We may be a cricket crazy nation but not all cricketers are equal in India. Where the men in blue routinely attract the most love and attention; sending people into paroxysms of delight with each win and into the depths of despair with each loss, the women in blue get not even a fraction of the attention and adulation. And then there is our team of visually impaired cricketers – winning accolades for us but creating barely a blip on our personal radars.
I bet a lot of us didn’t even know that cricket is played by the partially sighted and blind; much less that there is a national team for the sport! India, Pakistan, England, Australia, South Africa and other nations have national teams for visually impaired cricketers.
Yesterday, India successfully lifted the Blind T20 World Cup. The finals were held at the Chinnaswamy Stadium at Bangalore. An unbeaten 99 run knock by Prakasha Jayaramaiah helped India coast to a 9 wicket win.
India defeated arch rivals Pakistan in the finals to win the cup. Pakistan had remained undefeated in all their preceding 9 games and had managed to beat India as well. The Indian team had won 8 out of their 9 matches and managed to win the won that mattered the most… the final!
Pakistan batted first to put up a score of 197 / 9. India cruised to 198 in the 18th over having lost just one wicket.
The game was invented in 1922 in Melbourne, Australia. The equipment is different than standard cricket: the ball is larger and filled with ball bearings to make it audible, the stumps are also larger and players are permitted to touch them to orient themselves. The bowler has to yell ‘Play’ as he bowls, totally blind fielders can catch out a batsman, even after the ball bouncing and there are different rules for LBW and stumpings as well.
The first edition was held in 2012, also in Bangalore. The Aditaya Academy Ground in Bangalore had seen India emerge victorious when the home team defeated Pakistan by 29 runs on that occasion too.
Celebs and other twitter users congratulated the T20 World Cup winners.
Regular Twitterer Virendra Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh were also quick to congratulate these men in blue.
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