If you belong to the 70% of Indian male population then Cricket is something that flows through the blood along with chants and hymns for maybe Sachin Tendulkar, Dhoni or even Ravindra Jadeja. The summer of cricket has started. The Border-Gavaskar trophy is going on between India and Australia and soon, IPL will start. Amidst all this cricket how does a working man get his fix?
Many people resort to getting the scores at regular interval. Once phone messaging was all fad. People used to message every few minutes to get the scores. Even today, monthly or series packs for cricket are available by service providers.
Most of the phones now come with GPRS though and people have started using this to access sites like yahoo cricket or espncricinfo.com. Here they can see the scores, some interesting stats and a ball-by-ball commentary to read. I sometimes even open this commentary to read even when in front of the TV.
None of this though beats the real thing. Watching a game live (on TV even) gives the real excitement and people do find excuses to watch their favorite sport. Many sites have popped up that show the cricket live on the internet via streaming. IPL is offered by Youtube itself.
Many of these sites are illegal or shady at best. They have not paid the necessary amount to broadcast the show but to the end user this does not matter (like the issue of piracy).
The difference is the attitude of companies towards it. While piracy or illegal downloading (torrents especially) are frowned or even banned by many companies, they blissfully turn the other way when their employees have opened a tab that is streaming cricket.
Even though company is losing both the precious bandwidth and the time the person is giving to the sport, it is a general phenomenon that companies while strict about watching anything else are quite lenient about sports. Not just in our country too. Even when Football is going on, in many countries people would stop their work to enjoy the game.
Is it a hidden perk that companies know they have to give to the employees or is it that they do not want to stop people from pushing the line sometimes? Does your company gives you these perks?
