A brief history of cricket

A long time ago, an English man came up with a bright idea to scratch himself in public. He called it ‘Cricket’. And since it also involved a lot of spitting on the ball, it was natural that cricket became very popular in India where spitting is a national sport. We practice it everywhere, through bus windows, while walking, when talking about politicians and so on.

Over time cricket evolved into a fiercely competitive team sport. The players from the batting side would guard themselves behind heavy armory. Meanwhile, all the team members of the bowling side would get involved in the public display of affection towards the cricket ball. I dread to think of what may have happened if this habit had spread to other sports like say shot-put or worse....javelin throw.

Initially, cricket was restricted to what are called ‘test matches’ where a game could last many days and end without a result. Sometimes the players having played for what seemed like years would die of sheer exhaustion and had to be cremated even as the game went on. This is how the famed ‘Ashes’ series came into existence.

However, as it became more difficult to find replacement players during the game and also due to the rising cost of urns, a modified version of the game was needed. That was when somebody named Kerry Packer had a brilliant brainwave and invented colored clothing because he was finding it difficult to explain to his kids why the bowlers always had red marks around their crotch area. Incidentally, he also introduced one day cricket where the game got over in just a day.

This was an instant hit with the public since they could now buy smaller popcorn bags and could leave their bedding at home. But since these matches were played during the day, the heat during summer months became a major problem.

So yet another format change resulted in day-night matches. This helped popularize the sport among insomniacs as well. But there were frequent complaints by the teams regarding the inability to sight the ball during nights. After considerable discussions and brainstorming, the organizers realized that things worked better if they switched on the flood lights.

But cricket was still limited to very few countries. Even the one day version was considered too long to get other countries interested in it. There was something missing, something that could capture the imagination of millions worldwide and that something was...yeah, you guessed it right, skimpily clad cheerleaders !!!. Since it was quite tiring for the cheerleaders to be dancing the whole eight hours, cricket was reduced to three hours. The new version is called twenty-twenty where each side gets to play twenty overs each.

And we just finished a T20 tournament involving a whole lot of advertisements and product placements. Not to mention, the insane amounts of money each cricketer made.

And do you know who won ?. Well, neither do I. But I do know which soap to use, which toothpaste to buy, which bike to ride, which car to drive and which soda to drink...