By: Kapil Sanadhya

Those of you who thought the nationwide strike was the sole reason for less traffic in Udaipur on Tuesday 28^th February, the One Day International between India and Sri Lanka stole the show and seemed to be the only reason for it.

From schools to colleges, offices to organizations, societies to social media, the thriller-cum-one sided match kept everyone talking and posting throughout the day.

It’s high time when the mid-semesters are on in colleges but discussing the heroics of Kohli was the favorite pass time for the students, rather than discussing the question paper.

Even in offices, the common gripe around the water coolers was how that wild goose chase was achieved.

A 321 runs target to be achieved in only 240 balls or less if India is to think of making it to the finals could tell you the whole story. But don’t they say when no one can do it, only India can and the Men in Blue took 220 balls to do so with Virat Kohli finishing it in style and scoring 133 runs off just 86 balls.

There was huge roar when Kohli hit that last four to finish things off and left us with the glimpses of the World Cup final memories.

It was neither a nail bitter nor was it a one sided match but you could have cut the tension with a knife when Sehwag and Tendulkar were gone after giving India fiery start.

Over the next two hours from then, what the young guns of India did was something that kept everyone on the edge of their seats. Even words will fall short in describing those superb innings by Gambhir, Virat and Raina but rather, they won’t, when you have a Facebook world around you which was full of congratulatory posts to Team India for putting up such a scintillating show.

There were some humorous ones too saying, “Indian team is like a rocket…will not fly until the tail is on fire”, “‘VIRAT’ compressive strength…is ‘bande k shots’ me jaan hai” or for that matter a poster portraying Kohli as Dushasan and Malinga as Draupadi and the title given to it was “Malinga Haran”. One message going around between Blackberry users was “Malinga BBM Pin has been changed to 264444” which was the description of the Over in which Malinga was sweetly hammered by Kohli for 24 runs.

Team India and Kohli topped the list when it came to Twitter and Youtube. Those who missed the live action for some reason seemed out of place, but they also couldn’t help catching the highlights and cheering equally for every shot being scored.

A win with bonus point has done a world of good for us to be in the contest but the final is yet not final for team India until Sri Lanka lose their next to the Aussies and therefore the Indians will pray, not for themselves but for the Lankans to lose.

It is that point in the CB series where you have to watch the other two teams play and be a mere spectator to know your fate. So, with ummeedon wali dhoop and sunshine wali aasha, we’ll make it into the finals, what say Udaipur?