12 years ago, when Sanath Jayasuriya blasted that 48-ball hundred in the Singer Cup at Singapore, I turned cricket-crazy. The ‘96 World Cup had come and gone, India bowed out of it in that tearjerker of a semi-final at Calcutta and a sensational Sri Lankan team took the cake but I was all oblivious. But on that day, when Jayasuriya belted Aamir Sohail for four consecutive sixes and made the then fastest one-day hundred, I was hooked, for life. My Hindi annual exam was ruined but it now holds the honour of being the first of the many tests wrecked by cricket matches ;). My brother turned cricket-crazy a couple of years later, most probably when Sachin Tendulkar gifted himself the Coca-Cola cup on his 26th birthday in ‘98 at Sharjah. So, what do we love about the game?

We love it when:

• Ian Chappell’s “You know it when the time comes” thumb rule of retirement targeted at Sachin causes at least 5 Aussie players to retire.
• Sachin hits that straight drive.
• Someone “takes the aerial route”.
• Ravi Shastri supports Team X when India plays against Team X.
• Sehwag, when on 6 or 60 or 94 or 194, hits the ball “if it’s there to be hit”.
• Ricky Ponting gets a duck. For that matter, when Hayden, Clarke, Symonds.. anyone gets a duck :)
• Australia loses.
• Australians “clinch victory from the jaws of defeat and show the world why they are No.1 team in the world”.
• Jayasuriya flicks the ball off his pads for a six.
• Chris Gayle “goes on a rampage”.
• Shivnarine Chanderpaul “makes a patient fifty/hundred while the rest of the team fall like a pack of cards“.
• Sachin Tendulkar tells us how he “thought the ball was coming onto the bat and..”
• Sanjay Manjrekar is hated by one and all for his holier-than-though (yet, sometimes correct) comments.
• Shoiab Akthar plays.
• Steve Bucknor is compared to Stevie Wonder.
• Someone calls a monkey a monkey.
• India wins :)
• At some cricket field somewhere in the world, someone bowls, someone bats and we watch them do that all day and all is well with the world.

This blog is for us to

• Bookmark our favorite matches, moments and comments.
• Voice out our laym(f)an’s perspectives on all things cricket.
• Have some fun!

What do you love about cricket? :)