Getting on the frontfoot

Well, there you go. First blog post - ever - and already a billion cricketing references. For those slow on the uptake, yeah, I love cricket. I've rarely played the game - I'm more of a tennis player - but watching the truckload of international cricket played every year for the past few years, and getting my admittedly sentimental, and er, romantic soul swept away by the cricket frenzy that spreads across the country so often, I've become a diehard fan. Seriously. And the eye-candy that the game generously offers also helps, yeah.

A real cricket fangirl.

A few things, though. Firstly, I'm not going to be overly technical. I can't. I can't go on about seam positions and hand grips and middle stump guards and top-spinners and crumbling pitches and such-like. What I can do, however, is offer a perspective. A reasonably knowledgable one. I don't know whether it'll be unique or any such thing, but hey, like everybody, I get opinions, and also, like everybody, I like expressing them at every possible opportunity.

Like every devoted fangirl, I manage to dock a bit of time everyday for catching up on everything cricket. One thing I have noticed about general commentary on the game is how freakin' pessimistic people seem to get while talking about the state of the game. How nostalgia seems to exude out of the computer screen and hit me like a tidal wave. Well, you know what? I'm not like that. I only started following cricket in 2003, and seriously fangirling it only from 2005. So, yeah. I don't remember the 'Tendulkar-is-our-only-God' era, or the pre-match-fixing era, or the Ganguly's-awesome-start-as-captain era. Or even much of the Great Middle Order era (though some of Dravid's innings in Australia and Pakistan still cling in my mind as vestiges of a magnificent memory). I started following the Indian team as it is HERE AND NOW. And I'm excited! (Mind you, I still have no love lost for the ICC or the BCCI. >.<)

There're a lot of things I love and hate about the game and everybody involved in it, so this blog came to life. Everything needs a start, though, and what better way to start this baby than the Australian tour of India this year? First Test starts just 3 days from now, and the hype... well, it's been magnificent. There're a lot of things that're being said, and predicted, and such-like, but the excitement this time is rather... understated. Both teams are what experts like to call 'in a state of flux' and what I'd like to call 'having their personal shitload of problems', and how they overcome that, or whether they will it all, is something nobody is sure of - not even the players themselves. So there's nothing unnecessarily acidic flying around - both countries are too busy criticising their own teams.

The imminent retirement of the Middle Order Plus Spinner-Captain, whether Badrinath gets the Opportunity, the performance of Amit Mishra and the pace attack, whether Dhoni finally gets some Big Test Innings under his belt and seals his candidature for Test captaincy as well, whether Ricky Ponting will finally find the form that always deserts him in India, whether Krejza or White turn overnight Warnes or get ripped apart at the seams by the Middle Order, the Harbhajan vs Australia fights, probable verbal spats, delicious controversy... I could go on. There is just so much to look forward to.

I love, I mean, ahem, hate cricketing cliches, but dudes, seriously. Test cricket is so alive.

... If only Bangladesh weren't getting their asses handed over to them each and every time.

I'm going to look forward to blogging about this obsession of mine. Then what's the "life" and "fantasy", you ask? They're there because they sounded good.

Seriously.