Saurav Ganguly, the Greatest Indain Cricket Captain- and me..

This post is completely dedicated to Saurav Ganguly. If u are an indian and heard about a game called cricket, ( is there indians who dont know cricket?) you will know him well enough. Well, this isn't a post to describe the feats he achieved or the mountains he conquered. Its about a girl for whom cricket meant SAURAV GANGULY.

Till 10th i was a passive cricket fan. I know thats too late for an indian to get enamoured with the game. But after my 10th, i became an avid cricket viewer and a die hard Ajay Jadeja fan[it was his youthfulness and good looks, and cricket, in that perticular order]. Then, my li'l brother, who was into cricket from when he started watching TV and started understanding anything, was a wikipedia in cricket and a faithful fan of the then-new-player Saurav. I held on to my ajay till around 12th, when the betting scam came out. then i shifted gears to Sachin for a short time. Then, Saurav was captain and my bro still worshipped the soil he walked on.

Thus, we were both happy cricket crazy nut cases. We are 5 years apart, but we always found an age in between to adjust to, when we were young. More of that was me, who behaved like a little boy collecting cards and making books with news cuttings along with my kid bro. Then, i dunno the exact reason, i started liking Ganguly. May be its because of his arrogance (he says he isnt, but arrogant men are sexy if they aren't yours), or the fact that Sachin tried to take captaincy, or some unfathomable reason, Ganguly, for me became Sourav. Two drastic things happened at once. My saurav admirer of a brother became a Sachin fan and joined an I-Hate-Saurav club, and Saurav's magical form started to disappear. The first was due as we both never like the same person, as a scope of argument dies there. Thus, me small town girl started worshipping Saurav the Prince of Kolkata, King of Off side. And the second, i dunno.I didnt see anything wrong in this obscession.

Then i went to college. At college, the juniors were never allowed to set foot in TV room, and even if that happened, touching the remote was another matter. So, my future with cricket and Dada looked like a tunnel with no lights. So, many a matches went with me rushing to morning news papers to find the news. [My seniors, well, many of them were idiotic bitches, whose TV IQ was limited to regional films and soaps]. Then I in the midst, i searched for a co-conspirator, to make impossibles happen. So, there was this girl,i found, who was funny friendly and loved saurav and cricket and knew the game more than me. (Hey, i was really good in the game and its all aspects then.so, someone better meant the best.) Unlike other cricket watching girls who watched it to sigh at cute boys, the game meant something to us, and we started to talk hours on the game, and Dada, bitched Sachin together [her bro also loved him], and we became friends. Thus, saurav gained me Di, my final word for friendship. [ as there were two girls in our batch with Di's name, everyone started calling her Ganguly, it got stuck even after the second di went away from our college. Still, many calls her that.]

Then, along with a senior friend of ours, we started attacking the TV room. We became bold enough to criticize people who watched silly TV programmes when a live match[test too] went on. We asked friends to come support us (many a times i had to drag a sleeping H to TV room), and in time, the people who watched regular cricket increased and we bacame like Navjyot Singh Sidhu and Harsha Bhogle to them.

The Tv room hold so many memories.. The fights we won, the matches, the excitement, the perticular places to sit for us which were crucial for the indian win, the world cup, the jokes, the sachin bashing when ambu was present [her cricket begins and ends with sachin], the roars, the cries, the mad grin, the rushes in between to the mess, the nick names, the newspapers which began in sports column... And the most memorable ones would be of the fights for Saurav, against sachin supporters and others who just hated him because we loved him(Actually loving Saurav knowing 2 crazy fans like us would be impossible, as we bored everyone to death with his stories all the time). Those fights in which we shouted, bled, stormed off and 90% of the time, WON :)

Then, as the days went on exams and crisises came, course became tough, schedule tight and then the worst, Dada was dropped from the team. And we stopped watching Cricket. I mean, cricket existed for me before him, but how could i loose interest in a game just because one player stopped playing? yet it happened. i still liked Kaif, Yuvi, Irfan, Zaheer, Sehwag...yet it just wasnt enough. Cricket without saurav is like 'Lays' without salt. Not complete. Then i went into other sports- football during the world cup, tennis during many cups, and shifted to Nadal and Juan Requelme. And i stayed an F1 viewer.

Thus cricket was on the verge of an exit from my life, then HE CAME BACK. Thus came back the match craze, the schedule posters in room prior to every tournament and the averages, strike rates and the whole statitics. We were back and were loving it. He was in such a good form..

And then there was final exams and all the shite associated with it, and later the IPL was announced, and i was so sure about which is my team. The only doubt was whether i would pick kolkata/ saurav. then they both came in a parcel. Then i was afraid which team SRK will pick, as i loved him too, then the 3 came in a package called Kolkata Knight Riders. And That Is One Heck Of A Team. It will also be a very special team for me, but the associated memories will be more connected to home, arguments with bro(mumbai indians) and cousins(chennai Super Kings), mom making fun of me for crying when KKR lost any games, Orkut, our community and Rudra, and my phone calls with Di.

Today, my friend Rudra scrapped me of Saurav's retirment, i thought it was a joke. I've heard the grapevine, yet Dada retiring? Unfathomable. To Me. The Question is, Will the cricket go on? it will. for me? I am not sure. There will always be IPL and KKR, but it feels like a part of me is retiring too. The cool cricket loving girl, the one who had a book with all the statitics, the one cared for what someone said about Dada, the one who was interviewd by a major paper once as one of the most into-cricket girls in our college, the one who was so silly, she cried for days after world cup...

Guys, the passionate, crazy, cricket and Sourav loving Small_town Girl is retiring.