Cricket! It is almost a religion in India. In this huge population, a team of 11 players get selected and represent the country in world stage. The competition for a youngster dreaming to be an international cricketer is very high. One has to dedicate his entire young age for cricket to play for India one day. He must practice daily; sacrifice his wishes of enjoying life. All these shows that cricket has grown that big today. Who sowed the seeds for this growth? Cricket was there in the nation from 1960s. Children used to play cricket after school and during free time. Some played seriously. But many didn’t know that they can take cricket as career. Cricket was played in Olympics during 1960s. Many countries played cricket at that time. But cricket was removed from Olympics because it took too long to complete a single match. Then cricket was played for 60 overs in Olympics. In 1975, for the first time, Internal Cricket Council (ICC) organised a grand cricket tournament inviting teams from all over the world. That event was the World Cup. It was played for 50 overs. West Indies won the World Cup 1975 and became the first time Champions. They made history and repeated that in 1979 as well. Yes, they won the consecutive World Cup in 1979. During that time West Indies were the giants of the world cricket.

In 1983, India won the World Cup under the captaincy of the great all-rounder Kapil Dev. At that point they might not know that incident would inspire millions to take up cricket. The face of cricket in India got changed then. Youngsters started believing that they too could play cricket. They too could be selected for the national team. They too could win trophies for the nation. At that phase, Kapil was the hero for Indian fans. Then after Kapil Dev, there came Sunil Gavaskar. He played brilliantly over the years. He smacked the giant West Indies bowlers for boundaries without helmet. Then came Sachin Tendulkar at his very young age of 16 years. Sachin took up against the world’s best bowlers in his very young age. The worked hard and became the God of Cricket scoring 100 centuries in his career. All those years from 1983, cricket has grown continuously and remarkably. In 2004, MS Dhoni made debut for Indian team when he was 23 years of age. That time, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid captained India. In 2007, ICC started conducting a new format World Cup called “ICC World T20” which was played for 20 overs. India won the first ever World T20 cup under the captaincy of Dhoni. In 2011, India won the World Cup. In 2013, India won the ICC Champions trophy. Dhoni, through his amazing leadership won trophies after trophies. They way he handled youngsters was very impressive. He also won 3 IPL trophies. Now Virat Kohli is leading the Indian team. He made India to win a Test Series in Australia for the first time. He made India the No.1 Test ranking team.

All these years, India won, lost, suffered, sustained and fought. Cricket never fell down from the hearts of Indians.