World Cup Blues

It happens every World Cup. Well, every cricket world cup anyway. Over the past five and a half weeks there have been 45 ODI's. I have certainly not watched them all, in fact I have probably only watched half of about 10-12 games (second innings is on too late for me). But for all games, I have followed online with interest, especially considering the waxing and waning fortunes of the Aussies, based firstly on their own performance, but also on how others teams' results impact on their ladder position. Maxi's 200 the other night was a standout! I lost a couple of hours sleep following that one on my phone!

But then we got to the end of the round-robin phase, and had a two day break before the semi-finals began. OMG, suddenly there was no cricket to follow of an evening, and I felt a bit lost! You see I have plenty of good memories of the cricket WC in my life - in fact my interest for cricket to begin with was largely driven by our success in the 1987 version. That one I did not see on TV, but listened to on the radio, and remember talking on the phone to an Aussie girl at school in Singapore that I fancied at the time. 

Other really good WC memories include going to Sri Lanka with Ramesh to watch a match in the 2011 version. That's another story in itself which will no doubt appear in this blog somewhere. But probably my fondest memories - and you might think me weird here - are sitting at Healy Mac's in CBB in KL, drinking beers, smoking ciggies, and watching WC matches on their wall-mounted TV's. I did that in 2011 and 2015. Ah the memories! Hazy as they might be.

So yes, the cricket itself is something I love and am happy to have on every day - I have similar feelings of loss whenever an Ashes (especially in England) comes to an end. In some ways, the ODI WC is a bit of a drag because it takes so long, but that's the point - it becomes an ingrained part of my life whenever it happens, and then when it suddenly stops, be it after the final or even the first day with no games like this week, it leaves a whole in my heart. 

Fairly silly I know, but that's just me. I love the World Cup.