The extraordinary cricketing tales of Purvarth Maddhyanakumar - IV

Throughout childhood, some of the proverbs that were poured over my head (nay, taught!), sometimes to the point of grey-cell-saturation were “Practice makes perfect”, “Rome was not built in a day”, and so on and so forth. Phrases and proverbs, which in a nutshell, were invented to build character. Now unlike the endearing Calvin and his dad, I didn't live in a country where it snowed every winter. Naturally there was never any snow in the courtyard to shovel away and thus 'build character'. Understandably, the proverbs came thick and fast to compensate for the lack of the character-building snow.

But I digress. What I'm driving at is that little Purvarth didn't just wake up one fine Monday and start delivering toe crushers at specifically demarcated trees with a rubber ball. He started off at the tender age of 2 or 3, pretending to be Kapil Dev running purposefully through the living room and hurling an imaginary red cherry at the maidservant struggling with a dirty milk-pot in the kitchen. Later of course, he advanced to higher levels of competence which involved a rubber ball, his elder brother's 'heavy' cricket bat, the initial struggles to catch a moving ball and so on, until he one day began playing with his neighbourhood friends at the 'practice ground', more about which you would have read in an earlier post.

When I was all of six years old, barely into my first standard, playing cricket on the road in front of the house with all the children in the neighbourhood, both young and old, used to be the high point of the day. We used to assemble on the poorly laid coal-tar turf by 4 pm on weekends and occasionally after school on weekdays, by which time the intensity of the hot tropical sun had subsided to an extent which, our parents were convinced (after much pleading) would not cause untold dehydration on us little souls. This turf of ours saw much cricket played by us for many years, right from the late 1980s until the last of us kids of the neighbourhood moved out of home in the early 2000s.

One particular game of cricket played here taught me a lesson, one that many most people who have played cricket will tell you too: you will have bad days on the field. But you need to have heart even if things don't go your way. It was well into my fourth standard at school, when one day, at the end of a long day at school all the neighbourhood kids had gathered around for a game of cricket. There were children of all ages. RD who was was the eldest of us all was in the 11th standard, Deergharth Madyanakumar (Purvarth's older brother) and SK who were in the 9th, DB who was a year older to me and a handful of other kids. In the company of towering (in age and height) personalities like this, DB and I generally did whatever we were told to do, like "field here!", or "stand there!" or "get ready to bat next!" and so on. And we quite enjoyed it too. 

This was a day when I learned for the first time what it was to be 'sledged' by the opposition, and to be literally (sledge) hammered in the game. I was never a great fielder, even worse when in the primary school. If Purvarth M ever took a catch, it would result in utter disbelief from many, and naturally in much celebration. Somewhat like Venkatesh Prasad winning a match for India by virtue of his batting. RD was at the crease, ominously wielding his massive Jonex cricket bat while Deergharth was bowling. RD, knowing my weakness decided to play all the deliveries to point, where I was fielding. To make matters worse, he kept reminding me how pathetic my fielding was and promised me between overs to hit everything towards me. Amid the guffaws from the others, my ears burned in shame, because well, he had a point. There would be much yelling from the people on my team if a square cut from the batsman passed right by me and zoomed into the coconut grove (which was our boundary). 

My fears were not without reason too, for many such shots from RD zipped straight through me causing several shouts of "Purva! What the hell!!". On the bright side, I got plenty of exercise running repeatedly from point to square boundary and back all the time. Not that I needed it then though, how much extra exercise does a boisterous 6 year old really need? Anyway, after a while my turn had come to bowl. However to my dismay, RD was still batting and it didn't look like he was going to relent anytime soon. 

"Hold on", I thought. "Here's my chance to get him out, and get back at him for all those jibes. Hah. He who laughs last laughs best!" With this renewed confidence, I breezed through my run up, jumped gracefully at the popping crease and let loose at RD batting at the other end. It's a different thing: bowling to fellow fourth graders and bowling to a seasoned high school stud. Despite my hopes and confidence of 'beating' the batsman and all that, my delivery benignly approached RD. 

"THACK!" 

RD hit a straight drive sixer, sending the ball gracefully way over my head and into another neighbour's compound, which formed our straight boundary. I was stunned into disbelief and wonder, and after the next ball which also went for six, absolute helplessness. Deergarth and the rest of my team were beside themselves with perfectly justifiable frustration. But that wasn't going to help at all, as RD kept smashing everything I threw at him. 

Around this time, dad returned home from work, and his arrival coincided with the penultimate delivery of my over. He didn't go into the house immediately, but lingered by the fence, dangling his briefcase nonchalantly with two fingers. This penultimate was slightly better, but only in that RD didn't hit the ball for a six, but he strode out of the crease and creamed the ball right past me for a scorching four! I took a little solace from the fact that he didn't smash it for a six before dad. Relief was short lived though; I was losing all confidence and willingness to bowl at this madman. Nevertheless, I completed the over, and let loose at the batting RD with all my strength. He actually stepped out and swept the ball for a six, again right over my head. Dad responded with applause for the dude who was ruining his son's reputation, saying "Wow! He is just like Sachin Tendulkar!". That was the last straw. Unable to bear it anymore, I legged it from the scene of humiliation and ran into my house, ran bawling past my mum and the dining table, into my bedroom and screamed into my pillow every swear word a nine year old could think of. All directed at RD of course. 

Demoralizing as this game was to my confidence with the ball, it helped me have heart later in my cricketing days in school. I knew what it was to have your best bowling smashed with disdain, and regardless of how many wickets I may have taken in school, there were numerous occasions when my classmates would hit me for fours and sixes. Somewhere deep down, this experience gave me the heart to go back to the bowling mark, and keep bowling at the batsmen with the same effort, if not more. 

And much later, when I reflected about how little experiences teach us things, I realized another very important aspect of the game when I remembered my dad applauding RD. While making that comment, exasperating though it sounded to me at the time, he had introduced the concept of the Spirit of Sportsmanship to me. Someone who outclasses you fair and square deserves your applause, and after all much of the spirit of cricket is based on this aspect. I obviously didn't realize the importance of it then, but I did later, and realized how much healthier it made the experience sports in general.