full-toss and thereby a six. Memories of Javed Miandad romping home with a victory, with a final ball six, notoriously flashed in my mind.

But a loss here would have meant even more than that, as we were so near, yet so far and that too in a final of such an international tournament. Neverthless, Cricket as a game has spun surprises from nowhere and needless to say 20-20 can’t do that. As Misbah-ul-Haq scooped the next ball with a typical 20-20 shot, when billions of Indian hearts were in their mouth, the ball slowly fell as a dolly into the safe hands of Sreeshanth and the rest as they say, is history.

Call it coincidence, after the release of much acclaimed film ‘Chak de India’, Indian sportsmen have heaped laurels to themselves and our country. After the football, hockey and the tennis fraternity, it’s the turn of the Cricketers to make us proud. At a time, when some serious issues are bothering our country, such victories atleast serve the purpose of giving us a sense of achievement, confidence and satisfaction. Chak diya India :-)