The extraordinary cricketing tales of Purvarth Maddhyanakumar - III

“You are the best bowler in the class” - The first, the best and one of the few compliments I had ever received about my cricket.


When our class first started out on its own journey with the game, there weren’t too many fast bowlers. Forget Cricket; there were many budding footballers and police-and-robber-ers and swing from tree-ers and slide show-off-ers and ace ‘swing’-ers. But fast bowling was still a sport in the making for most. Consider for a moment, the flutters little Purvarth must have created when he came in all of a sudden, with a long run up and a Kapil Dev like delivery. New kid on the block and all that.

The honeymoon period during which I had burst on to the scene, as you might have read by now, was absolute bliss. Suddenly, I was a sought after man. People wanted me. During the games periods, when opposing captains took turns to choose their teams, I’d be the first one to be called (an incredible honour I must emphasize), captains tossed the ball to me to start the first over of the innings and so on. It was like being in the shoes of some of the best cricketers in the class then. Like TSR, the left handed boy who everyone thought could do no wrong on the field. Like RM, another cricketing genius on the same level as TSR, if not higher. TSR was the fastest bowler in the class, one of the best batsmen and fielders, in close competition with RM who also was a batsman of prodigious skill and who could roll his arm over quite effectively too. These two lads would invariably be captains of the two teams playing; them being on the same team would be a complete carnival for the team who had them, you see. Then came the second level of geniuses like AR who used to play almost every game we could understand with effortless skill, GR who was one of the better batsmen and some others.

Being called first by TSR or RM was an incredible feeling, let alone being asked to bowl the first or second over of the match. Historic moment in the life of the individual, like for Zaheer Khan when Sourav Ganguly tossed the ball to him in the former’s debut match to bowl the first over. Ha!

Barely a few matches into beginning to play on the main stage, the hallowed football ground, using one of the trees lining it as the batting stumps, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I used to try and model my bowling like Kapil Dev’s, not that I managed to copy it completely, but got the basic movements right. I’d get a wicket every now and then. Fast bowling was not a common thing and the batsmen wielding the coconut leaf ‘oala’ bats would keep missing frequently. We young kids were still growing; we had little palms and little arms and little legs; catching the ball wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Naturally, most wickets would be claimed through the ‘clean bowled’ or ‘run out’ way.

Then one day I tasted my first big moment. I never thought it was possible. It occurred one afternoon in the games period in a match with players chosen in the manner I’ve mentioned above. I was bowling the penultimate delivery of my last over. GR was batting, standing sedately in front of the tree, tapping his bat against his foot like Praveen Amre did on TV. I ran up purposefully and hurled the ball in the general direction of GR and the tree. GR attempted a wild swing at the ball, missed completely and the ball merrily bounced off the tree, just below GR’s right knee.

Wicket!

What's more, GR’s wicket! After much ecstatic jubilation had taken place, and GR had trudged off to make way for the new batsman, that all sports conquering fellow AR took stance. I had my heart in my mouth as I started my run up. AR shuffled his stance a few times as I ran up, probably trying to distract or taunt me. I wavered not from my purpose and let loose at the popping crease.

WHAM!

The ball thudded on to the base of the tree. AR was out! Clean bowled by Purvarth Maddyanakumar! What a day, ladies and gents, what a day! GR and AR out on consecutive deliveries! Later in class, people would make fun of AR and how he got out Golden Duck style. My heart swelled with pride at these moments. Bespectacled boy from nowhere did this! Ha!

It was time to be inspired by more than just bowling action now. Those were days when Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev appeared in Boost advertisements. After he had drunk his cup of Boost, the cameral would pan across Kapil’s face as he stood at the base of his run up, tossing the ball up repeatedly with a murderous look in his eyes; just before delivering a ball which shattered the white stumps, sending the bails to Beelzebub. Needless to say, little Purvarth did the same, mostly with just the tossing of the ball. Not that I shattered the stumps with every ball or sent bails anywhere. Every time I wanted to take someone’s wicket, I’d toss the ball into the air a few times, glaring at the batsman, before running up to bowl. Whether I got the wicket or not didn’t matter much; it was mostly the thrill of doing something which Kapil would do, perfectly. Whee!

Kapil Dev. The fast bowler who inspired Purvarth M to become one

A few days later TSR came up while we were fielding somewhere on the field and said, “You are the best bowler in the class”. I had no words. It was the best day ever!

My last moment of triumph in the fourth standard came on the last day. It was the day our final examinations had gotten over; the last day of school in our fourth standard and we had the whole afternoon to play. By now, I had graduated from officiating in paper ball games to playing with the top dogs, as you already know. It was one of those rare matches where TSR and RM were playing on the same side, against my team. In this 8 over match, we batted first and scored a respectable 42 runs. As I opened the bowling, RM opened the batting with another chap; memory fails to recollect who it was. But he didn’t last long as he got run out or something. How can you not remember who got out in your over? - You may ask. Well, I think it was because of what happened next. TSR took stance with RM at the runner’s end. Deadly combo! I went tearing round the stumps, TSR tried to heave me on to the on-side, missed completely, and the ball hit the tree where the middle stump should have been!

4 runs for 2 wickets in the first over! We had them by the neck!

What might have been an upset never occurred though, because at that moment the bell rang and it was time to go home for the summer vacations. We all agreed to come back next year and continue the game, but that never happened either. What if the bell hadn’t gone off and we had completed the game? We might have made history, beating a team with both RM and TSR. But on the other hand RM was a fellow who could have swung the game single handed. I guess I will never know. I guess I don’t want to know either, because it’s much better to remember it this way.

Like the people on the Grecian Urn.

The extraordinary cricketing tales of Purvarth Maddhyanakumar - II

It is only fair that you, sweet reader get to know how Purvarth learned his cricket; learned how to bowl; learned to bat; learned to have heart when some batsman carted him for four sixes in an over and still run to the popping crease into the jaws of the waiting monster with a bat; learned how to catch, albeit not very well. And also how it became that he played his first ever game of cricket in school, and earned much fame and lost it too later, and gain some of it back.

Here is what my practice ground looked like. A quiet peaceful colony, around 28 yards of paved lane, neighbor’s gate across the road at one end and a proud coconut tree at the other, just after the road curved away at a right angle. Houses on either side: potential window pane accidents at every swing of the bat! A line drawn on the tree trunk with a brick, about three feet from the ground; the popping crease drawn in brick again, with the afore mentioned brick being the stump at the bowling end; empty plots of land, festooned with coconut trees on all other sides of the batting tree. Now we know why they call it a tree stump. Haha. Ok.

Many a game have I played here, with the neighbors, all of whom were one to six years elder to me. You can imagine what would happen when a primary school kid tried bowling pace to a seasoned senior high school stud. That's right. This is where I learned to have heart. Well, I won't brag; there were times I ran away from all the humiliation to hurl abuses at that guy into my pillow, but yes, I eventually came around.

In the hallowed school grounds, much after the phase where we used to play with cardboards and paper balls and kochengas and chalk pieces, some of my classmates had taken to playing with real rubber balls and anything that could pass for a bat: pieces of plywood or a cut out portion of the versatile coconut leaf. Real stumps and creases weren't necessary. These were compensated for by trees by the playground, or sapling grills. The popping crease stumps were usually a couple of bricks, couple of pairs of shoes from some football playing kids, a schoolbag, or anything which formed some kind of mark. Sometimes even pencil boxes. In a couple of months into the fourth standard, the real cricketers soon identified themselves and would set up the afore mentioned kind of environment and battle it out like real men. I was too shy to go in and start bowling like Merv, so I would watch from the sidelines, like that chap who throws the ball back when hit for a boundary.

I eventually got over my shyness, and came out of the shell during an idle games period. The established fourth grade cricketers were out playing tough competitive cricket on the big stage, which is to say, against one of the casuarina trees lining the main hallowed football ground. A tree on that ground meant that you were playing serious cricket. Otherwise you were playing time-pass cricket. I approached the latter kind of match; a bunch of us were playing with a rubber ball, a stiff cutting from a tree trunk someone found, a sapling grill, and a couple of bricks. Time-pass game meant anyone could walk in a join a team while the game was still on.

"Do you bowl?” AA asked of me.
"Yes".

What followed was that wonderful feeling of first love that you must have felt at some point of time in life. In a class of mostly fragile 9 year-olds, I covered an admirable run up and bowled the first over of my life in school. From the reactions of my mates around, I gathered it was an impressive one. The over included a couple of bat-beats and a full throated appeal for LBW to the batsman himself, as there was no umpire. RP, who was batting, dismissed the appeal saying the ball had hit his ankle so it could not be out. (I learned many years later that it the ball hitting any part of the batsman's body excluding his forearm and fist was eligible for LBW, but whatever). After the over, AA exchanged a running high five with me as he ran past, leaving me exhilarated, beaming with unblemished happiness and all that.

It was only a matter of time before word spread to the bigger cricketing circles and I joined the group of few fast bowlers in class. And I couldn't wait for the experiences to follow.