Cricket, The Game

Cricket, one of the best sports any can play, where eleven fielders and two batsmen stand on a field trying to show how they are better than the other. This was definitely not the case at one of the best cricket matches I have ever been to. The Asian XI VS The Rest of the World XI match which was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in January 2005. This match was played for the reasons of Charity for the Boxing Day Tsunami disaster in 2004. The match was very different to a normal cricket match where racial slurs would be thrown around and people would only be supporting their own team and putting down the other. There were many factors that made this match very special and very memorable.

Well excluding the first factor that made this match special that millions of dollars were being raised to go to the countries that were hit by the terrible Tsunami disaster, there were so many others. One of the things that made this match very special, which would be near the top of my list was that you got to see all your favorite superstars in the one go. You had some of cricket's greats including Sachin Tendulkur, Brian Lara, Steve Waugh, Daniel Vettori and last but not least muttiah muralitharan. To see all these players, playing together in the same teams was just excellent. Talking about teams I don't think there were any.

Even though the players were in two different teams playing against each other the crowds didn't seem to think so. For the first time at a cricket match that I have seen people from all countries supporting not just their own country but all the others no matter which side they were on. Everyone was joining into the chants no matter which country they were from or were supporting. I being Indian was sitting in a huge group of Indians and what really got my attention was that the Indians were joining the Go Aussie Go chants and the Australians were joining into the Indian chants though I doubt they new what they meant but yet still chanting along.

Each and every person in the crowd stood up for each and every batsman. No matter which country the player was from, everyone stood up and gave them a standing ovation. This was probably because everyone knew that the players were playing without match fees so that most money could be donated. No one was putting any of the batsmen down and there was just generally an excellent atmosphere. And when batsmen would make runs, or hit the big