The Passion of Indian Sports Fans part I

When I first got to India the Australia v India 5 day cricket match was going on. I didn't have to work that first week so I spent every evening with the company guesthouse caretaker, Madan, watching the cricket match.  Initially, my purpose of watching was to learn more about the sport since I was going to be working in Sports Marketing, but I soon found myself 100% emotionally involved in the game. I was never more proud to be Indian. 

It is a truly indescribable feeling to go from wandering the streets of Delhi seeing tremendous poverty, class differences and an endless supply of depressed, resigned looks on people's faces...to seeing a stadium of  Indians of all different socioeconomic classes celebrating together (with huge smiles and full of possibility).  If India won the match, we would typically go out and celebrate and it is like you have walked into a different Delhi.  People who were fighting on the streets earlier are now talking about how great Dhoni hit or how Sachin is in a class of his own.  Just another reason why I truly value the power that sports has to connect people (it also has the power to disconnect people, but I'll leave that for a later post).

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