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Here are some activities which can help you cope up with the depressing things happening in these dark times
It is a sad world out there these days because of the Corona outbreak. The Olympic Games have been postponed for the first time since the Second World War and every sports event is likely to follow suit. However, there is a chance for you to find some positivity even in these dark times, and take self-isolation as a sport. Each of these activities listed below has nothing to do with stepping out of your house, meeting other people in person and catching the virus. Interested? Read now:
If you are a sports lover then you might have a few books stashed here and there that you have always wanted to read. It could be the autobiography of former Australian captain Steve Waugh, Shahid Afridi’s Game Changer or even Usain Bolt’s Faster Than Lightning. Now is the best time to do that, because if you don’t read those books now, it would be better to pass them over to someone who would. Of course, after the government declares it safe for you to do so.
YouTube is making quarantine easy for a lot of people these days and you can join that august group, and improve your cricket knowledge. There are a lot of cricket performances that we Pakistanis have only read about, not watched because cable TV came late to the country. With the help of YouTube, you can now experience Lance Cairns towering sixes, Trevor Chappell’s underarm bowling and Javed Miandad’s cheeky batting Down Under, or find out why Richard Hadlee was feared by his opponents, what made Abdul Qadir a magician and how far the Ball of the Century spun!
And then there is Amazon Prime and Netflix, two of the world’s best streaming services available in Pakistan. While Netflix is more popular, it is Amazon Prime that has more cricket-related stuff, including The Test and Inside Edge. While the former is a documentary that revolves around Australian cricket team’s resurgence after the ball-tampering allegations, the latter is a two-season drama that tackles the other kind of “tampering”. That doesn’t mean that Netflix doesn’t have anything sports-related to offer — it has Hollywood flicks such as Coach Carter, Ali, Trouble With The Curve, The Blind Side, South Paw, The Karate Kid, Space Jam, Million Dollar Baby and Million Dollar Arm, besides countless documentaries with one on Cristiano Ronaldo and another on Borg vs McEnroe. Need I say more?
It’s back to YouTube, where Pakistanis love to check matches they have seen countless of times to get the adrenaline rush. However, it might come to you as a surprise but there is more to cricket or football than the World Cup, and more to the sports than victories. Try searching for important matches that changed the course of history such as the 1987 World Cup semi-final that an over-confident Pakistan lost to the Australians; the match where Pete Sampras passed on the torch to a younger Roger Federer; the penalty stroke that helped Pakistan more than it did Holland in the Hockey World Cup played in 1994, or the car crash that resulted in the death of Formula One driver Ayrton Senna.
We all know that it was Ajay Jadeja whose clean hitting got India into the semi-final of the World Cup in 1996 but how many of us have seen Aravinda de Silva’s master-class in the semi-final that followed? If you didn’t know that Rahul Dravid nearly won the match for India in which Saeed Anwar had scored 194, how Ejaz Ahmed decimated India with his 139 not out or that it was Hand of Maradona than Hand of God in the 1986 World Cup semi-final, now is the chance to watch those matches. Check out the world-record performances from the best players in the world as well and be ready for a shock because there are some records that belong to players you haven’t heard about.
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