Cricket World Cup Diary
1999 It is raining heavily in Ooty. We are rushing inside the hotel we are staying in. I catch sight of a Sportstar Cricket World Cup Special edition in the newsstand and pester my mother to get me a copy. I read every page of it with the help of a LIFCO dictionary. I memorise statistics like Saeed Anwar’s 194. Later, when we get back to Salem, we collect Britannia and Pepsi booklets about the World Cup. Even in 2023, when I dream about the 1999 World Cup in my sleep, it is not about cricket. Where did all those Britannia booklets go ? 2003 We are in eighth standard now. India is performing poorly till Tendulkar, the balm of the nation, applies himself on the wounds. In the final, Australia scores 359/2 but our locality in Salem brims with hope because Tendulkar is yet to bat. He gets out in the first over, the entire boys (and few girls) of Raja Nagar come out to the streets and crib about what-ifs. The next day, a rumor somehow spreads across the entire nation (long before Whatsapp o
