Lost and Found !

On a hot and humid April evening in 2011, I had done what a lot of Indian cricket viewers had – switched off the television after Sehwag and Tendulkar had walked back to the Wankhede dressing room. Agonised, I tried to distract myself by picking up a book. But the roars of approval from crowds huddled around television sets at the local clubs in the by lanes of Kolkata started increasing in frequency and intensity. With trepidation I switched the telly back on and let it remain that way till Ravi Shastri's excited voice described Dhoni's victory scythe. I thought I had seen it all – a World Cup win in 2007 which no one expected and then the one in 2011 which everyone expected but took a lot of hard work.?

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With that I inexplicably entered a period where I stopped avidly following cricket for nearly a decade. Yes – a decade. I have absolutely no memories of any cricketing campaign in this intervening period – whether Indian or otherwise. Yes, I knew Kohli was turning into the lean, mean, hungry fighting machine, I read in passing about "Remember the Name" and I did spend some time on understanding what happened in "Sandpaper Gate". Like Rip Wan Vinkle I slept through the Nidhas?Trophy fireworks, Ashwin's dominance, Hitman's 200s, Jaddu's magic, victories of Mumbai Indians, the ban on CSK and the emergence of stop-gap arrangements of Pune and Gujarat having IPL teams. However, if there is one thing that I regret missing during this period would be the emergence of India as a formidable test playing nation with a battery of fast bowlers winning matches for us.??

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A brief flirtation with the sport kindled in the 2019 World Cup where I remember Kuldeep Yadav's magical delivery to castle Babar Azam's stumps and that agonising semi-final heartbreak for India and the even bigger heartbreak for NZ in the finals. The feelings subsided and it took the COVID era to make me start following cricket – once again. It was an inauspicious start – the 36 at Adelaide. It was a time when all of us needed something to believe in and I kept at it. And my belief was not in vain – the joy that the next 3 test matches brought kept my spirits alive for a long time.?

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Since then I have followed cricket with the old zeal of the past – but maybe a bit more maturity and stoicism. This seems to be right era to get back to the game – globalisation at a rapid pace and players constantly reinventing themselves in. While folks talk about how sport unites, I have another observation. Sport is the only time that atheists turn into fervent devotees and rationalists embrace superstition. My superstition – I?never watch the live telecast of?India's matches – I?keep refreshing the scorecards on cricinfo or google or watch the in-match highlights. When I broke this rule [which I often do] during the recently concluded World Cup in the semi-final, Shami ended up spilling a catch. Never again put the interests of the team in jeopardy !!!?

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"Lost and Found" - the phrase never felt sweeter !!!?

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