Sounds weird? Probably. I was thinking about cricket. Then my mind forayed into various aspects of internet, God knows why!. And when both these threads of thoughts got entwined in my little brain, I got a new theory. This weird comparison.

There were these olden times, when the red kookaburra balls bounced off the ground for five days before they went to rest. Yes, the test matches, which put the batsmanship and the bowling skills to grueling tests. Cricket lovers had to wait five long days to find out which team won. But it had its own charm. Grab a cup of coffee. Sit down. Watch the match. Repeat the previous steps for five days.

And there was this new technology, called email, which made the normal form of mails to be aptly nicknamed as snail-mails. Fascinating it was. Very fast. Extremely convenient. Easy to convey your feelings. But then the wait for a response  was sometimes annoying. And soon came another trend – personal websites. It took quite some time to create them, and much more time to publicize.

But then, in this fast-paced world, one cannot spend five days watching batsmen playing just too many defensive shots, scoring at under 4 per over. The focus shifted to ODIs. Just one full day. We get to know the results after just 100 overs. Interesting. And more innovation. The ground has become colourful. Teams were recognized by the colour they wear. “Men in blue”. “Men with the black caps”… More following. More money. A single packet of popcorn. But the ball turned white .. !

And then people thought. “I remember there was one guy sitting in the farthest corner of the classroom, when I was in fifth. I guess what his name was…”. A sudden sense of bonding develops between these two persons, who apparently might be in two corners of the world right now. emails are good. But not good enough. Thus came social networking. Orkut. Facebook. Hi5… Find friends. Sometimes it gets so weird that the websites help us to find our long-forgotten friends. But yes, this was much faster. Response time was lesser. And along with it emerged the blogging fashion. A few hundred words helped people to give vent to all their feelings. Quick and efficient. And the whole world was there to read it. But, privacy was hugely compromised .. !

And now to the present. People have only enough time to manage a short movie during office breaks. How can we afford to spend a whole day to watch cricket, where people just hit at about 6 an over with the ball occasionally going over the fence. Cricket got further shortened… From mega to mini to micro. 40 overs. A little above three hours. Fireworks all around. Fiery hitting. Music, Drums and Cheerleaders. A perfect commercial movie. Or a sitcom. No more time to have a full packet of popcorn. Just grab a bite, a glance at the television and off we go…

And no time to edit a blog either. Now we have twitter. After extensive research, someone has discovered that 160 characters [160 - the length of an sms too. twitter offers 140] are more than sufficient to express our feelings to this world. And along with it came all these short forms too… LOL, OMG, ROFLMAO, IMO, G2G, NVM, TTYL… Txtng s gr8. Characters are precious. Cannot afford to waste. Affectionately called micro-blogging. “I had a cup of coffee this morning at 6 am, and guess what, I made it myself”. As if the world cares… Why should i write a whole blog trying to convey that I am sad? Just “:-(” is sufficient enough. So now, twitter rocks. Not because it is good, but because people do not have time to write long emails to friends or to sit and type blogs, and twitter has come to the rescue. And this can be very easy if you put your mobile phones to appropriate use too.

Time is nearing for cricket to be made a sitcom screened during the prime-time, competing with Himym and Heroes for viewership. And time is also nearing for single-character blogging. A – I just woke up. B – I had coffee. H – I am happy. L – I love u.

Test matches have almost become vintage classics. So do emails and personal websites. Sorry, we just do not have time…

In this age of timelessness, if you really did read through this entire article of mine, you deserve special appreciation. Kudos.

Tags: cricket, internet