Cricinfo turns 20

I came to know today that Cricinfo has just turned 20. While reading some of the articles, I realized that I too have completed a decade of following Cricinfo. As a huge cricket fan since childhood, Cricinfo has been my daily companion for the last 10 years. While I do not recall the very 1st time I visited the site, I do remember that I regularly started visiting Cricinfo in 2003, when I entered B-school. Getting access to a broadband network for the 1st time in my life, I began checking scores and reading articles on a daily basis in my Hostel room. I still remember the day when I followed Brian Lara's march towards 400, and "multi-casted" the event on our internal messaging software to the entire Hostel. We would even go to the extent of opening the site on the desktops in our classrooms used by our Professors to share their presentations, and project the ball by ball commentary on the projector, so that cricket crazy students like me could check the score while we waited for the Prof. to enter. I remember how, as a Class Representative, it was my duty to close the window as soon as a Prof. entered our classroom. One one occasion, I mistakenly minimized the window instead of closing it. In those days, when a batsman was dismissed for Zero, Cricinfo used to make a duck walk across the screen. This happened even if the browser window was minimized. And as you would expect, soon after a Prof. started teaching, a duck appeared nonchalantly walking across the projector behind him. Thankfully for me, he did not notice the collective chuckles of the students and turn around to see what was being projected on the wall behind him.

Just like we sometimes get nostalgic about our lives before the internet and mobile phones, I am thinking back to the days before Cricinfo. In those days, I used to religiously subscribe to magazines like Cricket Samrat and Sportstar, for my dose of Cricket scores and articles. And I used to note down details of all Sachin's Test 100s in my notebook, for reference. This also gives you some idea about how long Sachin has been playing.

Happy 20th birthday to Cricinfo !