We are a fan!

A wrong sentence certainly, one that my grammar teacher would have a fit over, but precisely the sentiment. We don’t care if you have spent a decade and a half giving to cricket what no one before you have done. We don’t care because we have given you in return even more than that. We gave you sleepless nights watching you play at all the odd hours, we have had marital tensions for that. We have at times neglected our families, our jobs. We have postponed our grocery shopping, lived off pizza.

So when we ask that our team respect our love, we are not asking much. We are in fact asking what is our due. We are not fair weather friends too. Far from it, we have seen you with strings of bad scores before and we have still said you are the best.

When it is time to go, don’t pout like Ganguly did, don’t have that hurt ex-pression on face like Laxman as if we have committed an unbearable crime against you. We have not.

Yesterday you did. Not for being out, but for the manner in which you were.

Yesterday before the match you said you have been playing well, it is not that there is anything wrong with your batting, that it was an odd good ball…

Odd good ball?

I don’t know if am sad or angry, maybe a little bit of both. I don’t watch cricket and analyze it like some of my friends here do, I just watch it, I fall into the pits of despair when my team shows no spine, I stand tall, grim faced when we lose but after have fought tooth and nail for it, I jump up in jubilation when we win.