Yes, you read it right, we’re becoming cricket fans, this sport, absolutely ignored by the rest of the world, except a dozen of countries. In India, this is a second religion for many and it’s one of the most visible English legacy. This sport is everywhere, from the kids playing in the street (even if that should be one the most difficult sport to play in the street) to the main stadiums in cities, it’s the king of sports, far away in front of the football which is barely emerging.

At the beguining, we were more in that mood concerning cricket: “it seems to be very similar to base-ball”, “it sound very boring” “you have to be crazy to be able to play games that last multiple days”, “how can we call that a sport, they barely move on the field!”… Yes, the Indian head bobble, we’re able to catch it after a few months, but the Indian cricket passion, it’s beyond the cultural chock.

Except that every year, for 5-6 years now, the cricket is transforming itself when the IPL (Indian Premiere League) season is starting. IPL is to cricket what NBA is to basket-ball: a big and fat show regrouping all the best players on earth mixed with all the usual sport-show ingredients: big brands sponsoring, movie (Bollywood here) stars, big industrial bosses and cheerleaders! The rules traditionnaly followed in cricket are also changed to the T20 ones where games are “only” lasting for 3-4 hours.
Last year, a bit sceptical, I already tried to watch a game of the local Bangalore club, the “RCB” (Royal Challengers Bangalore). But it finally rained and the game was cancelled.

This year, we tried our luck again with friends and we were really well treated with one of the most tight game since the beguining of the season between Bangalore and Delhi. Without going into details, just imagine that even if they have very high scores, the final score was finally a draw, 154-154, which is pretty rare. And, of course, we (yes we are RCB followers now) won during the extra-time (a “super-over”). So that was really exciting and stressful at the end (even if we don’t forget the 3 first hours where you don’t mind getting food and missing some balls…).

Since then, we don’t miss the cricket page in the newspaper and we even follow some part of the games on TV. Last week, for instance, the RCB has done a fabulous game breaking several records of the IPL and even cricket history at the same time, thanks, mainly, to Chris Gayle, an awesome Jamaican player. All my colleagues were watching the game in the meeting room, and so I was!