My cricketing years

Let me state at the outset that I am not an average Indian. Average Indian has to be avid Cricket fan/fanatic or critic. That's why we have more cricket critics than players. In India, you can be expert cricket critic without even holding a bat or ball for 1st class cricket, read Harsha Bhogale [ I like him, I like him, just to make a point ]. Even vice a versa could also be true. Meaning You are not an Indian if you are not a cricket fan/fanatic or critic. In such a scenario where do I stand? I am an Indian so it has to be either fan/fanatic or critic! And I am none! What about players? Yes, there I might stand a chance. I was playing cricket when it had not become a religion. Way back in the 60s me, my brother, and 2 friends used to play cricket in our frontcourt, what today is known as Gulley cricket.

The frontcourt was a narrow space leading to a car parking garage, on the door of which we used to draw 3 lines with charcoal or something like it, that made our stumps. Bat used to be common property, so no question of the owner having an extra-inning even after getting out. Ball, THE ball used to be so weird that it would be extremely difficult to imagine in today's times how we used to make it?  Any takers? [Yes, we used to make it ourselves, no ready-made balls from the market for us. Just couldn't afford ! ]  

At the core, we used to put 'Marble' marble, not glass marble. It then was covered either with wet paper pulp or thin muslin cloth to get sufficient mass. Once the size was adequate, rubber rings cut from old bicycle tube were put around it in such a zigzag fashion that not only did it retain its round contour but attained the size of a normal cricket ball with that peculiar zingy bounce!

I was a bad cricket player. In all fields. Batting? I used to get out very easily when yorker was bowled near my left foot. I just could not go back foot. Fielding, I used to find it boring. So when younger, I used to run away after my batting or bowling turn was over, a trick my playmates detested but had to bear with, as they were always in short supply for heads. There was an arch of entry gate at the end of our playing field, rather on the lower side. I was always taller for my age, so had to bowl at an angle to avoid hand hitting the arch. That bowling action, my mates labelled as chucking and I used to get debarred from bowling! Today when I see   Malinga bowling,  I curse. [ Myself ! ]    
I very well could have been Malinga of the 60s!!

Retrospectively I feel I had dyslexia for the games where you require to make a contact of two moving objects. Thus I became a good swimmer and still at this age enjoy it.

T 20s were unheard of, One day cricket was on the anvil but not played, [ circus meant only of animals and trapeze players, so Packers' was not around !], So it was 5 days test cricket only! And it was boring to the hilt! Not a single match was played to win, especially by Indians. Either they lost most of the times or could 'SAVE' the match by making it 'DRAW.' 

After such 5 matches 'Draw' debacle against England I remember a cartoon by some famous artist on the front page of a national daily where he had shown test cricket being buried in a ditch and all the players from both the sides mourning the death of the competitiveness!  

C K Naidu, Vijay, Hazare and Merchant, were has-beens by then. Vijay Manjrekar, Dilip Sardesai hardly did any fielding, agility had deserted them for good. Chandu Borde was only saving grace. Bapu Nadkarni used to bowl more than 40 overs maiden in a row, maybe not because of his bowling skills but batsmen were lazy and used to play extremely defensive strokes, some times for days in and out!

Radio commentary by Bobby Talyrkhan used to be a treat for the ears and everybody literally was glued to the radio set when he was on the air. I still distinctly remember shouting in the exhilaration by the elders [ in their late 20s then] of the family when Jesu Patel took  9 wickets for 69  in the match at Kanpur against Australia or dismayed when Nari Contractor was hit on the head fracturing it, by a fastball by Charlie Griffith in West Indies.

In 60s TV was yet to come. So for the movie footage, we had to wait for Film divisions' Newsreels. Cinema halls used to put advertizements in dailies when footage of some important cricket match was made available. We have seen many 'Bakwas' Hindi movies just to have 2 minutes glimpse of the beloved game.

My cricketing years lasted till the late sixties when I joined college. Thereafter it was only studying. Admission in Medical school was difficult then too! My chums played cricket even after they became daddies but only on Sundays and I haven't touched the bat again, for the fear that I might be exposed! There was naivety in cricket then, today it's a commercial galore! Times change, they do change!