Essay on Cricket

Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties. I have heard this phrase on the television a number of times but could never quite decipher, what it actually meant. I had always been a big fan of the sport. Had all the knowledge about the game, players, past records and on a few occasions I would even get a few match predictions correct. I loved the game and often wondered why people go hammer and tongs behind the game and criticize it for the way it is played. I used to play the sport on a frequent basis until recently, when I finally landed myself a job. I used to live alone in Mumbai at a one-room flat in the suburbs. I had moved out of my hometown in central Maharashtra to Mumbai to earn a living. I borrowed money from my extended family and a few friends so that I could procure a place to live and maybe use it for personal expenses for a couple of weeks. I had to face trying times and heavy cost cutting till I finally got the job of an assistant reporter for a popular news channel, running on the tube). Needless to say, I wanted to become a sports journalist. The working atmosphere and the unrelenting energy of my seniors at the workplace took me by storm. I realized that one needs more than just the love for the game to report on it. I worked on my vocabulary, the body language, and observed other big names in the field of journalism to enhance my presentation as a reporter. Within a few months of getting into the job, I had the opportunity to interview some of the biggest names that had played for India and a few bright future prospects too. I was star struck and dumbfounded whenever I came face to face with these cricketing 'gods' but a couple of questions down the line, you come to realize that they are human too and it is what they do on the field that makes them godly. All this and I was getting paid a handsome salary for the work that I did. I knew this was what I wanted all my life and I could not ask for anything more.

On an October sunny morning, I was at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai, covering the test match between India and South Africa. It had been a pretty dull match yet since the pitch was belter for the batsmen and the result was predictable (a draw!). I was bored to death, sitting in the Press Box trying to write an article that sounded different than the one I had written during the previous four days. Runs were scored aplenty and the bowlers were getting thrashed to all the parts of the part. I sipped on some tea while reading the newspaper. The sports section had an editorial written by a prominent social critic about the perils of the commercialization of the game of cricket in our country and the hovering dangers of match fixing. I looked up to catch the latest happenings on the field. The Indian batsman hit a four. The South African pace man mouthed a four letter expletive and returned to the bowling mark. "No signs of match fixing here", I thought.