I have tried, over the past few weeks, to enter the mind of an Indian cricket fan. This is not easy for me because I am not a cricket fanatic or even a fan even. I watch it sometimes, but most often I find it a fabulous sleeping pill. Even worse, in spite of reading and enjoying the works of Neville Cardus and CLR James, I find that the IPL version of cricket is the most thrilling to watch. This clearly establishes me as a philistine female who cannot appreciate the nuances of a glorious game. Guilty as charged, I hang my head in shame. In my favour, I can only redeem myself by stating that I dislike Bollywood, badly dressed cheerleaders and those strange “agricultural” non-classical shots. With this half-knowledge of cricket but some serious research on meaningful exchanges of human discourse like Twitter and Facebook, I have analysed the cricket fan and come up the 10 points that make their lives so difficult, sometimes apparently unbearable. Their lives are full of dilemmas and contradictions as they move from match to match, player to player and era to era.u00a0Their pain is palpable and is very moving.u00a0

Dilemma no 8: The pitch is very dull to look at on television and experts keep talking about it, which puts a cricket fan to sleep