I have long been confused with this particular aspect of Sri Lankan adolescent/post adolescent annual rituals. During Big Match season we generally tend to see an uprising of sorts from boys school all over screaming in enraged defiance at their opposition and at the world in general for no particular reason other than that two school teams will be playing a cricket match a week or two later.
Most of them wouldn't even know any of the players in a team but will usually have a rough grasp of which team is favored to win since this is an important factor in determining the level of defiance in your roar and levels of virtual testosterone in air humping movements made on top of moving pickup trucks.
The whole deal as a matter of fact, is nothing about the cricket. the big Match is just a chance for some legitimate skullduggery, some legitimate jumping into girls schools and some license to feel like alpha males for a little while at least. Everyone's a little tolerant of these things come big match season yeah? Principles are in a boys-will-be-boys mood, the girls are coy, the teachers wear grim faces yet undergo tremendous stress to keep amused smiles from breaking out. Pedestrians are annoyed, yet secretly wish they could prance around without a care just like the objects of their annoyance.
And they All contribute, knowing full well that the money goes to nothing more than an alcohol, papare band, and smoking material fund that will probably contribute next to nothing to whatever cause they claim to be collecting it for, and that claim usually goes something like 'for the big match', which is very vague and that’s the way everybody likes it. see no evil and the rest of it.
And the girls. I think the number of girls at big matches would outnumber the boys if there weren't already so many boys inside the place already. It's like they actually enjoy being amidst a rowdy bunch of hooting males drinking and smoking everything drinkable and smokable regardless of legality and screaming and fighting and pushing and taking their shirts off at a moments notice. The attention factor must draw them to it. Because i suppose there is nothing more gratifying for a woman than to be ogled at by a hundred guys at the same time. Which is roughly the proportion of males to females at most big matches. And the alcohol and intoxicant content would ensure that pretty soon any woman seen on the grounds would have her own fair share of oglement. We're very politically correct that way.
Not that I've done a statistical analysis of these things, I've never been trucking or jumped into a girl’s school mainly 'cos the school i went to didn’t have an operational big match. But crazy rumors and stories circulated telling of a of a big match that once existed which was abolished due to some chap 'from the other school' dying, as in being stabbed to death, of course, our guys say we did the killing. Versions may differ. There is a bit of an ugly side to the whole thing, sure. But isn't there an ugly side to everything?
The chap sitting next to me sums it up best, big matches are not really about the cricket, once you leave school they are mostly about catching up with your old mates and having a slice of that carefree life you used to enjoy. Not really about enraged fans screaming for a win and more about a bunch of males with a rowdy license meeting for a good old booze up and a smoke up and a screaming fest with constant ogling action thrown in. It's the atmosphere. The cricket is only what holds it all together.
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Monday, July 7, 2008
Sport Fuelled Sunday
Yesterday was quite a day for sports fans. I don’t know about other sports fans but for a sports fan like me it was a hell of a day all right. It started out all slow, no big plans, but then since my malli (who while not being my blood malli, was still my malli, as I am his) came down from Aussie last week, us and the old school crowd decided to make a day of it.
So we’ve been hanging out at this hotel with this stop for coffee and sports bar inbuilt and after the usual walk around the donkey park stuffing ourselves with anything and everything and commenting and rating every single decent looking lady around the place (one main schoolboy practice that never fades when we’re e together). So we’re walking around in shorts and rubbers me, Malli, Jundar (broken arm in tow, hunting accident, don’t ask), and Tunks, and ended up hogging a table in aforementioned sports bar and delved into some good old fashioned schoolboy catch up talk and some unexpectedly good sporting action..
Lewis Hamilton streaked home in first place in the British Grand Prix finishing up on the top of the list with Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, it was a thrilling race though and Massa and Kimi finished 4th and 13th. Rained like hell and quite a few drivers lost control and were out of the race including Honda’s Jensen Button. It was wet and wild and a nice race to be sure.
In the meanwhile Sri Lanka’s batting order starts to crumble after Sana’s initial blitzkrieg (‘what you bugger, we still need a 39 year old bugger to keep us out of the gutter?’) the rest of the batsmen proceed to cave in and SL, after looking extremely dangerous and poised to exceed 300, end up hitting a dismal 272 (or was it 273?). At this point the Indian guy at the next table wearing an ‘Ajay Jadeja’ cricket t-shirt looks extra smug and us having baited him for a while now, starts giving us sly looks and at one point points his finger at me and goes her-her-her-her-herrr!.. We suffer in silence.
But we have some diehard fans in the house especially this one chap that took it upon himself to shout out words of noble encouragement loudly from a table nearer to the screen (COMMON SANA! WELL PLAYED SANA! COMMON VASSIE, MENDIS I LOVE YOU! and YESSSS!! every time someone caught a ball in the field, a rolling ball mind you, and going OOFF! Whenever it passed within 10 feet of a fielder in the air) and although it is unclear as to whether he actually had an effect on our boys all the way in Pakistan, Mendis proceeded to tear into pieces the Indian batting order which had looked so good when starting off (Sehwag 50 off just 26 balls). Indian chap now looks thoroughly cowed and pretends to be more interested in the heating up battle between Federer and Nadal.
That was a fight to remember. All that hype and the game certainly lived up to it. A bit of background here, the Wimbledon as you have to know (if you don’t then it’s totally fine, I’m not that big on tennis myself) is the ultimate tennis championship and the most coveted of all. The come all and be all or whatever. Federer has won it 5 times in a row so far beating Nadal In the last two finals. He just needs to win it one more time to surpass Bjorn Berg to become the first guy to win 6 Wimbledon’s in a row so since Willie Renshaw (who played in the 1880’s). Nadal enters the game with four French Open titles under his belt and an advantage over Federer based on previous meetings. Anyways you can read all about how that turned out (Nadal won after a downright nail-biter) but the cricket was definitely the highlight of the day.
Mendis walks away the man of the match as well as the man of the series but how long will he shine? We could just picture the Aussies getting the VCR out and playing his balls (erm ) again and again and again in super-super-slo-mo. He’ll have a hard time remaining a mystery so he’ll have to work hard at developing the menacing consistency that Murali seems to have acquired over the years. But right now let’s all just feel good for a while cos the Lankans have fired again and hopefully this will be one of those winning seasons where the entire public will get so engrossed with cricket that our poor money starved government can finally reward itself a bit by increasing food prices a little further, what?
So we’ve been hanging out at this hotel with this stop for coffee and sports bar inbuilt and after the usual walk around the donkey park stuffing ourselves with anything and everything and commenting and rating every single decent looking lady around the place (one main schoolboy practice that never fades when we’re e together). So we’re walking around in shorts and rubbers me, Malli, Jundar (broken arm in tow, hunting accident, don’t ask), and Tunks, and ended up hogging a table in aforementioned sports bar and delved into some good old fashioned schoolboy catch up talk and some unexpectedly good sporting action..
Lewis Hamilton streaked home in first place in the British Grand Prix finishing up on the top of the list with Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, it was a thrilling race though and Massa and Kimi finished 4th and 13th. Rained like hell and quite a few drivers lost control and were out of the race including Honda’s Jensen Button. It was wet and wild and a nice race to be sure.
In the meanwhile Sri Lanka’s batting order starts to crumble after Sana’s initial blitzkrieg (‘what you bugger, we still need a 39 year old bugger to keep us out of the gutter?’) the rest of the batsmen proceed to cave in and SL, after looking extremely dangerous and poised to exceed 300, end up hitting a dismal 272 (or was it 273?). At this point the Indian guy at the next table wearing an ‘Ajay Jadeja’ cricket t-shirt looks extra smug and us having baited him for a while now, starts giving us sly looks and at one point points his finger at me and goes her-her-her-her-herrr!.. We suffer in silence.
But we have some diehard fans in the house especially this one chap that took it upon himself to shout out words of noble encouragement loudly from a table nearer to the screen (COMMON SANA! WELL PLAYED SANA! COMMON VASSIE, MENDIS I LOVE YOU! and YESSSS!! every time someone caught a ball in the field, a rolling ball mind you, and going OOFF! Whenever it passed within 10 feet of a fielder in the air) and although it is unclear as to whether he actually had an effect on our boys all the way in Pakistan, Mendis proceeded to tear into pieces the Indian batting order which had looked so good when starting off (Sehwag 50 off just 26 balls). Indian chap now looks thoroughly cowed and pretends to be more interested in the heating up battle between Federer and Nadal.
That was a fight to remember. All that hype and the game certainly lived up to it. A bit of background here, the Wimbledon as you have to know (if you don’t then it’s totally fine, I’m not that big on tennis myself) is the ultimate tennis championship and the most coveted of all. The come all and be all or whatever. Federer has won it 5 times in a row so far beating Nadal In the last two finals. He just needs to win it one more time to surpass Bjorn Berg to become the first guy to win 6 Wimbledon’s in a row so since Willie Renshaw (who played in the 1880’s). Nadal enters the game with four French Open titles under his belt and an advantage over Federer based on previous meetings. Anyways you can read all about how that turned out (Nadal won after a downright nail-biter) but the cricket was definitely the highlight of the day.
Mendis walks away the man of the match as well as the man of the series but how long will he shine? We could just picture the Aussies getting the VCR out and playing his balls (erm ) again and again and again in super-super-slo-mo. He’ll have a hard time remaining a mystery so he’ll have to work hard at developing the menacing consistency that Murali seems to have acquired over the years. But right now let’s all just feel good for a while cos the Lankans have fired again and hopefully this will be one of those winning seasons where the entire public will get so engrossed with cricket that our poor money starved government can finally reward itself a bit by increasing food prices a little further, what?
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