An Incurable Addiction

It's strange how even the quintessential healer, time, cannot heal some 'ailments'. One positive example is the way you feel for someone or something that you genuinely love. Sports has been one such love for me. While in school, it was an integral part of my life. I remember playing daily, without exception - cricket, football, table tennis, carrom and a host of other not-so-famous games that we played during and after school. One such invention was what we called Terrace Tennis. A court was drawn out on our terrace and a string was tied at about 4 feet to serve as the net. A table tennis ball (the local, hard and heavy variety) was sent across it with hard-cover 6-inch copies following the same rules of lawn tennis but no shot, including serves, was allowed to be played overhead. This last stipulation put a check to the number of times we had to run downstairs to fetch a ball. Visitors, the elderly ones, used to get alarmed seeing us running on the terrace at such fervent pace. More because, half of the terrace did not have a boundary. We were allowed to choose our names and it is no surprise that I was the Agassi on that court. In fact I did a bit better than him, staying the number 1 player as long as the game was played. :)

Such an involvement was ably supplemented by an equally strong interest in the happenings in the global scene. There was not much on TV those days, but we would lap up the weekly sports roundup shows and the big events. And, even to this day, I start reading a newspaper from the last page. We would get The SportStar and I used to read every page - though the most interesting part was to collect the centre-spreads that came free. I still have them at home, more than 300 posters of myriad sportsmen and women. My joys would cross the line whenever there was a Viv Richards, Andre Agassi or Gabriela Sabatini for the taking. Sadly, somehow I missed out on all the Marco van Basten ones and do not have one of him. These four were, and still are, my sporting idols.

No wonder, then, that I do not have to look up for names like Nigel Mansell, Jan-Ove Waldner or Leroy Burrel to know what they did.

But things changed, for the worse, after school. I stopped playing any games and even the craze for the happenings in the world of sports slightly decreased. This was aided by the retirements of Viv, van Basten and Sabatini around the same time. Thankfully, Agassi stayed on to re-write an essay in agelessness. I developed special likings towards many new players, but the passion for these top-4 borders on devotion and is much greater than my liking for Brian Lara, Thierry Henry or Dennis Bergkamp.

It would be an unending saga, if I am to write extensively about my madness for sports. And though I have grown apart from it to a large extent, the thrill of watching a defining moment in any game is unrivaled. There was a time when I would know all names in the starting XI for each team in the Football World Cup or the European Cup. Now I have to look out for the few I know in each team. I did not watch a single football match in the last 2 years, since the 2006 World Cup. Yet, when the Germany-Poland match at Euro 2008 kicked off the day before yesterday, the rush of excitement was the same. A packed house of colourful fans singing for their teams, the players not able to, and not wanting to as well, rest for even a moment for a full 90 minutes, the passionate attraction towards the ball at any cost - what a sight!

So here I am - suffering from the fever called IPL till recently - back to my bigger love football the moment Michael Ballack and his men lined up for their national Anthem at the start of the match. And no prizes for guessing who I would be supporting. The unique distinction of winning the European Cup as a player and a coach awaits Marco van Basten if the Dutch invasion runs till the end under his coaching.

Go Orange, Go Marco!