A DCT - A Dream Come True

The DCT a.k.a Dream Come True was an acronym I made up almost a decade ago. Yesterday, around midnight (AEST), I did have a DCT moment. It was so special, so supernatural that I decided to break my hiatus and write a post about it.

A few years ago, I had decided that Sachin Tendulkar (SRT) could no longer last an entire 50 overs in an ODI. The simple reason being that the biophysics didn't work out! His body couldn't last the intensity with which he plays his ODI innings. Hence, I had given up on him scoring an ODI double ton which, to be honest, I have felt he has deserved just as Sunil Gavaskar deserved to break the 10000 run test match barrier.

Yet, SRT has always found nuggets to surprise me. I can recall - as if it were yesterday - his amazing 98 at Supersport Park Centurion in WC2003 against Pakistan. That day, he did surprise me starting with that uppercut off Shoaib Akhtar. Yesterday's unbeaten 200 was such a bolt out of the blue that I have yet to recover from the pleasant numbing of the senses. However, my actual realization of SRT's achievement had a bit of a supernatural deja-vu-ish flavour to it. This is how it happened yesterday night ...

I had a chat with my parents that ended around 10:30pm AEST. My mother told me that Sachin had got his century in the 28th over and I merely acknowledged it saying that this is going to be another high scoring rubber. SRT's centuries have become so commonplace in the last few weeks that I didn't even bother being ecstatic about it. I signed off that conversation and went back to some reading that I had to do for today - I didn't even bother checking the scorecard online, at that time.

Around midnight, I decided to check the Indian batting scorecard and see how South Africa had begun their chase. That's when it happened ... The cricinfo site was taking an eternity to load ... This usually happens when there is huge traffic to check on some breaking cricket news - scorecards become inaccessible and the cricinfo home page takes ages to load. That was precisely the moment when a light went up in my head that something special had happened in the Indian innings and that something special was that Sachin had achieved the ODI double ton - trust me.. these were thoughts, now put in verse!! I knew it then without checking, without being told... just like that... a deep intuition - it was like sensing new information that was out there in the universe.... and there's more!

Whenever I check cricinfo first up for any new information, it is usually not to my liking... the team that I am supporting usually is not doing well... this is just one of those cricketing superstitions that I have experienced in my years of following cricinfo when I don't have access to the cricket on television. So I usually check the timesofindia or rediff website if I want to break that jinx and yesterday, it was almost as if the web was telling me to uphold my superstition and get my first account of the ODI double ton, not from cricinfo but from some other site - and I obliged!!

I immediately loaded the timesofindia website and lo and behold! - the headlines confirmed my supernatural intuition! There are some moments in life that affirm your belief in the unknown, the immeasurable, the subjective universe - and yesterday I had one such moment. Needless to say, "Thanks Sach for that special moment... sach is life!!"