In matches that go down to the last ball or a super over, I would absolutely refuse to believe that luck doesn’t play a significant role.
Just as there is luck, there is also superstition! Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality, where one event is believed to determine another unrelated event.
Read More: The Logic Behind These Superstitions Are Not At All Superstitious
Most athletes and fans have their own crazy superstitions. Having been a high-school basketball player, our team had a few rituals of our own:
1. Take the highest warm-up jump last or at the end
2. Covert the final shot during warm-up right before the match
3. Huddle around the basketball before the game
4. Touch the ground before entering the court
5. All five players enter the court together
6. Score the first basket of the match
I don’t believe in coincidences and thus the fact that I listed six superstitions isn’t a coincidence. The number 6 is my so-called lucky number and my jersey number.
Anyway, coming back to the point, since the IPL is the hot topic of the hour (or month), let’s come back to cricket and have a look at some crazy cricket superstitions that people believe in with all their faith:
1. Not changing your position/posture/seating throughout the game and the insignificance of the discomfort as a result.
2. Not fiddling with the remote to change the volume during a tough situation, no matter how high, low or muted.
3. Not changing the channel in between, even if it means memorising the most boring commercials.
4. Not getting up in the middle. Come hail, come snow, you just do not get up in the middle of the match.
5. Just prayers. Heart crossing, hoping to die, prayers. Continuously whispering words, not even pausing to breathe.
6. Promises and trivial barter, give and take games, with God. Desperate times do call for desperate measures. What to do?
7. Keeping your lucky charm with you. It can be anything; a bead, a coin, any inanimate object that has the superpower to overrule the forces of nature, destiny and fate.
8. Wearing a particular colour shirt. This one can be disguised as “support” but it is really not. Because well, how exactly do you “support” a team from the comfort of your couch? Do tell.
9. Positioning the TV appropriately based on Feng Shui or Vastu Shastra or other such things.
10. Not talking to people around you when wickets are falling (that is if you’re on the batting side of course)!
11. Consuming a particular brand of beer while watching the game at a sports bar.
12. Not watching the match at all, and star gazing instead so that your favourite team wins!
13. Dancing to a particular song every time it is played at a boundary or fall of a wicket. (You do not want to choose a team’s official song.)
To be honest I kind of just made that last one up. Yes right now.
I know some of these sound pretty silly and I guess if we were to look at this whole thing logically, they are. But it’s all about faith, right? There’s a lot of things we believe in without any proof or evidence and so why not this?
Especially with matches that could really have gone one way or the other and end in surprises or rather shocks, how else could you justify them?
Besides, you would be surprised to know how many top sports persons follow strange superstitions and just how strange they are.
Please see: It is extremely ironic that a list of superstitions has exactly 13, but well it does. I guess this is my crazy superstition, so deal with it!
Image Credits: Google Images
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