World Cup finals...a day to remember

Becoming world champs in any discipline isn't a joke. And in cricket crazy India, to lift the coveted trophy that the teams play for is almost a demand, a mandate and not an option. Captains and coaches have lost their jobs in search of the elusive trophy that came to our shores once before, in 1983, a couple of months after I was born. And so on the evening of 2^nd April 2011, the day of the cricket world cup finals between Indian and Sri Lanka, I was at Ms Quiche's place, along with Ms BakeAnything. After the semi finals against Pakistan (also watched at Ms Quiche's house), we'd decided that we were going to watch the finals there too, sitting in the same spots in the same positions.

Ms BakeAnything had baked a cherry pie, and while it was sitting in the fridge after it came outta the oven, we were watching our bowlers get tonked all over the park by the Lankan batsmen. The recipe for the pie shall be put up on their blog and I shall provide a link to it in a later post. Midway through the innings, both ladies decide we need to cook something to go with the pie. I was pleased as punch...cooking, food, and a cricket match. But these two ladies didn't allow me anywhere close to the kitchen, let alone the ingredients or any action that could've helped in the whole cooking process.

Some of the tweets that I tweeted once the game started








So while I had to settle to click pictures and keep myself entertained with the cricket and give a little commentary to the ladies, they set about boiling potatoes and peeling them, slicing them thin, seasoning them with Italian seasoning and then pan frying them. Once this was done, some cheese and water to get it a little runny and presto - one world cup winning snack ready to be downed :) I tell you, we were convinced that we had a small part to play in the victory - sitting in the same positions when fours and sixes were hit, realising that different positions made our chaps get out and so shifted back to original positions, and of course, eating the right things.

Some of the conversations we had:
Ms BakeAnything: Against Pak, when I was cleaning the house, Sehwag was hitting 4s. The moment I sat, he got out!
Ms Quiche: So clean, take the broom...fast!
Me: Yes please!

During the middle overs, the game got a little slow.


Jayawardene then started taking our bowlers to the cleaners!


Q: SL will make 275, but we will win.
Me: It's 268, with one ball to go. He has to hit a six for your theory to work!

Six of the last ball!

Me standing hands akimbo in front of Ms Quiche.
Me: You'll pay dearly for this! That last six had better not cost us...
Q: Hehe.. we'll win, don't worry (very unconvincing voice).

Our start was disastrous. Two wickets down in no time, that crazy Lankan called Malinga with his hideously bleached blond hair is giving rise to a lot of potty jokes. We're all worried whether our batsmen are going to choke. The crowd has all but lost hope, but this being the Bombay crowd and not the Calcutta crowd, they don't want to throw stuff onto the field and hand the match over to the Lankans (a la 1996), so they stay behind and try to pretend that they can actually be sportive. People make Rajanikanth jokes and want him to save the team.



There's a partnership building. Looks like our team has some spunk and fight in them. The Lankan skipper starts resorting to cheap lawyer tricks to get a breakthrough. The umpires aren't having any of it though. Thankfully!


Now the boys are fighting back. The run rate required is still manageable. Some bimbo named Poonam Pandey had promised to strip for the team if we won the cup. Do it for Poonam at least, the chants on Twitter get louder. Murali, the ace Lankan spin wizard is getting tonked around. There's real hope now. And it isn't even optimistic hope, we're talking realistic hope here.






Oh boy, in between all this, there's food to eat. And it's awesome what these ladies have made. The pie is abso-effing-lutely delicious, and the potato sliced thingy with the cheese dip was pretty darn good as well. After pan frying them, the ladies had drained the slices on tissues to remove the excess oil, and so when we bit into them, they tasted quite 'light'. And if you like fried stuff, and cheese dips, then too bad you missed out on this :)




The match began to get interesting again. Gautam Gambhir was leading the charge along with young Virat Kohli. All of India was praying for Ganbhir to make a century (he was well on his way). Twitter is chirpy again. People making jokes...until Sanjay Manjrekar opens his mouth, and the dreaded commentator's curse strikes! Gambhir is bowled for 97. Damn!





It's still not over. The game I mean. The food's been polished off, we'd stepped out and come back with some dinner, and now we had only our finger nails to chew on. And in comes the captain and plays the innings that'll go down in history as the epitome of a captain's innings, courage under fire, call it what you like. And finally, just as the last shot of the Lankan innings was a six, the new drug we were all high on, MSD, lambasted one over and above the stands to send a billion into a frenzy never seen before.