The chasms that divide the people in our country are great, on one hand you have bored housewives and punk college kids who have nothing to do, and on the other hand you have high flying management consultants working at Fortune 500 companies and scions of political families who have, well, nothing to do either. It kind of makes you wonder just how the fuck our GDP ever reaches anywhere over $0 million, and if such is the situation on normal days, on days when you have a critical Cricket match on (you know “critical?” – India vs. Pakistan?) – all common sense and logical thinking jumps off the building in quick succession. I mean, on such a day, there’s literally NO ONE WORKING. I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced that if our country can run smoothly when every citizen is glued to the TV, we should really just quit working and wing it like they do in Spain, we’ll get by more than just fine. But moving beyond this idealistic vision – have you ever noticed how even the misfits and otherwise anything-but-Cricket-aficionados-types suddenly turn into the biggest balls of Cricket lovers just waiting to explode on critical match days? Blame it on misplaced nationalism, or call it herd mentality, these pseudo fans are here and they are hungry. So, who are these people? Let’s have a look.

Passive-Aggressive Housewife

“Why don’t you go watch your stupid match, huh?” is her usual retort, it doesn’t even matter if there’s in fact a match being played that day or not. She’ll just pick on the game for everything that’s wrong with her life, including but not limited to how Hubby dearest doesn’t love her like he used to once and how he is always too busy bleeding blue. But on the day India plays against Pakistan, something strange happens and her body chemistry changes – now she’s just glued to the TV like there’s no tomorrow while everyone in the family pleads for food because they’re hungry as hell. In between saying “Yuvi is so hawt” and “I’d divorce you happily and become Sachin’s groupie if I could,” they manage to slip in a “why don’t you go fix yourself a sandwich for a change, huh?”

Lazy Bum Rastafarian

His favorite song is “Peace, Love and Happiness,” and his favorite man made instrument is the bong, and he needs weed – lots of it, all the time. Besides doing things like contemplating the deeper meaning of life, counting stars in the night sky and staring at the wall – he is most likely to have lengthy discussions on how “competitive sports are destroying the fabric of human oneness” and that “television is the devil’s instrument”. But come said match day, he goes against his entire way of living, turns the TV on and laughs hysterically finding double entendres in commentary where none exist. Careful though, they’re still high as a kite – don’t try to reason with them when they say “man, that eighter was fuckin’ ace! What’s the score now, 2-love?”

Hardcore Sports Hater

There’s a 98% chance that this person is a blogger, and there’s a 100% chance that he has a category especially devoted to hate rants about sports. He’s conducted surveys on the subject, and has proven by the use of calculus that Sport is a tool to brainwash and manipulate the masses. The fiscal damage to the economy resulting as the aftermath of day long matches worries him to no ends. But behind all that rational, “oh, I’m so different from the others” façade, is a man nervously biting his nails on D-Day watching the live telecast, while simultaneous pretending to be off the grid by tweeting random things which have nothing to do with anything – on in some cases, more hateful rants. Let them be, why burst their bubble? All this convoluted behavior usually results from the simple need to feel like a unique little white snowflake. Most likely a case of unresolved daddy issues.

Hardworking Professional

These people just never have the time for anything; they’ve been contemplating suicide for the past decade but just haven’t been able to fit it in their schedule. They are most often seen changing paradigms and promoting synergy at their workplace. It’s not that they mind Cricket, some might even love it, but it’s just that on most days, watching a match seems just too frivolous an activity when they could instead be working on raising their net worth. Their bosses are proud of them, and know that they can depend on them to deliver, even on the day of the Cricket World Cup final. But then of course, the boss would understand if they happened to have a personal emergency of some kind, uncannily enough on the same day as the India vs. Pakistan match. The boss, in his good faith, does not realize that personal emergency here is a keyword for “I need to urgently paint my face tricolor, get drunk and make woohoo!”