THE WORLD CUP FEVER

                                EVERY ONE OF US HAVE Been  aroused with a lot  of  expectation, on the forth coming world cup cricket  There is an update comming up at  every second on the fm radio, the news papers have started reserving full pages to give an elaborate account on the participating players,  and the media is going  to have a good catch covering up the event and also  making   some fast money in the form of advertisements.I had a few calls from people known to me enquiring whether they would get some tickets to watch the match, INCLUDING MY DAUGHTER you see now a days people are willing to spend money on many sporting activities,its more important for them to identify themselves with that elite, affordable,  crowd, which can spend money and be apart of the game. well was life the same  when I grew up?i had to fast forward the events by a few decades. The game cricket was  known to some, definitely my mother never knew about it than(now she is an ardent watcher even curses Indian team when they give up easily.)Well only boys knew about cricket than, they used to play country cricket in different forms,logs used to be  their wickets, sometimes they used  a regular bat and ball(TENNIS) and many times it used to be a make shift bat from the palm branch and palm fruits of various sizes  used to substitute the ball ,leaving a part all these things. the game itself used to be played only in the form of test  matches  ranging to five to six  days . today we have different forms, ODI ,IPL day and night etc.all of us had a common goal that our country team should win.we never had divided interest about players and teams within.  when ever the game was played in India there was  a radio coverage (commentary)of the matches,we used to sit perched to the radio sets to follow the game,many of us had a lot of respect and regards for our players than,we had little idea what they looked like  but the Strong points of each one of them was known to us,kirmani,kapil,yashpal chauan,venkatragavan,ravishastri,  chetan Sharma.binny( just a few to name),each one had a unique standing and every one was important in their own way,listening to a commentary was more difficult  as well as fun, cause you had to simulate the field ,know what is silly point ,slip, mid on, mid off coverdrive lbw  etc ,i.e should have to virtually convert the conversation played into a visual. our best time where, when a match was played in Chennai(madras than)because the commentary used to be in tamil,mathai(bat)veechalar(bowler) and expert comments from ramamoorty were the high lights,coming back to listening program  on the radio,we had only two or three stations giving us the content,vividha bharathi a commercial station being run thro with advertisements,it played both Hindi and Tamil songs till 8 in the morning it was Hindi songs. neyar viruppam from 8 to 10,in the mornings and theen kinnam in the nights many houses used to never have wall clocks to display time,these programs were an indicator of time. we used to set our foot out to school once the radio announced 9.30am.the night programmes  used to be interesting with film songs,followed by tirai chitiram excerpts from films used to be played,we also used to enjoy our Sunday after noons, were we used to have an oli chitiram some family soaps,running to an hour,where some family dhrama was being narrated.the artists used various voice modulations to bring in the emotional content,and,we could get the grip of the play sitting in our small rooms,our imagination grew wilder each one of us would have perceived the chatacters in our own eyes.following this would be a one hour popular programmee,with new film songs,so our listener ship was almost 100 percent.well the first time we had a black and whiteTV  was some times during 1982 coinciding with Olympic games,I think there was a steep increase in sales of solidaire,the most reliable TV of those days, so we also became a proud owner of one ,after the Olympics the content what doordharsan provided the only channel available was sparing and he really had a resource crunch since had to meet every target segment within   the airing time of  12 hours and half the time the content was in Hindi ,yeah my foundation for the little bit of Hindi what I know today is due to courtesy DD,we used to watch every bit of programm ,thou the radio still had its standing.yet another popular program we used to watch on the TV was the weekly news for deaf and dumb which used to come with a subtitle for viewers like us,SOME TIMES DURIND LATE NIGHTS we used to have some spill over coverage of SRILANKA channel RUPAVAHINI which used to air tamil movies or tamil songs to catch this signal there used to be a person on the motta madi turning around the yagi antenna shouting varutha ,eppo,and one tuning the receiver down to atleast have a audio coverage ,but still we did watch this ,because we never had the alternatives of what exist today. your world cup would be on the TV ,you would get alerts from your mobile service provider, sitting where ever you are you may watch the match live or recorded by video streaming on your mobile see them on your computer screens,listen to the update on the multiple FM channels and many of us have the money to spend to get a high end ticket and be apart of the cheer group witnessing your match,but still my childhood and my experience of the world cup matches what we heard on our radio sets were more enthusiastic,SUPERIOR and memorable