stumped !!

Let's go forward 60 years in time ...

It was the summer of 2067. Sunny was ecstatic. He just finished his fourth grade and was eagerly waiting for his summer holidays. The whole three months. He thought he would play some football, fly kites and learn swimming. But only one thing worried him. The assignment his Fifth grade teacher gave him for the summer holidays. He wondered what the fifth grade had in store for him if he had to solve assignments even before school started. But he thought the assignment was fun. Who would not? If it was about games. But there was one problem. He had never heard about the game. In fact, he could not pronounce it. He tried spelling it out to his watch-cum-pda for any search results the internet would give him. Nope, none he could find. How would he, after all he was spelling it as "kraikate", "chrichet" and finally he got it right. Boom popped the result on his PDA. The first result said "Cricket - Extinct game in India since April 2007". "Oh ! Was it something from the early 21st century? Then Grandpa would be able to help me", Sunny thought and added to his list of reminders to ask his grandfather about the game when he visits him in summer holidays.

A month later, Sunny's reminder beeped and he went straight to his grandpa and asked him "Grandpa, what is see--aar--ai--see--kay--ee-tee?".
His granddad was surprised. How did this kid know about the game now extinct for many years? "Tell me about the game, I gotta know about this one" Sunny said.

So the old man started telling about the great game of kings. How the game evolved from a royal one, played by select people, to a common man's game running in the bloods of every kid ever born in the late 20th century in the country, and how without holding a pen you could graduate from school, but without holding a bat and ball in your life, you would not be called complete. How all the kids used to spend all their pocket money in buying cricket balls, how they utilized the old, unused furniture turning them into things called bats, how the walls in their rooms never needed paint, because every year a new cricket hero's poster replaced an earlier one and the "new look" stayed forever.

He spoke to Sunny about how, as a kid, he bunked school to watch live cricket matches, sometimes missing meals, having to lie to teachers about sudden stomach-ache and then run back home to see India batting and applaud for every run they made and curse the opposition team for every wicket India lost.

Sunny was amazed at the kind of passion with which his grandfather was talking about the game. He had seen a movie called Gandhi once, where people had the same look on their face when India was declared independent. That same look appeared on the old man's face. Sunny thought the game should really have meant to lot to his grandpa.

The old man continued telling tales of all the heroes ever born in the cricket world and how many of them were from India and how every four years he would cancel all his appointments for a one month period to watch all the World Cup matches, live. He went on for hours before Sunny interrupted "But grandpa, how did a game with such unbelievable craze become extinct? What happened?"

His grandfather laughed hysterically and then started.. "Sunny, it was in 2007. The Indian team was enjoying Godly status, each one of the players was a hero. People worshipped them, prayed for their victory and they were equally capable too. Some of them were the best in the history of the game and eyes around the world were on them. The world cup started. The very first match, these demi-gods showed how even Gods can be mortal. Not because they were overpowered by other immortals but because they could not use their capabilities. They showed no passion whatsoever. In the third game again, the team collapsed like a pack of broken cards built on quick sand. It was shocking. The team was out of the world cup in the very first stage. A billion hearts broke. And people don't forget, Sunny, their hopes were shattered, and from that day nobody ever spoke of the game. The players returned and the democratic government that we had, made a wise decision that the game and the team were given too much importance and if only the people had shown the same interest and concentration on education, we would have had 100% literacy - instead of everybody knowing the know-hows of Duckworth-Lewis rule, they would be kowing that the English alphabet had 26 letters. So cricket was out, never to be played again. And that's how the game has ceased to exist".

Eventually Sunny completed his assignment and learnt how to pronounce the word too :-)

Coming back to present, we now know what the Greeks went through when Achilles was hit right in the heel. But the Greeks won back then. They had something to cheer about. And we? Nothing !!