Cricket - an acquired taste

Gartmore Estate, Maskeliya, Sri Lanka

Cricket has always been a part of my life, just like black tea. While I have grown to appreciate tea for its flavour, scent and taste, I can’t say I feel the same way about cricket. But the world cup this year has me feeling all nostalgic. I miss the excitement of a whole nation going bonkers about a game that takes an entire day from start to finish. I kind of prefer the thrill of rugby and soccer where you get to see more action in a shorter span of time.

But this year there is a lot of cricket talk going on in the world of social networking which, as far as I am concerned is limited to facebook. And all this cricket talk has me following the matches. All my cricket crazy cousins, new friends and old ones are commenting on teams and players and every now then talking about lousy rain forcing players off the field. I just bookmarked the ICC World Cup website. I can’t help it.

That'll do for a pitch

For people who know me well this may sound funny because there was a time when you had to pay me to follow a match, literally. I would only ever do it for money and even then I never got it right. I never understood when a match was won by runs and when it was won by wickets. But I get it now, all these years later and when it really doesn’t matter whether I follow a match or not. Sounds like I have acquired a taste for it after all.

The next generation of cricketers