This one makes up for everything !

For those classes bunked in school, those excuses of tummy upsets, the days spent on the ground imitating Azhar's flick, Sachin's stance, even Prasad's slower delivery, those dreamy times when while laying the mat and setting the nets we thought of playing for India, for those bleak days when we assumed not getting selected in state trials was the end of the world and for those depressing months when we shied away from the game because it was tainted.

For those hours spent trying to explain cricket to girlfriends, ditching those who didn't like the game, for reading cricketing biographies under the guise of improving RC skills for CAT, for the times we shared one TV among 150 students in a college hostel to watch the game, for never switching it off until the presentation ceremony got over and for getting chided for spending money on Sportstar, Cricket Talk. and Cricket Samrat- on all of them for the same week.

For those times we debated endlessly with friends that even though it's spread over five days this is a game greater than any other, for never having an answer when questioned by elders - 'for what good?', then growing up and asking that question ourselves, for standing and peering over shoulders outside a TV showroom when one wasn't going to reach home before the last ball, for still sneaking onto Cricinfo in the midst of a team meeting and in spite of maladies like spot-fixing still believing that the game is above the dirt that surrounds it.

For that searingly painful one-run loss to Australia in 1992, that blunder of bowling first in 1996, the horror of seeing S. Ramesh and company give their wickets away in 1999, for that nightmare of a first over in 2003 and for that dreadful loss to Bangladesh in 2007.

Yes, I can sense it, 2011 makes up for everything !