Cricket is a funny game, very loosely related to baseball. It requires 22 people, 2 umpires, a huge football-sized field and a center pitch, which is a 22-yard piece of specially prepared turf. There are two teams of 11 each and one team bats while the other bowls and fields. The aim is to score runs by hitting the ball with a bat. The ball is bowled by a bowler and the bat is wielded by a batsman. There are two batsmen at any given time, one on either side of the pitch. The bowler's job is to prevent the batsmen from scoring and to get them out either by knocking off one of the three stumps behind them or by making them play the ball in such a manner that it gets caught by a fielder, straight off the bat. The fielders exist both to catch the ball and to stop it from hitting the boundary. A boundary is the periphery of the field and if the ball crosses the boundary, four or six runs result depending on whether the ball touched or did not touch the ground. If this sounds confusing, it is only because I haven't mastered the art of explaining cricket in less than 100 words. I suspect even 1000 words may be difficult.

I played cricket for my school. I used to be a wicket-keeper, standing behind the stumps so as to catch the ball if it crossed the stumps. I used to be a good keeper. I was also a crazy cricket fan. In the 70s, when live television coverage was unheard of, the only thing we could do was to listen to radio commentaries. I used to stay up from 9PM onwards to listen to commentaries when the matches were being played in West Indies or get up very early in the morning, if the matches were in Australia or New Zealand. If the matches involved India, the commentaries at least were broadcast on local radio; but if they involved non-Indian countries, we usually had to catch them on BBC or some other short-wave channel using powerful radios and antennas.

Those were the days of test matches; five-day long matches with one rest-day. Thus, for six long days, people would be glued to their radios, spending most of their time listening to commentaries, neglecting work.

Then one fine day a gentleman named Kerry Packer in Australia introduced in a big way, the concept of one-dayers. Fast one day matches with only 50 overs (an over consists of six balls bowled by the bowler) that had to end in a result, as against test matches which could be won, lost or get drawn, the latter being the most common result. Packer offered amounts of money, unheard of till then, to cricketers from all playing countries, to come and play in Australia. Defying their own cricket boards, many players deserted their home country teams to play in his matches. For almost a year or two, he was able to carry on with this, until the staid, conservative cricket bodies got their acts together and decided to embrace the concept of one-day cricket. The spin-off of course, was that from that time onwards, cricket began to be viewed as a commercial, money-making game and cricketers started making the kind of money that only tennis players used to make (of course baseball and basketball players in the US are a class apart).

Something happened to me at that time; I suddenly just lost interest. It was also the time when I had finished high school and my regular cricket playing days, were over. Overnight I stopped listening to cricket commentaries, stopped keeping manual score-cards and stopped bothering to stay in touch. Not that I have given up completely on cricket; occasionally I do watch part of a game (once or twice a year), but I am no longer fanatic about it.

The real tragedy of course is that the sponsors and the public concentrate only on cricket to the detriment of other sports. Cricketers in India are Gods. They make millions, they endorse products and they are role models for the youth. We have world champions in billiards and chess, but hardly anyone hears about them. The duo of Bhupathi and Paes has won two of the four tennis grand-slams in the men's doubles category, but the kind of attention they get is less than the attention the cricket team gets even when it loses.

If India wins even one bronze medal in the Olympics, it is a big event. A time for celebration and backslapping. In cricket, a win is an occasion for fireworks and rejoicing a loss, a time for mourning. Our national pride is linked with the sport.

Games are not a priority in our country. Until a few years ago, no sportsman would have been able to support himself/herself from the sport itself; even now, athletes and badminton, table-tennis etc. players still have to find employment in sports-friendly companies so that they can earn and play. Most governing bodies are corrupt. Parents refuse to encourage their children to take up sports seriously, unless it is cricket or to some extent tennis. Opportunities for under-privileged children to take up any kind of sport are seriously limited.

In school, I played every sport conceivable; from cricket to tennis to volleyball, basketball, table tennis, billiards, squash, football and hockey. When I left school to go to college, I stopped playing all these games overnight, simply because the pressure of studies left no time for anything else.

Today I don't play anything.

I'm not the most athletic person in the world -- and possibly the least athletic person in this entire World Year group of writers. I like to walk. That's about it. Not jog -- walk. Not rollerblade or skateboard -- walk. Stroll. Meander and shop. It wouldn't exactly qualify as a contact sport, unless there's a major one-day sale going on at Pottery Barn.

I did play basketball as a very young and very short girl, and I thought I was pretty good at it, actually. I was, in fact, co-captain of my team. I was a guard and according to the old rules of girls' basketball, I didn't have to worry about actually aiming and hitting the basket with the ball. We had a perfect record -- we never won a game. But I was, in fact, on an actual sweaty team.

I've also played tennis. I once even owned my own racquet. I still like to bounce tennis balls against a brick wall and catch them. Not very team-like behavior, but there is some minor physical movement involved, plus a spherical object.

But as for following organized, professional sports -- hmmm. Don't actually do much, know much, watch much. I usually try to catch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, checking out the various casual ware outfits of the different countries. I also like the fireworks and the huge local turnout of citizens, not to mention the stage full of spinning children that comes up in the middle of the track field for just one night only.

The most sporting thing I've done in the last ten years occurred last year when my daughter and her husband came out for a visit. They are avid fans of the New York Metro Stars, and they go to all the home soccer games, live and in person. They bring huge custom banners and usually have a picnic after the game with other like-minded fans.

The big showdown or team playoffs or deathmatch was being held near us in Pasadena, at the Rose Bowl. We got out the maps, rented a car, and drove to the big game. We were carried into the stadium in the arms of the happy mob and we found our seat -- long slatted bleacher benches that were screwed into the concrete steps of the bowl. I don't remember who the opposing team was -- possibly Chicago.

People brought all kinds of platters of food for the event and big plastic hand-tubs of beer. There were drumming mechanisms behind me and air horns and secret pouches of confetti that would magically appear at appropriate festive intervals.

The idea was to stand on the benches and even jump up and down on the benches. The benches were bowing -- I certainly remember that. In no time at all, coordinated songs were being sung, full of involved and colorful insults directed to the family members of the opposite side of the stadium.

It got louder and louder and eventually my daughter shouted in my ear that the whole idea was to just scream and scream -- it was a sort of feel-good release. "Try it!" she yelled. I sort of did. "Louder -- cuss and swear and jump up and down!" The bench was vibrating and rocking under our combined weights.

I sucked down a certain amount of beer and eventually I, too, learned how much fun you can have by screaming and yelling at the top of your lungs -- screams unheard, even to your own ears. But there they are. Interesting phenomenon.

So -- that's my entire repertoire of sports info.

Now, if we are talking primarily about competition, I can add a bit more to the info pool. How about fit bodies and clever outfits? And keeping score and winning and losing? OK. I'm on pretty safe ground then -- I can talk about what I really do consider sport: the Academy Awards. It's a female thing, maybe. But I think of it as the Super Bowl, and I arrange my snacks and my remote controls just the way the guys do when there's going to be a big kickoff or coin toss.

A live event that eats up several hours of your Sunday afternoon? I just did it. Nibbly things consumed? Yep. Winners, losers -- it's got them all. Suspense. People blessing themselves and thanking God for their good fortune. The thrill of victory; the agony of defeat.

Plus, they have these really cool, engraved trophies.