Numero uno in test cricket - Congratulations!

It was yet another day, when I saw the entire set of officers and staff of my directorate either crowding in front of the LCD screen or around the cellphone which was giving a ball-by-ball description of the game, eagerly waiting with bated breath for the result of the second cricket test match between India and South Africa, played at Calcutta’s lovely Eden Garden. The anxiety was especially palpable in the last fifteen overs when there was just one more wicket to fall. Normal work in the office had come to a grinding halt, every ball that went past without earning a wicket was greeted with shaking of heads in utter disgust but the choicest of epithets were reserved for any sort of misfielding and mind you, everyone had some advice or the other to give to Dhoni for wrapping up the game as quickly as possible.
By saying all this, I’m not trying to say that I was different, being much superior to the rest and that, these things did not matter to me. It’s ingrained in me that if I were to closely follow the game, the Indians had a propensity to lose and therefore, always prefer to hear the good news later on. And there’s another angle to my present approach to cricket as a game.
Many years back, while I was at school, I was a member of the school cricket team and had won matches by the sheer strength of my batting and leg spin bowling. It was this halo that I carried with me into the NDA. Sometime, within the first week of my first term, we were assembled at the squadron grounds and our sixth term appointments were eager to know as to what games we had played and excelled in. When my turn came, the moment I’d uttered ‘cricket’, our CSM- Cadet Sergeant Major-Anil Kumar Rai gave me one tight whack on my shins, with a hockey stick, saying that I should never say it again as he was only interested in guys who played troop games like football, hockey and basketball which fetched points for the squadron on the Inter Squadron championships. The acute pain in my shin (though I was given immediate medical attention) with blood trickling from the wound brought instant tears to my eyes- but concealed it to the best of my ability because I did not want those guys to think that they’d cowed me down- but something deep within me, my immense love for cricket snapped that instant. Over the years, I’ve played and organized many cricket matches, but the adrenaline rush all through me that I used to experience during my schooldays, has always been missing!
Anyways, back to the present, congratulations to the Indian cricket team for retaining the number one position in the world, in test cricket!!