I vividly remember how I was introduced
to cricket while I was a middle school student. My father used to listen to the
running commentary of various sports events. Although he was not a sportsman at
any stage of his life he was very fond of following sports events, reading
sports magazines and keeping himself update with latest sports news. Football,
Hockey and Cricket used to be his favorites.
I was never a sports lover and hardly went to play outdoor
games except during the games period in the school when all students were
forced to go to the field to play some game like football, Volleyball,cricket
etc. Thus I had some vague ideas of how cricket was played but I had never
developed any liking for the game. But my father used to listen to the running
commentary of cricket matches with awesome regularity. One Sunday afternoon
when he was relaxing on his bed with the only transistor that we had, glued to
his ear I ran to him and asked for the radio to listen to my favorite programme
of film songs. He asked me to get a piece of paper and pencil and sit down with
him. I thought probably he would give me some mathematical problems to solve
and protested, “No I will not study now. Please give me the radio. You are
listening for the last 4 hours. Let me listen for half an hour.” He laughed
affectionately and said, “No, No I am not asking you to study. I will teach you
the game of cricket and how to keep the scores.” I reluctantly sat near him.
The test series between India and England was going on. My father wrote down
the names of the Indian batsmen: Gavaskar, Gaekwad, Amarnath, Viswanath, Brijeash
Patel, Kirmani, Bedi, Chandrasekhar……. etc. Then he told me that Gavaskar and
Viswanath were batting at that time and India had scored something like 102 for
two wickets. He then listened carefully when a loud noise emanated from the
radio and added a +4 to Gavaskar’s score. After some time there was another
noise and he wrote “out” against the name of Viswanath. Somehow I forgot about
my film songs programme and sat with my father listening to the commentary.
This was how I was initiated to cricket commentary and from that day onwards I always
tried to listen to the same. Within a very short span of time I got addicted to
it and started missing my studies/tuition, bunking my classes to listen to the
cricket commentary and keeping scores and statistics. There were a couple of my
class mates who were equally addicted and we three became fast friends. One of
them had a small pocket transistor which he used to bring to the school and we
were caught on several occasions by teachers listening to the radio with very
low volume. On one or two occasions we were driven out of the class and our
parents informed about the “offence” but the cricket fever never went down.
As
I grew up and as technology advanced I graduated from transistor radio to
Television. After joining my job I used to take a leave to watch India’s World
cup matches in 1987.And today with the advent of the smart phone I am always in
touch with the latest scores without missing my important assignments and all
other little things that matter in my life. Over all these years since I was
initiated by my father my addiction for cricket has not diminished at all. I am
really happy that UC Browser’s UC Cricket will be a very useful tool for me and
ardent cricket fans like me.
I have already downloaded UC Browser
on my laptop and my phone. If you are interested then follow the links below:
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