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CRANK'S CORNER

        I don't know about you. But if I were you I wouldn't be reading this. Staying up all night watching cricket, going to bed when the milkman is about to knock at the door and then waking up wondering what is the bulldozer trying to do inside your forehead, the last thing you would want is a few hundred words trying pretentiously to be funny. On the other hand, if you were me, you wouldn't be writing this. Yes, the same cricket would be to blame. But why do we all stay up all night to know Scotland losing to the Netherlands and Kenya getting the better of Canada and then turn up for work feeling like having contracted a hangover for life? There is no answer to this. Cricket does this to even the sanest of us. After all, it is the game where you have two sides — one out in the field and one out. Each man in the side that is in goes out and when he is out he comes in and the next man goes in until he is out. When they are all out the side that is out comes in and the side that has been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. That is the game in a nutshell. Charu Sharma cannot better this description.

        Anyway, there may many amongst us who would have bunked exams to watch Sunil Gavaskar bat while even the seats in the stadium yawned or see Kapil Dev bowling with only his own spirit for support. We loved Gavaskar, Kapil and the rest of them. But more importantly, we romanced the game more than anything else and that is why we didn't go about damaging their properties whenever India lost, which, by the way, was quite regularly.

        Writing about cricket now is a huge risk in another sense. At the moment of writing, the India versus Sri Lanka match has not yet started. If India fails to put it past the doughty Lankans, most of India would go into a mourning, thinking the cricketers to be a bigger enemy than perhaps Dawood Ibrahim. While the irascible among the fans would be looking for players' property to be destroyed or set fire to (no realistic Indian cricketer would set out for a World Cup campaign without a double insurance on his house). If India wins, the same set of men will be seen as valiant conquerors. Quite simply, a defeat entails all hell breaking loose. A win will lead to all heaven, breaking loose.

        The situation was not like this in our growing up years. To follow cricket then was an exercise attempted only by the true faithfuls. It is not a fair-weather religion as it has become now. To have been a fan then was a desperately masochist exercise as India seldom won anything of worth. They were not even underdogs. Underpuppies would be more like it. To root for them was like hoping Nambiar to outsmart MGR and get the girl. And then the 1983 World Cup flukey victory happened. It was not so much Nambiar triumphing as much as Nagesh getting the better of all. And then cricket and those watching it have slowly metamorphosed beyond recognition. We have now come to a stage where even buxom bimbettes, whose IQ on cricket is lesser than the clothes that they wear, sit in judgement on Tendulkar's cover drive or Kumble's wrong 'un.

        My simple and infallible research (which is checking with those sitting with me) tells that cricket these days is popular because Mandira Bedi is. She was desperately close to winning the player of the tournament last time around and actually may have helped you sit through when Charu Sharma was trying desperately to sound like the man who invented cricket and sold it to the TV channels (by the way, what is it about Charu's accent and voice that makes you wonder whether he is speaking with his head fully fitted inside a hollow pot).

        Talking of last World Cup, those who remember Sachin's smashing six off Shoaib, which set everyone's imagination rising, just raise your hands, One, two, three....that makes it fourteen of us. Those of you who vividly recall the deliciously thin noodle straps on Mandira, which by the way left nothing to imagination, put your hands up. One, two...well that makes all of us.

        See, I set out to write on cricket, but have focussed on luscious Mandira for most of two paragraphs. Mandira, more than cricket, does this even to the insane among us. And you get nothing more insane than an edition of Crank's Corner. In this cricket season, it is crazier than even Mandira.

        Hah, here I go again!