The world cup begins!

The 10th cricket world cup began yesterday amidst as expected, a lot of hype. Nothing sells like cricket in the country and there was enough proof.

Its the time of the year when ex-cricketers make a lot of money by giving their "Expert" comments on various news channels - the path that not-so-well-known cricketers like Atul Wassan and Nikhil Chopra took to their 22 mins of fame(Every 30 mins has approx. 8 mins break on these channels) of fame. This time, as usual, channels are competing to put up the best cricketing panels to "analyse" the game and they try to do their best and cover every topic - right from the time a cricketer was born to what he ate when he was hungry to which school didn't give him admission.

I must say I like the CNN IBN panel the best with the likes of Sir Viv Richards, Imran Khan, Allan Border , Anil Kumble and not to forget, Murali Karthik - who is there to talk about what current Indian players are like - superhuman superheroes, knights in shining blue armors, "mere paas maa hai" type individuals. As a viewer, I would like to hear what they have to say for maybe 15-20 mins but not for endless hours , both before and after the match! As I said, cricket sells like nothing else in this country. Oh I forgot to add that the other channel showed the "legendary" Bappi Lahiri singing "all the best " for the Indian team. For those who don't know Bappida - he is the golden(literally) man who claimed he should have got the Oscar because he came up with Ramba ho ho ho (a couple of decades back) and AR Rahman recently copied that and created Jai ho !

What was the other significant thing in yesterday's match apart from the fact that I just couldn't watch after an hour of coverage as I got really bored, inspite of Veeru bhai going hammer and tongs on the Banglabandhus ? The ads. The ads were all in the next-gen category with most of the them talking about 2G, 3G, 4G, pepsiji, spriteji and zoozooji. Earlier world cups used to be about tooth powders, Vicco Vajradanti, washing powder nirma and Raymond - since 1925. ( I think I got the year wrong).

Brace yourself for non stop cricket and there is every possibility that by the time June comes along(World cup followed by IPL), many channels would boycott cricket. Ofcourse this ain't possible, so enjoy/get irritated by non-stop cricket for the next 100 days.

About the match itself,on a psychological note, opposition teams might start a mind game saying that Sehwag can't run and gets atleast one or two people out during the time he bats. I don't think anyone would complain about that if he hits 175 every game! But if he doesn't, then the team needs to think of a way to get over that.

Finally will we(Indians) watch the world cup ? Ofcourse ! Will I watch the world cup? Yes . Why ? As this might be Sachin Tendulkar's last world cup and personally, ever since I watched cricket, he was around. You see, I started hearing/learning about cricket/watching/playing cricket when I was 5 years old (1989), exactly the time when Tendulkar started playing for India...so we have a unique connection ! And just because of this, I will watch all those pre-match/post-match "analyser" shows,(but not the Nikhil Chopras and Atul Wassans), the "Ji" ads, the men in shining blue armors and king of them all, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.