I feel guilty for not supporting local sporting events, but in a way, that makes us repeat the same mistake.
It was just sports happening alongside each other. The choice was as spoilt as it is for a politician’s son. You couldn’t only choose which sport to watch, you could also choose which GOAT to watch. You could scroll between Messi and Djokovic on the same night. Suddenly, India losing 3-0 to England didn’t even feel like a big deal because we had no time to blame Gautam Gambhir. Meanwhile, the Indian women’s team consoled cricket fans by creating three different records in the same match. First, they beat England at Lord’s. Then Kranti Goud became the first woman in history to get her name etched on the Lord’s Bowling Honours Board, and Yastika Bhatia became the first Indian woman to score a Test century at the iconic venue. For the women, it was a Chak De! moment, whereas for the men, it was a ‘Chuck Them’ moment.
And cricket’s GOATs were present at Wimbledon. GOATs watching GOATs play. Here in Hyderabad, TG20 players were probably playing for the goat in the mutton.
So, all sports are happening at once. What do you do? Make a pros and cons list to decide which sport to watch? No.
You stream cricket on the laptop, Wimbledon on the phone, football on the TV, keep Cricbuzz open for the women’s match, and look outside the window to check the TG20 score.
But it was also a week of sharing OTTs and OTPs. The most common WhatsApp message was, ‘Do you have ZEE5? I’ll give you Hotstar’.
If you saw the chat window between me and my friends, it would look like secret agents exchanging code numbers... 5669, 1442, 2-1, 97-4, 30-40. If this wasn’t sports week, you’d probably have been visited by the cyber crime department.
Then there’s that smuggler friend who says, ‘Bro, I know a link that streams every sport for free. All you have to do is turn off your browser security, subscribe to Nigerian prince emails, and risk losing all the money in your bank account just to stream the matches for free’.
Trust me, if you’re not a sports fan, this week has been international week of silently nodding while sports fans talk. Usually, a newbie to sports asks just one question to remind the group that he’s still alive: ‘Who won?’ It’s normally followed by a one-word answer so he can quietly go back to eating. But this time, when he asks, ‘Who won?’, it’s a 16-mark answer and a masterclass in storytelling.
Every sports fan also became a sports reporter, telling everyone about one sport after another. Everyone turned into SportsCenter. We made memes and drew connections that nobody really needed.
Like when Messi and Djokovic won on the same night, I declared it the era of the late 30s and started believing real success comes only in your late 30s, mainly to keep myself motivated in comedy.
And when England won both the World Cup quarter-final and the ODI against India, we started saying, ‘Man, it’s not only coming home. They might start taking over our home again’.
Anyway, from next week there will still be sports, just not all at the same crossroads. I’ll miss that.
But hey, you can always spike your dopamine by blaming Gautam Gambhir for India’s loss.
Sandesh
@msgfromsandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)
