My affair with cricket began long ago, probably before I knew anything about the game. In fact, my feelings for it had little to do with the sport at all, in the beginning. It was just another 'Indian' thing to do -- love cricket, live cricket, breathe cricket, eat, sleep and, to paraphrase my favourite beverage-maker, dream cricket.

Not that I really do all of those things. But, deep down inside, apparently the flame still flickers. Why else would I stay up until the wee hours of the morning watching a fuzzy image of our Indian team on my laptop screen as they played Australia recently? Watching or, more accurately, listening to the match, my heart must have failed a thousand times in just two hours and I had so much caffeine in me that I'm still wired days later. I think I now know what drives all the other fans who were watching, listening or clicking for five days and nights in a row.

As a disclaimer, let me state flat out that I am not a sports nut. The topic exists somewhere in my peripheral vision. I know the teams, the players, the personalities and can fake expertise in most sports to convince the most obsessed fanatics (most of the time).

But, at best I'm a fickle fan of most teams and players. If I hear that Stanford is in the running for the NCAA basketball champs (like it was this year), I'll shake my fist in the air and yell "Go Stanford!" (to no one in particular) just because the university employed me for a year or so. But if my alma mater (any of them) ends up playing Stanford (which they didn't), I'll switch my affections without a second thought.

My rule of thumb? If I lived in a place for more than six months, I can claim allegiance to its teams. The exception is Atlanta -- mean fans, mean players, whether it's baseball, basketball or football. I won't waste my breath on any of those teams. But, anywhere else? "Go FC Bayern! Houston Rockets Rule! Minnesota Twins zindabad! C'mon India!!"

My shifting loyalties can be confusing to others. I wear a Purdue University sweatshirt every now and then. It draws a nod from Purdue fans I meet, oh say, in line at the grocery store, and a quizzical look when I say "No, I never attended Purdue, although I did drive past the highway exit to the town it's in once." A friend gave me the sweatshirt years ago. It's a beautiful piece of clothing and warm too. My friend trained me to yell "Go Purdue!" whenever the teams were playing, which I did dutifully, except when they played against Minnesota or Penn State.

When it comes to India, though, there's nothing fickle about it. No matter what the sport, it's always "Go, India!" Strange, isn't it? In the US we divide our loyalties every which way -- state, city, high school, university -- and only once every two to four years, it "U-S-A!" -- at the Olympics. But, for the most part, for most of us, it's always "C'mon India!"

Which brings us back to cricket. Yes, yes, I know, India has other sports and as we've seen recently, excellent athletes outside of cricket. But, I'm talking cricket now.

I can trace my affection for the sport to my first trip to India as a child. Like most sports I follow now, it began with the images. Leafing through Indian magazines then, it was hard not to be taken with those green fields, gleaming white uniforms and handsome men frozen in awesome poses. These players looked much more graceful and human than the bulky American football players I was used to seeing on TV in the USA -- those 300-lb. bulldozers.

When most kids were listening to bedtime stories, my uncles were telling me sports tales of cricket's greatest. They must have been great, I thought, from the tone and gestures of my uncles, as they pretended to bowl and bat explaining the game to me.

Poor things. Time and time again, they would explain fielding and batting and runs and sixers and overs and wickets. Day in and day out, but it all went right over my head, like most of the balls they pitched when playing on the empty field next to the house.

The trouble wasn't my ability to comprehend the complexities of the game. It's just that my lessons were constantly interrupted by my real passion, Bollywood, and travelling to see other relatives every few days or so, it seemed.

Each time I'd come back, though, the Illustrated Weekly and JS magazines would be spread open and I'd ask who this guy was and where that one played. It was about the players, you see, and any tidbits related to them.

Which is why, to this day, the actual rules and how the game is played still elude me, for the most part. I was more interested in names like Thompson and Lillee, the legendary Aussie fast-bowlers, or that one of them tore off a guy's face with said bowling, or that the Chappells -- Greg and Ian -- were brothers and well, when there's a nawab married to a Bollywood actress, I am a goner for the game. By the end of three months in India, I'd be an expert in cricket (kind of) and its personalities. Then I'd come back to the USA and forget it all. Two years later the summer lessons would start all over again and then, well, you know how it goes.

So, with all this time invested in cricket, how could I not stay awake to follow the critical match between Australia and India? A friend earlier on that fifth day simply asked me to send up a prayer for India's team. That's all I intended to do, say "Go India!" Then I wanted to just check the score. And that did it. Suddenly I'm downloading a plug-in and glued to my laptop to the glorious end. Not only had I reconnected with that old cricket feeling deep inside, but it's what my friends, cousins, and uncles were probably doing at the very same time. Talk about a connected world, USA, India, Singapore, Delhi, Boston, Mumbai, San Francisco, uptown, downtown, all around town -- we were all in synch.

I have to say, cable TV in India has helped my understanding of cricket greatly. And so has baseball. As an adult I developed a passion for baseball, one that lasted almost five years even when the Minnesota Twins were winning. Watching inning after inning of the World Series, suddenly my uncles' lessons started to make sense.

So, in October 2000, two days after landing in India, my relatives and I were flicking back and forth between the baseball World Series in the US and the Indian cricket team playing in Nairobi (and winning!). I explained innings and home runs and my uncle gave me a refresher course on overs and what the heck a wicket is. Watching the game, vs. looking at players frozen forever on a page made all the difference.

There are those who say Indians are obsessed with a game, when there are so many serious problems to address in India. I say, there are so few things in India that bring Indians together. So we go overboard at times, we're human, okay? But, if there's one thing I've seen that removes our differences, whether they are there or here or anywhere in between -- for Indians, it's cricket. Old or young, male and female, north south, east, west -- C'mon India!

Despite those interrupted lessons and my short sport-attention span, the 'feeling' of cricket stays within me. When India won the World Cup in June 1983, I was right there by the radio when my cousins and uncles let out a roar in the middle of the night. In January 1998 when my flight landed in Delhi just as the victorious Indian team flew in from Bangladesh, I watched the uniformed players walk by me, trophy in hand. Two hundred-plus weary travellers didn't seem to give a damn, but I stood and gazed at Azhar, standing less than 15 feet away from me, wishing I had the nerve to go up to him and say something, anything.

I caught World Cup fever in 1999 -- I was in India for the hype and stood still with a proud smile glued on my face when the ads came on TV. Now, on trips to India I click my camera furiously as impromptu cricket matches take place when all the cousins gather for a wedding or festival. And I nearly keeled over laughing when I saw a friend fondly caress his newest prized possession -- a bat. Not just any bat, though, to hear him tell it. The power of cricket -- when a grown man turns to jelly over a bat, or enters the 'zone' while batting imaginary fast balls in his living room, reliving glorious games of yesteryear, I imagine, a look of sublime joy on his face.

Maybe it's the Indian in me, maybe I've been conditioned to be passionate about anything Indian -- living away from India as I have all these years, maybe it's the hype, maybe it's the gorgeous guys, or maybe it's just cricket. Whatever it is, I hope there's no cure for this affliction.

Reeta Sinha's favourite sports is... spectating.

Illustration: Lynette Menezes