After watching Manchester United winning their 18th English Premier League title, I celebrated for less than an hour. Here is how my “grand” celebrations panned out. Saw the presentation ceremony for 5 minutes, which was abruptly cut short by the sports channel. Went online, caught hold of a live stream, saw the celebrations for about 20 minutes and then relived the season for about 30 minutes in my head. After that, it was back to the nitty gritties of life, thoughts moving on the next trophy, in fact, to the next season as well. So in a season, where I had countless anxious moments, was left with almost no finger nails to chew on and took a lot of flak for being anti-social on weekends (more on that later), the jubilation lasted all of 60 minutes.

Family, friends, acquaintances have told me countless times over the years that I have an unhealthy obsession with United. Passion is one thing, but at times they think that I take it on an extreme level. Although I don’t subscribe to that view and think of myself as a regular supporter who just loves the club passionately and wants them to do well.

Though there have been a few occasions over the last 13-odd years when I might have stepped over the line. A few TV remotes have bore the brunt when United have lost a match. I almost punched a very close friend, who by the way is twice my size, when he offered me fake consolation after a United defeat. Things have been thrown, glasses have been broken, and many such things were a common occurrence if the result went against United. I haven’t taken calls, avoided meeting friends, had arguments earlier with my mum and now my wife, on why can’t I just take it as a game. Of course, my wife having known me for donkey years always knew this about me. But I won’t be surprised if one day she penned down a book called How Manchester United Ruined My Life!

Apart from that, there have been times when to watch a United match I have gone to extreme lengths as well. Once, while living in the hostel, just when a match about to start at 1.30 in the night, the cable connection went off. I promptly called the cable guy and woke him up from his slumber asking him to fix the cable. We had a conversation which can’t be repeated here but after a few threats were exchanged between us, he caved in and put the channel.

Then there was a time, when due to the cricket match being shown on the hostel telly, me along with another United supporter, travelled a good 100 kilometres to and fro to his distant relative’s house to watch. I have landed at acquaintances’ houses at vague hours, if there was a power cut at my place. I have wriggled out of social engagements countless times, so much so, people have stopped inviting me if they know there is a game on. People who want me to take part in such engagements are generally sweet and kind enough to not hold such events on a matchday. So even though I don’t agree with the unhealthy obsession, I can understand why they think so.

But over the years, I have mellowed down considerably. For instance, I deal with United defeats in a much better way. I get upset but I try to get it out of my system as soon as I can. Things aren’t broken anymore, neither do I avoid people nor do I find myself switching off the cell phone to avoid messages reminding me of the agony I went through.

Somehow, I think that has rubbed on to the way I celebrate as well. Earlier, I used to be high on a title victory for days. I never stopped rubbing it in to friends who supported rival clubs and made sure that they almost came close to hating me. But now, I find myself sympathising with them, a favour which I am sure they won’t return if the roles were reversed. Not that I am too worried about this change which has happened, but still after devoting so much of my time, I would have liked to celebrate some more. Ever since the weekend, I have been humming these few lines of an Ozzy Osbourne song, “Times have changed, times are strange, here I come, but I ain’t the same”. Well, that just about sums up how I feel!

Two weeks into IPL 2.0 and I still find myself completely detached to the happenings in South Africa. Sure, I saw Sachin Tendulkar bat on more than a couple of occasions. I make it a point not to miss any of Shane Warne’s spells, and if an SMS beeps in about a match going down to the wire, I do find myself switching on the TV to catch a few glimpses. But, if truth be told, I have an attention span of a goldfish when it comes to watching cricket these days, especially T20.

Friends accuse of me having an inexplicable bias towards the IPL and say that I locked the part of mind which could appreciate T20 and threw the keys away long time back. It’s not true, as I said, I do make an attempt to watch T20 and at times do find it entertaining even if not that engaging. Yet, I don’t myself enchanted by the spectacle or be even remotely interested.

I have heard colleagues saying, “Oh, IPL is a flop this time around,”. Others will say, “There is no sense of connect as it is happening in South Africa.” Neither of this is true.

IPL, in my opinion has been a success story so far. And I don’t mean it in terms of TV ratings or the money being made by the franchisees and advertisers.

Step into a sports bar and try asking them to change the channel to watch a football match like I did earlier this week. Dozens of people, not in the most sober state of mind, will boo you and ask you in the choicest of words, to simply buzz off. Somebody even yelled at me, “Get lost you pseudo, want to watch football when our national sport is being played”. Err, you are not watching hockey, freak show, I thought of telling the man but decided against the idea, seeing a Kingfisher bottle in his hand. Though one of the guys serving at the bar did took my side and said he too wanted to watch the football match. But couldn’t do much than give me a sympathetic pat on the back as if saying ‘I understand how you feel’.

Which brings me to the second point, of having no connect this time round. Was there a connect in the first place? Despite people going gaga over the IPL and crying out loud for being “super fans”, I still don’t see any connect so as to speak with the teams.

Facebook status messages change with every victory or defeat. One day somebody is Bangalore’d, so the other day he is creating a lot “Halla” over Rajasthan Royals. Kolkata becomes Kol‘kant’a. And from “Chennai all the way” it becomes to “Go Delhi Go.” Loyalty in sports comes at a premium but when everything is all about fun and games, it’s not too difficult to see why people crib about no sense of connect.

A cricket blogger friend of mine says that you need to watch IPL thinking that the average T20 spectator and an average test cricket follower are two different species. And the game “caters” to different sort of spectators.

This is what I mean when I say the IPL has been a success story. It has given birth to a whole new generation of fans for whom the Royals Rule. And it has successfully managed to divide cricket fans all across the globe in different categories to build an audience for itslef. Silly me, here I thought we were cricket followers and not format specific followers.