Fans, not fanatics

Let us resolve, as a nation, and as fans of the game, to stop caring so desperately about cricket

- ANUJA CHAUHAN

Let's not even pretend that we aren't sore losers. Way back in 1996, when Sri Lanka stormed into the semis of the Wills World Cup playing an audacious, revolutionary game nobody had ever seen before, the Indian fans at Eden Gardens, fresh from defeating Pakistan in the quarter final, behaved like spoilt, petulant brats whose Diwali firecrackers had been snatched away unceremoniously and dunked into the Palk Strait.

India had been chasing a doable target of 252 and when they started collapsing like bicycles in a stand, fans (one man, I clearly remember, was dressed as Sri Ram himself, a novelty back then) set a section of the stadium on fire and pelted the outfield with fruits and water bottles. Warnings were issued and the match resumed, but so did the pelting, with the result that match referee Clive Lloyd called off the game and awarded it to Sri Lanka (We were 8/120 in 34 overs, so it was all over anyway, really.)

To be fair, nobody had expected Sri Lanka to be so kick-ass. They were a dark horse, back then, so much so that none of their players even featured in the multi-starrer World Cup campaign I'd spent most of 1995 creating (Pepsi's rather cheeky 'Nothing Official About It, which took a swipe at Coca-Cola's status as the official drink of the World Cup). It featured Indians, South Africans, Brits and West Indians. We had written scripts for Australian and Pakistani players as well, but we couldn't swing those contracts in time.