A Cricket fan speaks out about his love for the sport
THIS IS WHY I LOVE CRICKET...
Sports has to an integral part of one’s life. Doesn’t really matter whether you play it or just enjoy it as a viewer .I have loved sports from as long as I can remember .But I particularly got hooked on to cricket .
A 19 year old kid ,from a land that’s known for the terrorism that it has faced over the years was recently in the News .But guess what !He wasn’t in the news for a evil work that had done .He was actually in the news because the Indian Minister of External Affairs ,Sushma Swaraj tweeted about the giving this kid an Indian Citizenship .This 19 year old kid is none other than the No.1 T20 bowler Rashid Khan . One of the rare cases where the people from Afghanistan were getting joy because their son was making their land and everyone proud of the magic he was displaying in the international circuit of Cricket .Recently a terror attack took leaving a handful dead at a cricket stadium in Afghanistan .And a 19 old boy is restoring their joy not with the use of arms or ammunitions but with the use of a ball .Another similar example is when a 16 year old kid Mujeeb Ul Rahman completely foxed the world no.1 batsman Virat Kohli .The dismissal is one which you would never experience again .A boy who isn’t even an adult completely amazes the best batsman in the world .This is why I love Cricket
The Indian Premier League was highly criticized in its early days because of the fact that two players from the same nations actually played against each other .This wasn’t acceptable to some critics .They argued that this would create a sense of rivalry among the teammates .This argument was strongly supported because of an incident that took place where Harbhajan Singh slapped Shreesanth in the middle of the field .But this was just one side of the coin .The other side was yet to be seen .And finally that day came wherein a match between KXIP and MI ,the two friends Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul were seen exchanging jerseys of their respective teams .That day it did not matter who won or who lost ,the celebration was because cricket won .A similar incident took place after the finals of the WC Qualifier .Afghanistan had outplayed two times world champion WI in a promised thriller .The legendary WI batsman Chris Gayle was seen enjoying the celebrations with the opposition skipper Mohammad Shezhad .Again the winner did not matter here ,all that mattered was that a a nation had left its mark into World Cricket .This is why I love Cricket .
A funny picture had gone viral during the SA v IND test series .This picture showed proteas skipper Faf duPlessis giving a kiss on the forehead to star bowler Kagiso Rabada .Hardik Pandya has scored a magnificent 97 in the first innings and he was the only person who take the game away from the proteas .And that’s exactly when Kagiso got through his gritty defense giving SA a massive breakthrough .Kagiso is a black African and those who have followed SA cricket for some time would recon that Black Africans haven’t had a easy time getting into the national side .Conversely the first ever black African to make it into the SA side was Makhaya Ntini who played hardly a decade ago .From not allowing Black Africans to play in their side ,to kissing a black African for his efforts ,SA has come a long way and cricket has unarguably been the predominant reason .This is why I love cricket .
All this is fine .But what if I tell you that cricket had an important hand in granting Indian freedom from the colonizers .Sounds bizarre right ? Let me explain .The Indians saw in cricket a cultural tool to reassert their hurt self-esteem and injured masculinity .At the time when the ills of an unequal political and economic structure threw up contradictions ,cricket provided a stage to level things up .Whenever the Indian tried to take on the colonizers we were always left back in arms ,resources etc .But on the cricket field everyone had a bat and only one ball to play with .And the when the Indians defeated the British in a game of cricket ,it gave the Indians an hope to beat them in the real world .Cricket gave the 19th Century Indians a belief that they can overthrow they can defeat the colonizers and that’s exactly what they did in 1947 .A sport gave a group of people the belief that they can fight for their freedom .This is what cricket can do and that’s exactly why I love this beautiful sport .
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