Cricket fever is alive in Bangalore

Offbeat

 I thought cricket fever, the sort that existed before television, was a thing of the past. You need to explain it to youngsters the way you need to explain gadgets like the fountain pen, an automobile that is started by cranking a handle or something as quaint as going to England instead of the States for higher studies.

 But Bangalore seems to have changed some of that. Cricket fever is still capable of staging a comeback, the sort that existed earlier when all that the truly unfortunate and underprivileged members of society who could not get to the grounds could turn to for real-time thrill was the running commentary on the All India Radio.

 Calcutta, when it was still called Calcutta, undoubtedly held the record for going crazy over whatever took its fancy and nothing possessed its middle class more than a test match, the one day international not having been born then.

 The strict principal of the school where I spent most of my formative years, a great believer in equal opportunity, used to thunder at the chapel assembly before a test match,