Adios AB

Like many, watching AB De Villiers announce his retirement on Wednesday left me stunned. He didn’t take the normal routine of organizing a press conference, as is the norm. Instead, he tweeted a video via his Twitter account. Which meant that it didn’t give his fans the contentment of watching him play a farewell test or one-day series, as is the routine. Much like the batting that he’s known for, AB De Villers bid goodbye in the most unconventional of methods.

The realization that you’ll never get to watch a cricketer take the field again hits you harder when you have grown up watching them play. Right from their debut, to the first time they showed a glimpse of their genius, to their first match-winning performance, and finally to their retirement, you feel like you have been a part of a player’s journey. Maybe which is why you take so much joy when they hit a purple patch, and feel the blues when they are out of form. Thankfully AB was always a player who was always in-form.

There was something about AB that made you want to be like him, not AB the cricketer, but AB the person. Modest and unassuming, there aren’t many cricketers that are adored as much as AB. It hasn’t even been a week since he took a stunning catch at an IPL game. And it is that image he will leave us with.

Had I been younger and with fewer priorities, I may have shed a tear over his retirement, lamenting the fact that South Africa may no longer be strong contenders for the world cup next year. A part of me would have wanted him to come back. But just as AB has realized that there is more to life than winning a world cup; so have I. And like many others, I wish him well in his new innings.

Image source: Link

For the love of a team

 

 

There are few things that words cannot describe, one of them is the phenomena that’s taken over the city of Chennai in the last few weeks. Chennai Super Kings, after serving a two-year ban from the IPL for being involved in a betting scandal has made a return to the League, which has led to Chennai social media go bonkers. Over the last two years, there has been a widespread feeling of being wronged among CSK fans. Maybe it is because we feel that the ones who run the IPL are jealous of CSK’s success as a top team.

Chennaiites are a proud lot, we are proud of our rich culture, our generosity, our language, the state’s HDI (which is better than its northern counterparts), a national icon by the name of Rajnikanth, Oscar winner AR Rahman, and most importantly, our cricket. There are several moments in India’s cricketing glory that have been defined by its icons, yet, one of its finest moments had to be starring the city itself.

I enjoy IPL because I don’t share an allegiance with any team. Staying disassociated helps me sleep better at night. But that’s not the way a sport is to be watched. Where there is passion, there will be heartbreaks, and in heartbreaks, there will be wisdom. And you will find enough wisdom being circulated in memes, of which Chennai meme-makers do a damn fine job.

Scroll through your social media channels today and you might find your timeline in a sea of yellow. CSK is probably the one team that has been able to retain its core players; the ones the public identify with. Sure they may have lost local lad Ashwin to Punjab, but they still have the old ringmaster in MS Dhoni, and as far as Chennai goes, CSK begins and ends with the man from Ranchi.

Over the last couple of years, Dhoni may have been on the wane as a batsman, but that hasn’t stopped the fans to worship him any less, for there is still a belief that the old fox can conjure up some magic as a captain. Winning will probably be the last thing on the fans’ minds. For now, they just want to see the yellow jersey back on the field again with the familiar face of Dhoni marshaling his troops from behind the stumps, and Gurunath Meiyappan nowhere near the team.

As much as I’d prefer to watch the IPL as a mute spectator, it is nigh impossible to not be infected by the yellow fever. The team has the name of my home after all.

Image credit: http://www.chennaimemes.in/its-official-now-ms-dhoni-all-set-to-play-for-csk-in-2018-ipl-council-allows-to-retain-max-5-players-for-each-team/

 

A fall from grace

It was April 2000. I was twelve when Hansiegate broke out. I remember arguing about how Hansie Cronje was not guilty with my English teacher. I was fighting back tears, not caring that I was creating a spectacle in class. I remember brushing off my friend who put an arm around my shoulder asking me to calm down.

I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that Hansie had thrown games away in favor of money. All the while I was hoping it was a bad dream, and that the Delhi Police was just trying to tarnish the image of a beloved cricketer out of jealousy.

“They are just jealous that Hansie is a successful captain. He’s innocent. You’ll see,” I’d tell my friends between sobs.

I was blinded by my devotion toward Hansie, what was not to love about him? He was ordinary as a cricketer, but he was astute, likable and a team man. Hansie was a South African son of the soil revered by his people. Until the match-fixing scandal broke out.

The concept of match-fixing was new to me. I could never understand why a successful icon of the game would decide to lose games for money. Wasn’t he already earning enough?

As a twelve-year-old, you don’t understand what betrayal feels like. You feel let down when your parents don’t show up for your school performance, you feel dejected when you don’t get the chocolate ice-cream they promised. But betrayal, for a twelve-year-old, is a heavy emotion. When the King’s Commission pronounced Hansie as guilty and banned him for life from playing cricket, I realized what betrayal felt like.

Fans of the South African cricket team are used to feeling disappointed. In June 1999, the year before Hansie’s conviction, South Africa came heartbreakingly close to sealing a spot in the world cup final for the first time. They were led fabulously by Hansie until then. I consoled myself saying that Hansie will lead us to a world cup in South Africa in 2003.

Hansie died in June 2002 in a plane crash. He was the only passenger aboard the small aircraft.

Even after his death, until the age of 20, I’d argue on online cricketing forums of how Hansie was brave enough to accept he made a mistake. I’d be ridiculed by anonymous commenters that he had to accept his mistakes because he was caught with his pants down, stupid.

After the match-fixing scandal broke out, it became tough for me to start following South African cricket. The team would never be the same for me. I started to look at every loss with suspicion and every player with doubt. What if there was a rogue player in the team who was losing on purpose? Will there ever be a player of Hansie’s stature, his cunning, his controversies notwithstanding?

Luckily, South Africa had an influx of inspiring, honest, and tough-as-nails cricketers. The legend of Jacques Kallis was on the rise. Shaun Pollock, the senior statesman had seen his team through various ups and downs, but still held on. There were the mercurial Makhaya Ntini and Mark Boucher; and the little-known trio of Dale Steyn, AB De Villiers and Hashim Amla who were making their mark on the team. And then there was Graeme Smith. A mountain of a man, one to never back down from a fight. He captained South Africa through a purple patch of not having lost an overseas series for nine years.

My faith and love for the team were restored. In the loss of one tainted hero, South Africa had found a dozen more.

*********

Australia captain Steven Smith’s admission to ball-tampering let down the whole of Australia, with even the prime minister calling for his head. Cricket forums on Reddit were filled with angry and dejected Australian supporters who couldn’t believe that a young player, touted to be a modern day legend would indulge in such tactics.

While the Australian public was fuming over the embarrassment that the national team brought them, there was a feeling of schadenfreude among current cricketers, commentators, and the general public who had a dislike for the brand of cricket that Australia plays under the guise of hard but fair. From verbally assaulting opponent teams to as recent evidence suggests, going as far as even physically assaulting a player when paid back with the same coin, Australia had done itself no favors by producing boorish cricketers who brought out the worst in their opponents.

As the controversy engulfed the cricketing world, threatening to take away another promising cricketer, I couldn’t help but think of all the 12-year-olds Steven Smith and his team had let down. This letter from the parent of a pained and confused boy brought back my memories of how I tried dealing with Hansie.

Ball tampering cannot be compared with match-fixing, in fact, it has been advocated by several cricketers, and is a practice that is secretly being followed across cricketing divisions. While match-fixing is taking money from bookies to lose a game, ball tampering is changing the nature of the cricket ball so as to assist the bowler which will help them win a game; but it is a practice that is still against the spirit of the game.

What makes it worse for Steve Smith and co. was that it wasn’t a move made out of desperation, but something that was planned, as Smith put, “by the leadership”. And what has rightly earned them the label of cheats is that they lied to the umpires when confronted about it.

The aftermath of this controversy could see promising careers cut short, reputations getting tarnished, but its most devastating effect will be on the kids who idolize Steve Smith.

Smith’s image now cannot be reversed. He will forever have to live with the tag of a cheat even if he wins the world cup for his country. These kids will probably lose their faith in heroes, even if a promising one comes up. Once bitten twice shy, after all. But eventually, they will give in. They will heal again, and they will rejoice when they find a new hero.

That’s the beauty of sport; it gives us new heroes, idols, and gods. But most importantly, it gives us something that cannot be measured: hope.

Image source: https://maroelamedia.co.za/nuus/hansie-cronje-nadoods-aangekla/

https://www.mid-day.com/articles/sandpaper-gate-why-should-we-believe-steve-smith/19243184

…And the Buck Stoppeth Here

I have been an avid armchair cricket buff for long, the fascinating duel between a fast bowler running at 100 miles an hour, hurling a ball at a man standing twenty-two yards away with a bat in his hand who is trying to hold his own is one of the most testosterone-charged sights that any sports could offer. But what I find more captivating than the sights and sounds of this wonderful game is the way it has been captured into words by the ones who write about it. Cricinfo is a premier website on cricket that not just boasts of great content but is also blessed with a wonderful team of insightful writers from all over the cricketing world. When I read about the passing away of Peter Roebuck­–one of Cricinfo’s most hard-hitting and widely read writers, it left me saddened for I had lost someone who with his incisive and to-the-point articles educated me and millions of other readers about the rights and wrongs that were happening on and off the field.

Journalists are superheroes in their own rights, for with the might of their keyboards and with the gift of their intellect they have the power to change the way the world thinks. There are those who shy away from calling a spade a spade, fearing the powerful enemies they might make, and then there are those like Peter Roebuck. Honest, with a no-nonsense approach and with a genuine affection for the game that was his bread and butter, Mr. Roebuck breathed life into words going on to be one of the most celebrated sports writers. He pooh-poohed cricket’s governing body and never feared in chastising those who brought disrepute to the game. After the controversial Sydney test in 2008, Peter Roebuck in a scathing article for the Sydney Morning Herald had called for the head of Ricky Ponting. For a man who always believed that nationalism should not come into play while writing about sports for it corroded your views, Mr. Roebuck wrote blunt and unbiased columns that earned him bouquets and brickbats, admirers and detesters.

Be it the ugly hood of match-fixing that when struck had poisoned the game, or the advent of the hit-and-miss format of T20 that threatened to take the life out of cricket’s ultimate Battle Royale- Test Match Cricket, or even the Zimbabwe cricket crisis, Roebuck with his articulate and a school-headmaster like tone of writing shook the souls of players, and the foundations of behemoth cricketing boards. A David who took on the might of the Goliaths of cricket with a laptop and his arsenal of words as his only weapon, Roebuck carved an image of a prophet for himself amidst cricket enthusiasts of all kind. Every time I browsed through Cricinfo or “The Hindu”–where he was often published, any article that carried Roebuck’s name beside it indulged me into opening the doors to a whole new world of insights and opinions on matters that were hotly debated in the cricketing circles. Be it the emergence of a new cricketer or the prelude to an exciting series, or an article criticizing the functioning of ICC, Roebuck’s piercing analysis served me often as a lens with which I viewed the finer details of the game.

With his untimely death under the most heartbreaking of ways – a suicide, the reasons for which are unknown, the lovers of the game have been robbed off of a brilliant and respected writer. Cricket has lost one of its sanest and stoic voices that raised issues with no fear of being diminished. He may now have retired to the pavilions of Heaven, but we shall all be thankful for Mr. Roebuck as he leaves behind his voice in those rich literatures that with every written word brings us closer to cricket.

Image Source: http://www.topnews.in/sports/bollinger-beerandsawdust-man-far-removed-sipping-sherry-roebuck-27959

"I am Not Following This Team Anymore!"

How many times have we said those lines to ourselves when we saw our team crash out of a prestigious tournament? I remember I first said that a decade back when I was a thirteen year old, fighting back tears as Lance Klusener ignited me with a hope with two thumping hits to the boundary to only lose his head and run for a single that never existed. It was ironic that the man who had dazzled us with his brutal hitting and a calm demeanor took us so near to the cup, and within the blink of an eye stumbled at the last hurdle. I went to bed crying that night, on my birthday. What is it about men that they get so involved with a team/sporting icon that they blindly devote their time, energy and the most crucial element – their emotions to them? In their favorite team’s achievement they run around chest thumping like as if it were their own brother(s) who had accomplished a feat, in their team’s downfall they let out a cry of anguish, their hands over their forehead wishing that it was all a bad dream, rebuking them as if they were their worst enemies, praying that all that had happened was just a bad joke. 

Neither my mother and my brother nor would my cricket-ignorant friends would ever understand the level of passion I have for a bunch of men, my folks will never understand why I choose to break everything that I lay my hands on when they fail, nor could they ever comprehend why I run every time to the temple on a big match day, something which I had never done even for myself. All this and much more for a team which hails from Cape Town while here I am in Chennai writing out an obituary to their latest death they had suffered at a global event. “Choke” is what many of them might prefer to call it, and “Chokers” is what they will label those men as every time they step on a cricket ground during an international tournament. When there are a billion people supporting the home team with a vehement and scary jingoism that it floods twitter with their support, opinion and love to an extent that it crashes, and leaves you voiceless when faced with the shouts of passion of a billion people you end up wondering why don’t you be one among the crowd?  It’s much like falling in love with someone out of your own community in a society, eyebrows will be raised, your loyalties will be questioned, they will say that you will be disappointed in the end, they will call you names and try to bully you in getting back to their side. But then, it’s never easy to fall out of love is it?

Its 2 a.m right now as I am typing this, sleep seems to have evaded me for good, hunger and thirst crave me no more, and in another couple more hours I will have to go to work on a Saturday, something which I always abhorred but right now seems like the best option to get my mind cleared, and to get my heart in the right place. I won’t lie if I told you that I had not prepared for this outcome, I was prepared like any supporter should be, I was prepared well in advance two months back for their exit. But as it is with sports, you always tend to believe in those miracle victories, and those “Cinderella Men” who pull a rabbit out of their hat to script a win out of nowhere. No matter how much you have trained yourself to prepare for failure, but it is when you see a group of men perform convincingly you always ask yourself with a whisper “Could this be it? Could this be our time?”, a feeling crept into me with my heart turning romantic willing to believe in a miracle, while my mind remained practical and warned me to keep my feet firmly on the ground and reminded me of those heartbreaking exits in previous world cup editions, but in the battle between the heart and the head the head lost emphatically. Brain malfunction, mathematical errors, overconfidence have all played their part in robbing my team of the accolades which they so richly deserved. Every world event is a new one, yet the failures of the past come back to haunt them somehow. Maybe it is mentally embedded in their psyche which no psychologist can resolve, or it could be their lack of belief which contrary to what they say in their press meetings and tweets still exists somewhere within their head. 

But still the question remains : Why is it that we celebrate a team and an athlete with an undying passion? Aren’t those Man Uniteds, Chealseas, Federers, Nadals, Schumachers and Ferraris better off without our support? Its they who win the glory not us, its they who have their names printed on paper in the front page not us, its they who win million dollar endorsements not us, we don’t even belong to the same nation as they, and the ones who do belong to our nation don’t even know of our existence! Then why is it that we break down when we see them fall and why is it that we cheer them on when they rise to glory? Why is it that we vent our ire and exhibit our joy on twitter and facebook over them? Why do we waste our emotions over them? Why do we promise ourselves during every heartbreak that we shall care to hoots if they win or lose but promptly go back to paint our face with their colors and scream their names at the top of our lungs when they step out on the field on a match day? Why is it that we argue with family and friends or any Tom, Dick or a Harry on the street or a troll online who tries to tarnish our sporting heroes and questions their accomplishments?

There are no defined answers for the questions above. Maybe it’s because of the ordinary lives we live that we try to see our dreams being realized by these extraordinary sporting icons. Life and sports are almost similar, except that sports has a lot more chutzpah and a feeling of epicness to it. The people who play on the fields represent all that we could never be, in this day and age where athletes are celebrated as modern day all-conquering gladiators and every sporting event is hyped up to be a battle royale between two teams, victory has been defined as something that encompasses a lot more than a glittering trophy, and a loss warns you of scathing remarks from news channels to the layman with a twitter account.

Those gladiators carry our aspirations, in their victory we see our pride and in their defeat we see our insult. We end up living a regular life that revolves around a nine-to-five job, we face intense pressure at work, sometimes we go beyond the call of duty. But then, no one celebrates us as a number-crunching excel-sheet-conquering software-codes-typing modern day wizard, nor as a life saving demigod of a doctor, nor as a smooth-talking suave marketer. There are no one-hour biographies made about us, we do not endorse any products, we do not get to romance any starlets or have our photos printed on the cover page of GQ, nor are we labeled as style icons.

Our sporting icons are everything that we are not – immortals, legends, and miracle workers so much so that every time they step out on the field we expect them to blaze their way to victory. But when something on the contrary happens, we realize how fallible they are, their aura seems to disappear, they appear ordinary like you and me, they appear more human. And we get disgusted with them, we tweet/talk rubbish about them and we question their lineage, we are in no mood to forgive. But in actuality, within our sub-conscience we yearn to be like them, haven’t we all dreamt of racing away to a victory in a Ferrari, or hit a last-ball six to win a game with the crowd chanting our name and going delirious, or hitting a goal in the final minutes of the game to secure a jaw-dropping win?  But in reality the closest we have come to being larger-than-life is while playing gully cricket when we tonked a 12-year old for a six and the aunty in the balcony saying “Tu to Sehwag jaisa shot mara re!”. It’s that brief moment which makes our heart beat with pride when we are compared with one of our sporting heroes.

So as a fan where do I go from here? I am thirteen no more so I haven’t cried today, although I tried to squeeze a few drops out by contorting my face to various degrees but to no avail. I am also done chastising the opponents and also the players from my own team. With an egg on my face that may take some time for the stink to go off, I will be lying low with minimal tweets and facebook updates. I will abstain myself from cricket and anyone who speaks of it. The wounds are still fresh and will take time to heal. I will stay away from friends and not attend phone calls lest someone wants to add a bit of salt into my wounds, so even if they attempt to do so I would promptly ask them to go screw themselves or a member of their family (though in much harsher words). I would get back to blogging and watching sitcoms and movies which are far more predictable and far less heartbreaking and nerve-wracking than sports. 

As the wounds finally heal, I shall come out of my shell. The very immortal men who have been reduced to fumbling men shall be resurrected to their iconic status in my eyes. And in another four years time I shall transform once more into that obsessive fan as I start to dream again with my eyes wide open, while my heart asks “Could this be it? Could this be our time?”

The Plan

There is always a thrill of doing things on the sly, like watching late night porn with the T.V on mute when everyone is sleeping, or texting your friend during class hours when the most hard-assed of all professors is taking a class, whispering sweet nothings in your girlfriend’s ear in a movie theatre when the lights are out, watching youtube clips when actually your boss is the next cubicle, lying to your nagging wife about a business meeting and spending a weekend with old friends. It is the fun of making people believe what they want to believe. Your professor must be thinking that your are immersed in his powerpoints while actually you are texting your friend in the opposite corner asking “Which theatre do we go to?”. Your boss must be thinking you are busy meeting your targets while actually you are watching videos trying hard not to laugh your ass off. Your wife back home must be thinking you are busy closing business deals, but little does she know that your are with your friends acting drunk and stupid like a teenager all over again. But we fail to realize that sometimes the real thrill is in planning for the deed than actually doing the deed, and sometimes the planning gives us more satisfaction than the end result.

The thrill lies in tiptoeing to your T.V while everyone is asleep, switching it on without making that “Click!” sound, hitting on the mute button as soon the screen flashes, inserting the dvd which has “Software” neatly written in a marker pen, and then hit PLAY and skip all the story and go to the meaty part, but there may come a time when the CD gets stuck and stops playing. It breaks your heart, but then it is in that process till where you insert the CD that the real thrill lies. If you think about it, all those heist movies would not seem worth a watch if they had not shown how they plan and execute it, how the cookie was actually baked before it was crumbled. Think “The Great Escape”, would the escape have made that impact had they not shown Charles Bronson digging the tunnels away?, or good ol’ Steve McQueen do a survey of the prison?, or how they all planned behind closed doors for *that* escape? The epicness in the movie lay in how the P.O.Ws planned their escape. And that’s all we need, an escape from our daily life into that of hope, a brief moment of the day where we lived our dreams.

The idea had struck me two days back when I was sitting in my manager’s cabin when he had gone out to attend a call. I looked at my calendar and saw a cricket match scheduled on the 24th of February. 

South Africa v/s West Indies it showed.

“I think I will bunk this Thursday” I whispered to my colleague sitting next to me, as if I were planning to steal the crown jewels.

“Why? What’s on Thursday?” she asked aloud as I signaled her to bring down her voice.

“Okayyy, what is on Thursday?” she asked with a mock whisper.

“South Africa is playing the West Indies, it’s their first game of the world cup. I need to see them play the first game.” I said with a quiet murmur.

“It’s just the Windies, South Africa will win it easily don’t worry, you don’t have to stay home just to make sure that they win.” she said with a serious sarcasm.

“Don’t say that! You will jinx them! they never had a good record with the Windies at the world cup. They lost once in India during 96 at the quarter finals, they lost once in 03′ in their home ground at the opening game. You never know, the Windies are an unpredictable squad. They have Gayle, Pollard, Bravo…..” I rambled on.

“Very interesting…” She cut me short impatiently, “but anyway if you know your team is so suspect why do you have to bunk?” she asked.

“That is because my mind will always be wondering what is happening at the stadium, and it’s not like I can browse at work either. They have blocked almost all the sites that are worth browsing…….”

It’s true, almost all URLs that had cricket, tube, book, and boob(s) attached to it’s name were blocked at my workplace.

 

“…..no Cricinfo, no twitter. I wont be able to focus on work at all! You don’t understand! It’s like I am forced to marry someone when actually my heart belongs to someone else.”

“So what excuse are you gonna use?” she asked.

“Need to think of one, and don’t you dare go tellin’ around everyone about my plan. I won’t catch a seat for you in the train next time.” I warned her.

                                             * * * * * * * * *

“so what excuse do I use?” I pinged my friend online.

“say you have to take your mom to the doctor, managers find it very touching and they cannot say “no” when it comes to mothers, even Hitler can’t. It will actually win you some brownie points with chicks at work too, they always love guys who help out sick mothers and grandmothers”


“girls?… no one at work is worth the try, anyway what disease do I say my mom is diagnosed is?”


“disease?? are you crazy! planning to make your mom diagnosed over a stupid cricket game!? go for a mild disease like headache or fever, the ones that don’t last long. Don’t go for cancer or parkinsons. I’ve used that up and it really came back to bite me in my balls, you throw up big diseases then these managers will be up your arse every now and again askin “how is your mother? I hope she is fine,how much time has she got? what stage is she in? ” and you are no Doogie Howzer to explain about stages of disease. You don’t even know the symptoms of common cold.”


“true that… but I am feeling guilty over using my mom, after all she has spent sleepless nights trying to teach me vertically opposite angles.. something I still don’t understand by the way.”


“oh! then you can say that you are coaching your brother for his board exams, a decent reason, you can take up thursday and friday off, that way you got solid four days with you! :-D”


                      *********


“So you are using me to get a couple of days off?” he asked.

“Yeah that’s what siblings are for, I am gonna tell them that I will be coaching you for math, physics, chemistry and computer science, that way I can use up two days  – Thursday and Friday! I got Saturday and Sunday as a holiday anyway! Man am I glad that February has 28 days!”

“Yeah and while you are at it why don’t you teach me molecular biology and astrophysics too?”

“You have those subjects in school too?” I asked.

“Sigh! look, I don’t mean no disrespect to you and your job. But if you really were that good in school you probably would not be in a shitty job where you are dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s.And really, what’s an arts student gonna teach me about integral calculus? they won’t buy it and in an age where we believe the written word in solved out answer papers than the ones given out by our teachers, I feel you stand no chance in convincing your managers or your office receptionist about teaching me my subjects!”

“Why don’t you tell them that you have a suspicious rash all over your body and you are going to meet the doctor?” he suggested.

“I want to get a day’s leave, I don’t want to get isolated from the team forever, I’ll think of something else” I said.


“Do you know the country is loosing twenty one million dollars worth of production due to cricket, and also because of people like you?” he retorted. 

 

“I know, and I blame my company for that. Because had they installed a T.V at work place for score updates I would not be at home.” I clarified my stance.

“Yeah, and while they are at it they should serve you beer and probably a lap dance to raise your spirits among other things.”

“You have a board exam to prepare for don’t you?” I asked.

                                                 *********

Marriages are made in heaven they say, but then marriages can also be made out of thin air, all you need to do is let your creativity run amok. When your parents and your sibling serve you no purpose it’s your father’s cousin’s wife’s brother’s son who comes to the rescue. In short a distant relative of whom you have never heard and would have only seen in family functions. And as we have a plethora of traditions and customs, every once in a while there also comes a reason along with it to skip work, it’s all about how you are going to use it. 

I walked in to work with a valid reason. I now need not have to get my mother sick, nor do I have to “coach” my brother for his exams, neither did I have to break a leg or have rashes on my body. I logged into my leave portal, and clicked on to the “Apply for Leave” page, as it guided me through the process. I typed out my reasons for taking leave and thanked my father’s cousin’s wife’s brother’s son and wished him a fictitious happy married life, if and when he crossed his teens decided to and get married.

The Cup Of Good Hope

Finally the show has begun! After months of speculating over who will triumph over whom, those repeated telecast of World Cup matches which were running on a loop, jingoistic advertisements that advertises their products by pairing them with cricket heroes, and an opening ceremony where Sonu Nigam crooned like a Celine Dion with bowel problems and asked the players to “go for glory” – lyrics for which were actually inspired by all those locker room talks that a coach gives to his down and out players during halftime, the real deal has finally started. 

The whole nation has come to a standstill, malls have have giant T.Vs installed, there now will be an increase in absence of employees from work, students would get so caught up with the world cup fever that they may forget about their exams around the corner and would secretly indulge in score updates with the T.V on mute, wives and girlfriends and mothers would crib over the lack of attention that they are getting. If the politicians have any more plans of scamming the public and stealing their money they may as well do it over these couple of months because the whole nation is busy giving field placement tips to Dhoni. Ghaplas and ghotalas won’t take up the front page – Yusuf Pathan’s ability to pulverize the bowling will, twitter would be burdened with running commentary from all over the country as tweeters would be giving their own brand of sarcastic insight over the events unfolding at the stadium. New friends will be made with not a “Hello how are you?” but with a “bhaisaab score kya hua?” (Sir, what’s the score?), this is a fine time to be living in for a cricket lover as each nook and corner of the country is brought together by the country’s most favorite activity after sex : Cricket.

Things have changed over the past four years, not only with the world order of cricket, where now the Aussies are just a pale shadow of what they were a decade back, or with the Indian cricket team – where more than half of the team is playing its first world cup but also with the Indian cricket fan. The Indian cricket fan has become more tech-savvy as he keeps track of his players over twitter where he wishes his hero a great game and also advises him over his stroke-making or a delivery selection, thanks to EA Cricket we now know a lot about field placements and shot selection. If only we had a control pad over our cricketers, we would decide which delivery to bowl and what shot to play just with the push of a button.

But for a cricket hater and there are a few of them, this is a tough time. This is a time where the whole nation eats, drinks, burps and craps cricket. From Sadhus to Movie Stars, all are busy praying and wishing their team the best of luck. The haters have to put up with their relatives and friends who go on a cricketing hyperbole where they compare cricketers with the Sun, Moon, God, Bull, Tiger, Panther and every other celestial object and wild beast known to man. Apart from the visuals in the form of advertisements that they have to put up with, that includes an over-the-top portrayal of cricketers painted in a Na’avi like color palette which makes you wonder if they are promoting the game or the product or auditioning for Avatar – 2, they also have to put up with the “elite” cricket panel of burnt-out cricket players who are now known more for their repetitive stating-the-bleeding-obvious comments than their exploits on the cricket field. If you thought that the heavily decked up soap opera stars from Ekta Kapoor serials that have a never-ending storyline get into your skin, then the likes of Siddhu, Shastri, Gavaskar, Arun Lal, Robin Jackman, Sivaramakrishnan would probably get into your skin, tear it up, add citrus and salt to it and rub it all over you gently with a sadistic glee over their faces, whilst they spew some cringing commentary gems like “That sped to the fence like a tracer bullet”, “This is a good move by Dhoni”, “Listen to the roar of the crowd!”, “One gets the feeling…. (add whatever seems appropriate)”, and to the one that describes the team’s virility “They will come hard at the opposition” (the only time of the year where the term “come hard” is not used as a sexual parlance) and not to forget the lyrical Mr.Sidhu’s “An apple-pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze” which would make you say “Arre Mr. Sidhu will you now STFU please!?”.

This also is a bad time to be employed, when you spend most of your time in the office or end up doing overtime against your wishes, the most of the live action you could catch up with is the presentation ceremony, making you secretly wish if only you could quit you job for these couple of months. And with a work place like mine whereupon trying to access any website URL that has “cricket” in it show up “Access Denied”, I end up going to the loo every few minutes to browse the score from my mobile, which made a few of my colleagues ask if I got bladder control problems. 

But hate it or love it one cannot deny the unseen force that an event like this brings along with it, it not just brings the whole country together but also brings along with it a hope for the cricket lover. Fifty over cricket is that format of cricket that is threatened by the flamboyant and eye-popping extravaganza that T-20 is, T-20 cricket may give birth to instant heroes like those instant noodles which one may eat out of hunger, but fill our appetite it will not. The 50-Over game is now 36-years old, it is more like a middle-aged man who is going through a midlife crisis, this version of the game is going through a phase where its potency to keep the viewer enthralled for a longer period is under question. Poweplays and free-hits are those drugs induced which one hopes can revive this game. To a format of the game that is believed to be dying a slow death, it is only fitting that the efforts to breathe life into it is made in a place from where it had always received undying support. This is the cup that a true cricket fanatic counts to provide it with some resuscitation, this is the cup that should bring a hope of life to a format that is now under life support. And with the madcap frenzy with which we have embraced this event, it can be safely said that there still is good hope.

A Field of Dreams

As a kid we all had lived dual lives. There were lives lived inside the classroom, where the importance of academic excellence was drilled down into our heads – how solving math problems, memorizing multiplication tables, mugging up dates taught in history classes, racking our brains on trigonometry and Pythagoras theorems would help us secure a future with a prestigious degree (as in B.E) and would lay a foundation for a “golden” career (as in Software programming). Then there was the other life, the one outside the classroom inside a playing field, where for that two hours in a day we chose to forget and not care about math equations, the history of India, the state capital of Nagaland, and countries that lay near the equator. For that brief moment we became what we wanted to be, the Superstars of the game we adored – Cricket.

Everyday as I walk past the playground that once existed nearby my home, there seeps in a feeling of nostalgia. I never was an “outdoor sports” kind of person. I was always the last guy to be picked in any team, I never owned a cricket bat, I was too scared of fast bowling, I could not remember more than two instances where I could have held on to a ball without dropping it. To sum it up, I was picked only because my mother was a teacher at the school where most of the kids studied. My only attempt to stop a ball would be to awkwardly cover my face in a flash when it was hit toward me. It would be hard to even fathom how a boy who could not hold the bat, nor throw a ball be picked in a team. When the boys around me would be playing the game with a seriousness that involved making strategies in a huddle for the 12-year old Master Blaster of the neighborhood who played with a picture-perfect cover drive that even Sachin would be proud of, I on the other hand played the game with a callousness. Imagine the Joker playing the game of cricket, he would cackle away heinously with every attempted wild swing of the bat that would miss the ball by almost a yard, well that was me. The captain of my team, which always ended up losing would often be chastised for having picked me in the team, but the poor lad had no other option but to fend for me, for he had a Social Sciences assignment to be submitted the next morning… to my mother.

And come summer vacations we all would turn into cricketers with a seriousness as if we are having plans of participating in the world cup. With the sun beating down our backs and the worry of summer projects to be submitted postponed to the last days of the vacation, we would enter the playing field as Men on a Mission, ignoring our mothers’ call to come home on time for lunch. The seriousness of the other lads at times would turn out to be infectious as I would whole-heartedly make efforts to catch the ball, but the results would be the same nevertheless. We played till the Sun got tired of witnessing our play and would decide to go to bed, the rest of the evening would be spent with the boys in the dimly lit field strategizing for the next day’s play. And as I went to bed, I would make a note of the scores I made for the day in a log book – 1, 3, 4, 12, 5.

There was something about that field which made us young boys act like men and grown men act like boys once we stepped on it. The field had something mystical about it, for a brief moment of time in a day we boys stopped worrying about homeworks and assignments and exams, for a brief moment of time the men would stop worrying about their job and responsibilities, for a brief moment they would have regained their lost childhood. It was the thrill of playing the game we loved along with the people we knew that made us vibrant. It was the glorious sun, it was the thrill of playing in front of the neighborhood, to be applauded by the people we knew that made us play those expansive strokes we saw on T.V. It was an era when we hadn’t heard of the Internet, let alone Youtube as we tried to match each shot, each delivery and each jump to what we had seen on the television the last night.

With the girls in the neighborhood keeping an eye on the proceedings, that was as good a reason as any for a few of us to jump around and act like we were captaining our national team. We would do a few lunges and a few stretches nonchalantly as if the fate of the team depended on the strengths of our shoulders, the claps and the encouragement from the neighborhood uncles and aunts and their daughters would only make us act more like the cricketers we saw on T.V, as we chewed our gum even more stylishly with the mouths doing a complete circle, and a huddle held after every delivery bowled to discuss the field placement, add to that a “C’mon boys!” with an Aussie accent shouted every minute any outsider would feel like they were watching a match going on between future international stars.

But as years grew along so did we, and with that changed our responsibilities and priorities. The field that once lay beside my home is now encroached with apartments and a lot of houses. The Playstations and the X-boxes have now become our virtual playground. No more do I hear young boys crying in anguish over a dropped catch, no more do I hear grown men shouting instructions on how to bowl, no more do I hear kids embrace each other over a match won shouting in joy, basking in their moment of glory. Yet, if I prick my ears up as I walk past the field, I could still hear that roar of joy, those claps of the neighborhood and the shout of an enthusiastic kid yelling “C’mon boys!” egging up his other mates.