Even before Shahid Afridi held aloft his arms at the end of the final against Sri Lanka, the news channels were extolling his virtues, showering him with unstinted praise and generally behaving as if he was Yuvraj Singh. And once the victory was won, they all rushed off to party across the border, joining Pakistani news channels coverage of roadside revelry from Lahore to Karachi. Such a song and dance! Some were resourceful enough to catch Pakistani cricketers like Shoaib Akhtar, Rameez Raja and Javed Miandad for congratulatory bites while the likes of Kapil Dev looked dazed with admiration — that or he’d been in the studio for too long. Yes, it was quite a party on Sunday night — everything was forgiven and forgotten in India-Pakistan bhai-bhai — as the Indian media rejoiced at our neighbour’s good fortune. All but Doordarshan, which conducted a studio discussion on Pakistan’s triumph with such seriousness, you’d suppose the firecrackers that lit up our screens were bombs blasting. C’mon DD, take a chill pill.

From the point of view of spectator sport, the final began with a bang and ended with a bang but in between you could safely eat your dinner without swallowing anything the wrong way. Twenty20 and IPL have had the rare distinction of doing what no other sport can or has — install the female fan before the TV set for three hours. We’d guess that was because it was short (and therefore sweet) with tall scores and lusty hitting which made it seem like so much fun.

But suddenly this summer, beginning with IPL and continuing into the second World Cup, Twenty20 has gone deadly serious on us — it is being played with grim determination as if lives depended on it (well, careers just might). As the scorecard seldom crossed 150 and batsmen were out before they were in (!), some of the joy tumbled with the fall of every wicket. At 40-4 in the fifth over it was no longer the happy-go-lucky game that could be enjoyed by all spectators, not just the connoisseurs. If it continues like this, we suspect the women will defect to their serials and the men might be forced to watch soaps.

Star Cricket of course tried its tricks to keep us in our seats with energetic cheerleaders and the even more energetic Gautam Bhimani explaining how EVS brings us slow-motion pictures and replays in the match. How interesting is that? More interesting than watching Pepsi First Ball, in which a contestant bowls one ball to a cricketer. We saw a man from Hyderabad lope in to spoon a ball to Saurav Ganguly (yes, he and many other famous present and former cricketers were there, including Sachin Tendulkar), the ball pitched so way outside the off stump, he had to walk towards first slip to meet it. For this outstanding piece of bowling he received a signed bat. Hmmn.

Right, since last week, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has appeared in at least three more TV commercials which leads us to suspect that advertisers flocked to him hoping for a much better showing from the Indian team — at least a semi-final berth. Have they heard of the phrase, “too much of a good thing”?

The only person to rival Dhoni for TV space last week, was Salman Khan. He was on every news channel in excerpts from the show 10 Ka Dum, prancing about Katrina Kaif with school-boyish charm. Very charming in a schoolboy but for a fortysomething actor, a little underage?