LBW: Love Beyond Wicket

Growing up in the 1990s, I spent many summer evenings fiddling with a Panasonic remote and searching for a very specific brand of TV entertainment. My father had his old movies and news channels, my mother had her Hollywood soaps, but my obsession with sports led me to expect that elusive beast on the small screen: an Indian cricket-themed serial. There were plenty of army stories, family sitcoms, horror shows, mythological dramas, campus romcoms. But not enough cricket stories were being told in a decade where Sachin Tendulkar had elevated the game to mythical heights; it’s almost like filmmakers were afraid to mess with India’s newest religion. So I settled for Bodyline reruns instead. LBW: Love Beyond Wicket is probably the kind of serial my 11-year-old self was craving for — a slice-of-life, tacky, tropey, clumsy, but oddly sweet college-cricket television serial (not web series, mind you) with bite-sized episodes, Disney-coded stakes and a soap-opera aesthetic.