Test Cricket: That which separates the men from the boys. And the first B team.
As I'm reasonably sure is the case with many children of his age at the time, the sports my neighbourhood friends and I were interested in depended largely on the sporting season they were in. Let me explain: In the months of June, July or whenever the English summer is, we would have an irrepressible urge to play Lawn Tennis, thanks to The Championships at Wimbledon being telecast on Doordarshan. Or we would sometimes find ourselves playing Hockey with cricket bats, stumps and rubber balls, using a couple of bricks to demarcate the goal posts - during the Hockey world cup season. Cricket was an all season sport, that goes without saying. But the passion for the game would go up every now and then whenever a live telecast of an India match was on.
Doordarshan would also telecast a Cricket tournament called the Challenger Series played between the Indian team, India A team and India B team. By this time, I was in the 6th standard and the marvelous idea of forming a B team in the class struck him like a sack of coals. It made sense too. All proper cricket matches at the time in school were played between the two sections of the 6th standard. Only eleven guys got to play on that team, leaving the remaining 33 odd folks out in the cold to play whatever else they could salvage.
The idea was put forth in whispers and passed note chits (in a moral science classroom) to some members of the main class team, who responded positively to the idea and promptly challenged the B team to a test match! After the B team was put together, little Purvarth M became captain (probably because it was his idea, or others had better things to do!) In the B team think tank strategy meeting, it was decided that if we won the toss, we would bat. The reasons being the A team was armed to the teeth with fearsome batsmen such as TSR, RM, ADT, AR and so on. The B team, if they bowled first, considering that games were played only in games periods and lunch breaks, would end up bowling for weeks (the equivalent of two and a half days of relentless batting until declaration in a test match). To avoid this and the possible humiliation of having records scored against them, we chose to bat when they eventually won the toss to this match.
I had great dreams for this team. It was comprised of the proverbial bench of cricketers who were talented yet rarely got to play. Whatay marvelous it would be if we could give the A team a tough match! Or better still win against them! The night before the match was a sleepless one for the new captain - all I could think about was the match, and dreamed at night and day dreamed my way through the next day in school until the games period. The toss, as we know, was won by the B team and I had no hesitation in electing to bat first.
Disaster struck almost instantly. The records are inconclusive as to who the opening batsmen were, but they didn't last long as the pace of TSR, AB and RM blew away the top order in a matter of one games period and a lunch break. I who initially planned on batting deep in the order (much like our man MS Dhoni does today) had no choice but to come in at 3 down with only 9 runs on the board. Taking guard to much cheer and clapping and some good natured jeers for effect, I strode into an AB delivery first up and defended it down with much precision.
There was a reason I was never known for my batting. Nothing changed in this match either. AB mis-bowled his next delivery and the ball came harmlessly towards me. This was a test match, and I could have taken my time settling down in this one in a lifetime opportunity to bat all I wanted, but no! Throwing caution to the winds, I took one wild swipe at the ball, missed it completely and heard the anguish-inducing sound of all three stumps hitting the gravel. I wished at the moment the earth would swallow me up and send me to the other end of the world. To make matters worse, the score soon read around 12 for the loss of 5 wickets at the end of the lunch break. It was the end.
When the game resumed, it was during a double games period - but I had an extra second language class during the first of these two periods and could show up at the ground only in the second games period. I hurried to the ground expecting the worst, but as it turned out the news was not so bad. AUR had taken the crease and was putting up a defiant show of defensive batting. I watched on in glee as AUR stepped back to each and every scorching delivery and dropped it at his feet with precision. "That's how it's done, boy", said a tiny voice in my head. I forget now who the batsman at the other end was, but he stood and played with equal defiance. At the end of the day our score had reached 34 for the loss of 5 wickets and things were beginning to look up. However, that was just about as far as the first test match of our lives lasted. Maybe everyone had gotten tired of playing the same match for nearly a full week when we could have played limited overs games and gotten them over with!
Thus came to a premature end, the test match which should have separated the men from the boys. And also ended my first experience in captaincy. This wasn't the only B team which was formed though - more B teams were formed in the later years and there were matches played between the B teams of two divisions of the grade; much fun and excitement happened then too, but that's a story for a different time!
Showing posts with label Purvarth Maddhyanakumar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Purvarth Maddhyanakumar. Show all posts
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, January 09, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, July 30, 2010
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!
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.
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.
Monday, July 05, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, June 14, 2010
The extraordinary cricketing tales of Purvarth Maddhyanakumar - I
I didn’t really fit in with the regular crowd. There were over 40 like me, squealing and howling on our first day at school, asking for amma. I, bewildered, being the only bengali in a sea of wailing malayali toddlers, wondering what amma was, and confused as to whether I should be asking for it too looked outside the grilled windows, at the bunch of grownups peering in. I had a distinctive feeling of what the bunch of monkeys in the cage must feel like while the visitors to the Thiruvananthapuram zoo peered in through the grills, making funny noises, as though trying to be monkeys themselves. Hah. As if they didn’t know they used to be monkeys millions of years ago. Or so some chap called Darwin decided they were. The visitors here were anxious, no doubt, worried about their children’s first day at school.
On looking around, I noticed a handful of specimens whose eyes were dry, and who were not bawling for amma and appa and things like that. Probably their ammas and appas weren’t at the window. No amma and appa for me either; my elder brother had taken me to my new class and run off to his own. Brothers in the same school and all that, you know. Such were the beginning moments of my first day in school.
It would be several confusing days, months and a couple of years before I would officiate as umpire in my first ever cricket match in school. Much happened between my first day in school and the day I stood in front of a tree, all sagely and wise adjudging wides, no balls, stumpings and runouts. That, because I was too shy to enter the space between the two casuarinas as a player!
I was 8. That would be in the year 1991.The Christmas examinations were upon us. I of course had no clue about the seriousness of things. The junior school exams consisted of one exam a day; a two hour paper in the morning, after which lunch followed and most parents would turn up to pick up their children, so that they could go home and start revising for the next day’s examination. The remaining children used to live farther away from school, and would take the 3.30 bus back home, until which time they would indulge in all kinds of time pass, including cricket! Now what kind of full blooded cricket could a handful of screaming 8 year olds engage in while they waited for the bus?
Simple: a page from a notebook would be wrapped up into a tight ball (Some of us had the unique knack of making excellent paper balls), the cardboard used for writing the exams on would polymorph itself into a cricket bat, the two casuarinas would serve as the two sets of stumps. The rest of the school would be the cricket ground. It was on one such occasion, when mom was a little late picking me up that I stepped gracefully on to this field as the supreme decision maker. Amid the tossing of the paper ball, heaving of cardboards and squealing of the kids around, I stood sedately, raising my arms this way and that way accordingly, as I had seen Dicky Bird do on TV many a time. I was thoroughly enjoying myself when the mater descended upon the scene and scooped me away to the auto, despite the feeble protests of the junta around who evidently thought I was as fair and just an umpire as ever entered a cricket field.
Such was my introduction to cricket, as we knew it in school. Countless experiences would follow in the 9 years that followed: learning to bat, bowl, field, drop catches, experiences of joy, triumph, complete despair and other feelings I have not the words to describe.
My first ever cricket match took a while coming though, after a full year had passed and I was well into the 4th standard. That was when I had burst into the scene, the young fast bowling novice who took the cricketing lives of 80 fourth graders by storm, an era when most of this sample space would quake in their chuddies at the sight of Purvarth starting his run up to lethal deliveries!
On looking around, I noticed a handful of specimens whose eyes were dry, and who were not bawling for amma and appa and things like that. Probably their ammas and appas weren’t at the window. No amma and appa for me either; my elder brother had taken me to my new class and run off to his own. Brothers in the same school and all that, you know. Such were the beginning moments of my first day in school.
It would be several confusing days, months and a couple of years before I would officiate as umpire in my first ever cricket match in school. Much happened between my first day in school and the day I stood in front of a tree, all sagely and wise adjudging wides, no balls, stumpings and runouts. That, because I was too shy to enter the space between the two casuarinas as a player!
I was 8. That would be in the year 1991.The Christmas examinations were upon us. I of course had no clue about the seriousness of things. The junior school exams consisted of one exam a day; a two hour paper in the morning, after which lunch followed and most parents would turn up to pick up their children, so that they could go home and start revising for the next day’s examination. The remaining children used to live farther away from school, and would take the 3.30 bus back home, until which time they would indulge in all kinds of time pass, including cricket! Now what kind of full blooded cricket could a handful of screaming 8 year olds engage in while they waited for the bus?
Simple: a page from a notebook would be wrapped up into a tight ball (Some of us had the unique knack of making excellent paper balls), the cardboard used for writing the exams on would polymorph itself into a cricket bat, the two casuarinas would serve as the two sets of stumps. The rest of the school would be the cricket ground. It was on one such occasion, when mom was a little late picking me up that I stepped gracefully on to this field as the supreme decision maker. Amid the tossing of the paper ball, heaving of cardboards and squealing of the kids around, I stood sedately, raising my arms this way and that way accordingly, as I had seen Dicky Bird do on TV many a time. I was thoroughly enjoying myself when the mater descended upon the scene and scooped me away to the auto, despite the feeble protests of the junta around who evidently thought I was as fair and just an umpire as ever entered a cricket field.
Such was my introduction to cricket, as we knew it in school. Countless experiences would follow in the 9 years that followed: learning to bat, bowl, field, drop catches, experiences of joy, triumph, complete despair and other feelings I have not the words to describe.
My first ever cricket match took a while coming though, after a full year had passed and I was well into the 4th standard. That was when I had burst into the scene, the young fast bowling novice who took the cricketing lives of 80 fourth graders by storm, an era when most of this sample space would quake in their chuddies at the sight of Purvarth starting his run up to lethal deliveries!
Extraordinary cricketing tales
A series of blog posts will follow soon, outlining the life of one Purvarth Maddhyanyakumar, mostly his cricketing life in his 12 years at school. Almost all of these tales will be inspired from real life incidents. Names of course, will be changed to maintain anonymity and dignity of people around him :) haha.
Watch the space.
Watch the space.
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