The excitables and other fans

What do you think it is about full-grown, sport-watching adults of the human species that makes them turn into gibbering fools when a camera pans to them in a stadium? Have they never come across an image of themselves before? Or do they usually make a habit of greeting their every reflection with ecstatic shouts of jubilation? Is it surprise? Like, OMG, there's someone who looks like me… wait a minute, it is me. Wow. Let me jump up and down like a crazy person.

Is it a cover-up? Like, why the hell did the camera have to catch me just as I was picking my nose? Let me divert attention by waving my hands about wildly.

Of course, this is just one category of the adult human species, a category that, for want of a better word, I call the excitables. There's also the ignorers, the blushers, the smilers and the blissfully unaware. The ignorers are basically too cool to react to being on TV. They know the camera is on them, and they acknowledge it with a brief peripheral eyeball rotation, a turn of the cheek to present the best profile angle, and then continue to stare nonchalantly into the distance (preferably through a pair of outsized shades) with chin on hand. The blushers aren't as collected. The thought of being watched by millions flusters them so much that they either a) immediately cover their mouth and teeth and giggle into the palms of their hands like schoolgirls, or b) beam beatifically like wax statues. The smilers are the most temperate of the lot. They might let out a collective little shriek to start with, or at least a little jab in the side to say, look, we're on TV. Some wave, others blow a kiss, but they soon get over it and move on. And the blissfully unaware, well, self-explanatory I think.

It's the excitables I'm most interested in, naturally. Some of these excitables are very innovative. They use all manner of devices to draw attention to themselves. Common tactics include outrageous headgear, painted faces, musical instruments (my favourite is a desi guy in Durban with a little pair of cymbals), dressing in drag, and exposing body parts.

And then there's the baby-tossers. Very much in the spirit of single men who borrow their friends' children or pets to try and chat up women in the park, these parents - men and women both - shamelessly use their cute babies as pawns by throwing them up in the air, knowing no cameraman will be able to resist them. Why? Do they imagine they're going to be picked as the next Bollywood starlet? Is it the two-seconds-of-fame thing? Or is it a more primal, gene-coded desire of human nature that demands to be satisfied?

I can't really be sure, but I have to say that a lot of the fun of the IPL has been watching the spectators. Everyone goes on and on about how they're so surprised to see the crowds. Perhaps it's because here in India we think no one can touch us when it comes to cricket audiences. We've got the numbers, we've got the fanaticism, we've got the noise-making techniques, and we've got the jobless, who are happy to spend days, nay weeks, in a cricket stadium. No one is messing with us. But the South Africans are giving us stiff competition. They're really getting into the spirit of things, and I mean literally. What their stadiums have that India's don't is an endless supply of beer, which, when drunk in excessive quantities, as you know, can incite the rabble into greater feats of daring.

In all this spectator-watching though, one contingent has been conspicuously absent: the WAGs. I know that cricket WAGs aren't as hotly pursued by the media as football ones, or even the WOWs (wait for it… Wives Of Wimbledon), but surely, with all this glitz and glamour going, there's got to be some of them around? Maybe the problem with cricket WAGs is that they aren't as recognisable as, say, a Victoria Beckham? Maybe there aren't suitably tense moments in cricket like a double-fault, where the camera can quickly cut to a WOW's pensive face? Either way, I feel cheated. Because for the moment all we've got are team owners, two of whom could possibly qualify as a group WAG. And after yesterday's face-off, you can guess which one was crying all the way home.