MCC VS Rest Of the World: Celebrating the history

Too much epicness at Lord’s!

You can feel certain buzz around the cricketing world right now.

Today is the big day. It’s MCC XI Vs Rest of the World, a match celebrating 200 years of the Mecca of cricket.

Now that we are into the final leg of football World Cup, the excitement in the air was already pretty high. Add this one of a kind, once in a lifetime match studded with stars of past and present, I can echo a general emotion that this is a great time to be a sports fan!

Perhaps by the time this column will be published, the match would be underway. Perhaps, most of us would be engrossed, watching a straight drive by Tendulkar, a cover drive by Dravid or a googly by Warnie. There will be Murli’s doosra involved too, so would be Brian Lara’s ingenious class.

Afridi and Sehwag are sharing the same dressing room for perhaps, the only time in their life.

As if we are travelling back in time. The same lush green ground of Lord’s, celebrating her 200th birthday, and players who were reasons of indefinite joys of our childhood, as if nothing changed.

I am a small town middle class person. I have never even been to the Feroz Shah Kotla or the Wankhede so Lord’s stays a distant dream. But when I close my eyes and try to wonder and feel the atmosphere perspiring in London right now, it just thrills me. The old, majestic dressing rooms and alleys decorated with beautiful oil paintings of legends, the legendary balcony, the giant oval screen, we are talking about Lord’s here, Lord’s, the Mecca of Cricket.

There are performers from past and present, the very best of the last 2 decades, the cream of the cricketing crop of 21st century.

Emotionally, sentimentally, nostalgically, this can’t get any bigger for a cricket fan.

As Alan Gardner of Espncricinfo notes,

“In the Long Room, where the oil paintings on the wall hang heavy with history, there is an air of informality. Current and former cricketers walk back and forth, some with equipment in their arms, most wearing odd bits of kit; members of the press mill about with shirt collars open, not bound by the usual MCC rules on attire. In the middle, a legspin bowler tosses up the ball and a diminutive figure with an unmistakable backlift stretches forward to meet it, bat perfectly straight.”

This is the first time Sachin Tendulkar would wrap his pad and come down to bat since last November. He was the greatest batsman when he last played.

Now, he is a former legend who was arguably the greatest cricketer of his era. Instead of being talked about how he got out in his nervous 90 again or how he scored yet another century, he has been in news for receiving the Bharat Ratna and controversies surrounding that hoopla. He has lately been unintentionally on the celluloid for “not being known” by one Russian female tennis star.

The God of cricket is not habituated for so much off field duties. He is a true gentleman of the game, one of the very last of his kind.

He likes to settle his issues on the field. There was no better way, no bigger stage than today. He is the captain of Marylebone Cricket Club. It is the biggest honor that could have been bestowed upon him by the Englishmen.

He will be pitted against his greatest professional rival and one of the closest personal friends, Shane Warne, who leads the Rest of the World XI.

"I want to get him out, which didn't happen that often; he wants to smash me, which happened a lot, hopefully I don't get the chance to bowl to Sachin.”-Warne about Sachin on match eve

We are merely an hour away from the match as I conclude this article. There are two quarter finals tonight in Brazil, ready to blow our minds, but we have been soccer crazy throughout the last month.

Today is the day to celebrate cricket, to cherish its history, to revisit the last decade, to see our childhood heroes go at it for one last time.

By now, all of us are aware of the star studded teams.

Still, take a look at these once in a generation line ups.

The teams!

I have got coke cans and french fries at my disposal. Today I am not leaving my couch for a moment. The world shall stand still, time on a halt. What about you? Are you ready?