World Cup
England, 1975
In the first edition of the ICC cricket world cup, the ‘Black Cat’ and his men were unstoppable. In fact, it was Clive Lloyd, whose counter-attacking 102 off 85 balls set West Indies on the way in the final to 291 in 60 overs. A young Viv Richards scored three run-outs to derail the Australian retort and the West Indies won by seventeen runs to win the first World Cup.
India was expected to do well in the Wills World cup ’96. Never before was there such euphoria for any event. Not that I knew of. I remember that advertisement in which Mongia, Kambli and two other Indian cricketers used their four-square bats to win the boating race against boats loaded with the pro-Mallus.
In an era of brash,young aggressive Indian cricketers like Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh and Sreesanth, it is a calming influence to know that you have someone like VVS in your team.
I felt so disappointed after India lost to Sri Lanka in the Tri Nation Idea Cup. Not because India lost. But for the fact that I did not feel disappointed after India lost. For me, it was just another ODI, just another India-Sri Lanka match. Tharanga, Dilshan, Sehwag, Kohli, Sanga, Yuvraj blah blah blah.
No, I am not getting Americanized, I have not started losing interest in cricket. I watched the Aus-Pak test (Sydney Test) with utmost interest and also updating my “what you feel like” status on Facebook during the match! I followed the Eng-Sa tests with so much more interest. I want to talk about a few of issues here, all of them related to ODI cricket:
1) Too much ODI cricket and improper planning.
2) Empowering bowlers/ De-powering batsmen.
3) Changing the format of the game to remove the monotony from ODIs.