Cricket from a football fan's perspective
As football fans, we spend much of our time engrossed in weekly league games, UEFA Champions league(UCL) fixtures and couch FIFA matches. Majority of our entertainment revolves around the football season, spanning over the course of August to May.
However, when the season inevitably draws to a close, or during one of those intolerable international breaks, when you're done with your realisation that your team will probably not win anything this season either; you find yourself lost.
On a fateful Saturday during the last international break, I found myself craving for a football match to watch. Saturday had brought with it an almost insatiable desire for English Premiere League action. With the season being in hiatus, however, it meant my best chance was watching a rerun of an old game.
As I flipped through the channels, hoping to chance across the replay of a good derby match, I found myself face to face with a game of cricket.
I proceeded to put the remote down and decided to spend the 90 minutes of my life watching this. "Surely cricket matches don't last past the hour mark," I thought.
It was only after I was already an hour in, that I realised my fatal mistake. I had underestimated cricket, in turn overestimating its ability to keep me entertained. The game itself was too long, and this was only a "T20" match, which still takes almost 327 hours to end.
After spending a large portion of the game googling confusing terminologies such as, "closing the face" and "cow corner", I found myself more appreciative of the football's simplistic approach to commentary.
Having already committed an hour of my life to giving cricket a try (and since Google was already open) I decided to study up on the sport.
A quick search revealed that there were other formats of the game as well, all of which took considerably longer to finish!
I may have been a football fan, but under no circumstances would I want a Manchester United vs Liverpool match that would span the course of an entire day.
The slow pace of the game, combined with its multiple confusing elements left me dismayed. For a short amount of time, I had thought that I had chanced across a gem. That I would be able to pass the season break by watching cricket. Alas, this game of "Assault the ball" had failed me.
All of these complex fielding positions, weird analogies and underwhelming celebrations left me longing for football even more than when I had started down this rabbit hole into the cricket universe.
I had to escape. Simply shutting off the TV was no longer enough; I had to get away. This mindless game of big sticks and wooden balls was not one that I would let ruin my superior sports' fan intellect.
Thankfully, it was in that moment, that a friend called and uttered the magic words, "Areh mama hobe naki?" indicating that a couch FIFA session was on its way to rescue my soul.