The weather is hot these days. Not just because of the summer, but also because the two mega events going on, that entire nation discusses everyday, every hour, every minute. The first is national elections and the other is Pepsi IPL 7. Two wars being fought that are in entirely different fields. But the war is war, and so they are same in many ways. Yes, I am serious.
The common thing between these two are many. One, they enjoy the attention of entire nation. Two, they are being discussed, debated in every corner of India, even in cyber space. Three, everyone has it's favorite, and is hoping for it to win. Four, with each day passing by, the anticipation of the end results is reaching one level higher. And so on.
IPL has changed the face of cricket. It is more exciting, more thrilling, and more entertaining. Those who use to boast of watching the soccer leagues, and thought only that's a cool thing, now have a coolest form of cricket in our own country.
While watching IPL now, I remember the crazy things we did to watch IPL, when I was living with my friends in Hyderabad. I went to Hyderabad for few months for some training, with my friends. We were living together in a flat, and as it was a temporary arrangement, we didn't have the luxury of a TV there. Unfortunate, isn't it? To make it worse, we were there in the IPL season.
So, how could we watch our favorite tournament? We found a solution, with bit of luck, generosity of some, and a lot of nonchalance.
By the time IPL was about to start, we were fed up of the poor quality and delays of our home delivery service of tiffins. A friend referred a family, who used to provide meals for students and bachelors in their own house, for a reasonable fees. And to our delight, they had a TV and a fridge to keep lots of water bottles for their customers. This was like heaven to us compared to our flat with no TV, no fridge in that hot summer.
So we immediately subscribed to their service on a monthly basis. We used to go to have dinner, just in time to watch the first ball of the game. And we started enjoying the matches more than the food. Obviously, our meal would not last as long as the match. But we tried hard to take as much time as possible to finish our dinner. When the match was in interesting mode, we used to eat some extra chapatis, just to stay in front of the screen. One of my friends ate a record-breaking 9 chapatis in a single meal.
The family started hinting us to make it short and leave quickly. So we started going one after another with few minutes of gap. So even if we would finish our meal quickly, we would sit on their sofa, pretending to be waiting for a friend who just started eating. This too, didn't last long.
So we decided, that we'll not sit longer together, but we'll decide our favorites. Each one will sit there longer only when his favorite team is playing. My favorite team from the first season is Mumbai Indians, mainly because of Sachin Tendulkar.
The ladies in the family used to change the channel often to watch their daily soaps. Some of us or the other boys coming for dinner there would request some more food, and they would get busy. That was the chance for us to grab the remote and switch back to IPL. :D
To our rescue, they had a kid who was also interested in IPL. He knew all the teams and players. So when he was home, he would join us in watching the match, and discuss it like grown up sport fans. Sometimes, if the match would get slow, he would change channels to watch cartoons. But it was easy to convince him to come back to match, than to handle those ladies desperate to watch melodramatic serials.
When we had to leave their house, we would go on streets, outside some shops, to see if some of them has a match playing on tv. Sometimes we would get the chance, sometimes we wouldn't. And anyway, in such hot summer, it was not possible to stand too long outside, without any fan or cooler. We had to come back to our flat.
To be updated, we used to stay hooked to internet, for score updates, and try online videos. But blame our internet connection, or the slow websites, it wasn't as fast. We would be bored by the halts in video due to buffering. The score pages supposed to be refreshed every 10 seconds, wasn't accurate on it's time.
But the new star sports website is a relief now. It has a deferred live feature, which broadcasts match with a 5 minute delay. The quality and fast loading video compensates for the delay. When I am working in office, and can not watch video, I use it's scoreboard is really fast, and updates you in real time. The zip clips quickly summarize the key match points for you.
Now back home, it has become easier to watch IPL. When at home, I have my TV and in office, I have starsports.com.While I enjoy watching IPL equally now, the fun in doing those crazy things was different altogether.
This post is a part of Cricket just got better! Activity by starsports.com in association with BlogAdda.com.
The common thing between these two are many. One, they enjoy the attention of entire nation. Two, they are being discussed, debated in every corner of India, even in cyber space. Three, everyone has it's favorite, and is hoping for it to win. Four, with each day passing by, the anticipation of the end results is reaching one level higher. And so on.
IPL has changed the face of cricket. It is more exciting, more thrilling, and more entertaining. Those who use to boast of watching the soccer leagues, and thought only that's a cool thing, now have a coolest form of cricket in our own country.
So, how could we watch our favorite tournament? We found a solution, with bit of luck, generosity of some, and a lot of nonchalance.
By the time IPL was about to start, we were fed up of the poor quality and delays of our home delivery service of tiffins. A friend referred a family, who used to provide meals for students and bachelors in their own house, for a reasonable fees. And to our delight, they had a TV and a fridge to keep lots of water bottles for their customers. This was like heaven to us compared to our flat with no TV, no fridge in that hot summer.
So we immediately subscribed to their service on a monthly basis. We used to go to have dinner, just in time to watch the first ball of the game. And we started enjoying the matches more than the food. Obviously, our meal would not last as long as the match. But we tried hard to take as much time as possible to finish our dinner. When the match was in interesting mode, we used to eat some extra chapatis, just to stay in front of the screen. One of my friends ate a record-breaking 9 chapatis in a single meal.
The family started hinting us to make it short and leave quickly. So we started going one after another with few minutes of gap. So even if we would finish our meal quickly, we would sit on their sofa, pretending to be waiting for a friend who just started eating. This too, didn't last long.
So we decided, that we'll not sit longer together, but we'll decide our favorites. Each one will sit there longer only when his favorite team is playing. My favorite team from the first season is Mumbai Indians, mainly because of Sachin Tendulkar.
The ladies in the family used to change the channel often to watch their daily soaps. Some of us or the other boys coming for dinner there would request some more food, and they would get busy. That was the chance for us to grab the remote and switch back to IPL. :D
To our rescue, they had a kid who was also interested in IPL. He knew all the teams and players. So when he was home, he would join us in watching the match, and discuss it like grown up sport fans. Sometimes, if the match would get slow, he would change channels to watch cartoons. But it was easy to convince him to come back to match, than to handle those ladies desperate to watch melodramatic serials.
When we had to leave their house, we would go on streets, outside some shops, to see if some of them has a match playing on tv. Sometimes we would get the chance, sometimes we wouldn't. And anyway, in such hot summer, it was not possible to stand too long outside, without any fan or cooler. We had to come back to our flat.
To be updated, we used to stay hooked to internet, for score updates, and try online videos. But blame our internet connection, or the slow websites, it wasn't as fast. We would be bored by the halts in video due to buffering. The score pages supposed to be refreshed every 10 seconds, wasn't accurate on it's time.
But the new star sports website is a relief now. It has a deferred live feature, which broadcasts match with a 5 minute delay. The quality and fast loading video compensates for the delay. When I am working in office, and can not watch video, I use it's scoreboard is really fast, and updates you in real time. The zip clips quickly summarize the key match points for you.
Now back home, it has become easier to watch IPL. When at home, I have my TV and in office, I have starsports.com.While I enjoy watching IPL equally now, the fun in doing those crazy things was different altogether.
This post is a part of Cricket just got better! Activity by starsports.com in association with BlogAdda.com.
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