From All India Radio to Android App

by - 11:36 PM

“Have you brought the Transistor?” I asked my friend Anbarasu. “Yes” he said with a smile on his face.  He brought the transistor to school hiding it from his father who usually tunes into the All India Radio news every day in the evening once he turns back to home from his duty. That day we had few special classes as our class 10 board examination was nearing. Parents and teachers were complaining and even cursing cricketers for organising such a tournament during exam season. But we the boys had double pressure, one to clear the examination with good percentile and next India should win all the matches and lift the World Cup. Watching television particularly cricket was prohibited in most our house except in few (me belong to the exception list). There used to be a common tendency among boys to try/test which is forcefully bunged. This is the reason why transistor radio entered our class room that day so secretly.  The special classes used to be in Maths and English most of the time. We attended the classes as usual in the morning session and our plan was to escape in the afternoon session to listen to the match with the transistor. The school I studied till Class 10 was in a village surrounded by farm land where groundnut is usually sowed in the summer season. Toilets and drinking water used to be in one common place for which we need to walk minimum of 200m from our class. Going in pairs everywhere used to be the trend. Our plan for the day was made by me. The match starts after 1PM usually and our classes used to be till 03.30PM at the extreme. Being a special class there used to be no definite time for start, end or lunch timing except total hours. We planned that day to extend the class somehow at least till 12.45PM at any cost by asking some stupid question at least, so that we can extend our lunch hours till 01.30 or 01.45PM which will host the crucial toss of the match. Post lunch break our strategy was to disburse every 20 minutes one by one asking permission for going to toilet or for drinking water or by doing both alternatively so that the scores are updated continuously. During the lunch break we arranged the sitting position to listen to the match near the toilet (in fact under a tree near the farm), jumped the school wall into the farm land and uprooted groundnut plants to our capacity which used to be our snack while listening the match and also in the class during the lectures. There used to be two hurdles while listening to AIR cricket commentary, one the transistor never receives signal on time and even if received will not be clear and the next will be the Hindi commentary which we hardly understand. Post lunch break we used to have complete  list and timing for one to request the teacher to exit out, many times we never return on time making trouble for the next. Excitement will be high when one enters the class. All our eyes will be on him and a smile on his face will guarantee at the first instance that everything is right. Sometimes the teacher stops, quizzes and don’t allow few to move out.  Once the class is over we used to run to the tree to listen for the next few minutes before my friend hides it back in his bag to take back home before his father arrives.

 Days have passed, the game has changed, the technology has improved but the excitement still remains the same. Now we don’t have to hide the transistor, don’t have to play a trick to keep updated with the score. Thanks to Smartphone revolution. From getting live updates on scores to watching it live the era has changed a lot. Live scorecard was the trend before sometime and now one can watch deferred live free of cost provided by the broadcaster itself, this is the best thing which I like about the new starsports.com and its android app. I never imagined that star sports will be playing in my mobile when we listened to the scores in transistor exactly 11 years back.  I will not be surprised even if the next generation cricket broadcast changes to the way that the viewer virtually feels his presence in the stadium watching it live.


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