My eyes were drowsy after a heavy lunch on a weekend, but do not want to close my eyes as my thought was running over to switch on the television at 2:30PM. Never regularly followed the game the country loves after my school, but this particular cricket match is different.
It is the ICC World Cup 2011 finals with India vs Sri Lanka. Whole nation, media, Indian citizens across the world kept their fingers crossed to win the world cup this time.
Opened my eyes with a sudden thought judging it must be time to wake up to switch on the TV. Lazy to get up in a tiring sleep, looked at the watch and rushed towards the TV to know who won the toss. Little pessimistic over the toss with Lanka choosing to bat first.
Always not much interested to watch the other team bat, so opened my laptop and started browsing with a glance to the TV now and then for the score. With the Lankans struggling to get the ball to the boundary, started murmuring to get a wicket for every ball from the Indian bowlers.
My mother came after sometime during the end of the Srilanka batting and started following the score. We both were enjoying the match with the hope that Indian can get the score, that was when the Lankans screwed the hope of entire Indian fans in the last 5 overs with the high score of 275 to win.
All TV channels screwed the Indian captain of his decisions, making everyone worry about the world cup win. This drama glued everyone in front of the TV, giving way to hassle free traffic jams in the road, no crowd in the cinema halls and shopping malls.
Indians started playing with a great hope and power; disappointing the Indian crowd on the second ball to lose an important wicket, which might have made most of them to switch off the TV. :-) Another wicket on the crucial player shattered the hope of world cup at that point of time. I guess most of them would have started doing their own work to be away from following the score. My mother & I moved away from the television to carry on with our work but leaving it on for updates.
Neverthless, the captain sketched the true captaincy in the world cup with the glorious win which cannot be explained by words. It was around 11PM, before the last ball to win the second world cup for the nation, crackers bursted the sky with rocket, colors, noise in the neighbourhood. My mother screamed on the victory with the last sixer which made us run to the verandh to see the colorful sky with beautiful crackers bursting. The match made every individual shout with joy by becoming world champions.
Switched off the television after 9.5 hours and started to continue my sleep with the thought of the glorious win which I have seen after my birth.