He finds Test matches overlong for this day and age and T20 a tad short for his taste, but try keeping him away from a match featuring his favourite Kolkata Knight Riders!
If Gautam Gambhir held all the aces at Chepauk on Sunday night, grandpa held the remote at the Tandon household in Salt Lake.
Meet Kanhaiya Lal Tandon, 83 years young and fit to be up till midnight in front of the television to watch a game of fluctuating fortunes culminate in the first Indian Premier League triumph for the Knight Riders.
"Look! Australia versus Australia. Lee bowling to Hussey!" screamed the excited octogenarian as the match started with KKR's blonde bomber taking the new ball.
A throw in vain at the non-striker's end an over later triggered gasps in the room, but grandpa knew Murali Vijay would have been in even if Gambhir had hit. "Uff! Run out nahin kar paate! Baat mat karo (Oh! They couldn't have run him out! Don't talk)," he admonished the culprits.
When one of his granddaughters picked up the remote to lower the volume a notch, Tandon gave a stare that might have made match referee Ranjan Madugalle revisit the laws of the game if he were present there.
Grandpa also had the last word on when dinner would be served. He wouldn't get up from the sofa mid-innings, lest the Chennai Super Kings hit more fours and sixes than they actually did. Everyone else in the room had to be just as still. Nobody ' except grandpa himself, of course ' was allowed to talk either.
So after Chennai's blazing 190, did Tandon still believe KKR could win? "Aaj KKR hi jeetega (Today, only KKR will win)," he declared to the roomful of fans stunned by Suresh Raina's six-laden blitzkrieg.
"Chennai will not have their hat-trick. West Indies had won the World Cup in 1975 and 1979, but India was victorious in 1983. It's a pattern, as you can see."
For Tandon, who has been following cricket on grounds, radio and television for more than six decades, watching big-ticket matches like the one on Sunday is a way of keeping his passion for the game alive despite not being able to visit his favourite Eden Gardens anymore.
"It was probably in the 1950s that I started going to Eden. Cricket has come a long way since, from Test matches that would have a reserve day to 60-over ODIs and now the T20 format," he said.
Back in those days, an India-Pakistan Test would be the ultimate in cricket thrills for fans like Tandon. "Eden did not have as many seats then as it has now, but who would miss out on a game of cricket when it was between India and Pakistan? There was no Bangladesh then," he recalled.
Tandon regards the advent of television in India the best thing to have happened to the sports fan, though not everyone could afford one for many years after that. "I remember we bought our first television to watch a cricket match. What a moment it was for us!" he reminisced.
By now, the IPL 5 script was unfolding at Chepauk just as grandpa had predicted. Manvinder Bisla had gone from "Why Bisla?" to "Wow! Bisla" with 89 of the best runs scored this IPL season and even the 83-year-old himself couldn't sit still anymore, never mind his superstition!
Two successive Manoj Tiwary boundaries and many cheers later, Tandon had the I-told-you-so look about him.
So would he now change his view about T20 cricket being a format for the young? "I too like the IPL because it shows Indian culture in the true sense, uniting people from all over the world. Naya talent bhi bahar aata hai (We also get to see new talent)."
And while on talent, grandpa thinks Sunil Narine should be playing for India because he has a name that "sounds distinctly south Indian"!