 |
| Fans stared at blue and blank screens for several minutes as V.V.S. Laxman played yet another special knock. (AFP) |
Techie Anirban Roy may yet forgive Ian Gould for giving Ishant Sharma out LBW, but not those behind the blank screens that stumped cricket fanatics like him during the final moments of the first Test.
“I was watching the match in our office cafeteria when the screen froze with Ishant facing (off-spinner) Marcus North. There were still 20 runs to get and I screamed my head off in frustration as the screen remained static,” said Anirban.
Neo Cricket had apparently lost the feed because of “sun outage”, or distortion of geo-stationary satellite signals caused by solar radiation. Nobody from the channel was available for comment.
By the time Neo Cricket got back the Mohali feed, it was time for a typical “rain interruption” in DTH homes in town with the skies opening up and screens turning blank and blue.
When Anirban hurried back to his workstation to catch the action on cricinfo.com, the website refused to open. He then tried rediff.com but the scores were not being updated. “It was as if everyone had ganged up against the cricket fan,” Anirban said.
Belgachhia homemaker Anasuya Datta, who was glued to the TV since the first ball of the day was bowled, recalled “praying for Ishant not to play a silly shot” when her screen went blank.
“Since I don’t have an Internet connection at home, I called friends for live updates. I was pacing up and down the house after hearing about Ishant being adjudged LBW. Thank god, the picture returned and Pragyan Ojha held his nerve,” said Anasuya.
Screens going blank due to the rain is a common problem for DTH subscribers, though the duration and frequency of such interruptions vary depending on the service provider. And Tuesday’s afternoon downpour could not have been timed worse for Team India fans.
With websites crashing as well, it was a triple blow on Tuesday for fans following Very Very Stubborn Laxman fashioning a famous victory with two tailenders and a runner for company.
Sources said the cricinfo.com server crashed for a while because of a surge in traffic during the period when TV screens froze.
A cricinfo.com official told Metro from Bangalore that the website received a record 1.6 million hits during the day from users in India and 3.75 million worldwide. “We had 1.3 million hits in India when Sachin Tendulkar scored the first double century in ODIs in February. But we surpassed that today,” he added.
For Anirban, the only hits that mattered on Tuesday of course came off Laxman and Ishant’s bats.