Cricket Cartoon

Ask any 2 year old kiddo in India what he wishes to be in life. With an exemplary display of focus and enthusiasm even that toddler will tell you… Sachin Tendulkar. And that’s almost exactly what I told on my second birthday, to a big moustached uncle who planted a forced kiss on my chubby cheek when I announced that I wanted to be a ‘cricketer’. I guess that’s exactly what every parent wants to hear from his kid in this cricket-struck nation. Needless to reason out why the name Yuvraj is in such fashion with newborns and Bollywood movie producers choose to have such names for their movies in a desperate attempt to peddle their pathetic scripts.

So back then, I had a dream fuelled by a plastic bat with the help of which I would whip the ball across into the other room while my dad struggled to fetch it. Only had he told it to me then, that he allowed me to hit the ball as far as I could just to flatter me, I would have chosen to be a ‘scientist’ (every 5th grader’s obsession) instead. So I jumped in utter joy, ready to be the next star of my neighborhood’s cricket team… on day one of which I found myself surrounded by 15-something budding cricketers. Yes…to my luck, my colony was full of cricket enthusiasts, atleast 3 or 4 times of my age. They too fueled my desire to be a star batsman with tricks no different than those employed by my Dad. But soon, the very next day, I realized that they wudnt take me in their teams and I was left to either sit around as a spectator or join a group of girls who played hide-and-seek.

But my unparalleled persistence in pleading to take me into their teams helped me graduate from being a mere spectator to the last man to bat and a boundary fielder. Since the ball never came to me, I have long suspected that I was tactically placed in fielding positions where the batsman wouldn’t hit. And at times when he did, my lack of experience ensured that I gave away four full runs to the opposite team. So I would be left alone, to stand all day out in the sun only waiting for my chance to bat. To my great good luck, I often did get an opportunity to face the last 1 or 2 balls of the innings, which, were usually bowled by my neighbourhood’s fastest bowler. Hence in a desperate attempt to save my flesh and bones I would show him all the three stumps of my wicket. What happened next is every fast bowler’s delight.

With my growing reputation as a ‘kachcha-limboo’, I was soon being traded in between teams as an ‘extra-fielder’. The privileges of being an extra-fielder were that, you would get a handsome opportunity to field for both the teams while you would not get to bat or bowl. So to regain my position in the team, I came up with my own version of spin bowling. It did work for a day. But soon, every over I bowled was peppered with wide balls and no balls, sending me back to field at the boundary. Next I came up with the idea of using a bamboo stick I had found as my bat, claiming that I could stroke the ball to the boundary with it. It worked too! But only until I broke the window pane of a neighbour’s house. While everyone else fled away I was the last man standing taking all the scolding of my infuriated neighbour who threatened to make my dad sell his scooter and pay for the shattered window. But I still didn’t give up. I pleaded my way back into the team by offering to field at the fatal silly point/short leg position. Well, leaving aside the darker and more painful repercussions of my enthusiasm to field at that position, I often found the ball stuck into my hands. But the career of a fielder who cannot bat or bowl is as good as that of Mohd Kaif. So I was finally taken into the team, but only as the 12th man.

Failing in every attempt in making into my colony’s cricket team, I joined a cricket coaching summer camp. I thought that this was the place where I will make a difference, so I bought cricket clothes, sports shoes and the costliest cricket bat my parents could afford. This was the first time I saw a grave repent on my dad’s face for having encouraged me towards cricket. But the cricket camp turned out to be a different story altogether. It seemed that every kiddo in my state who had announced on his second birthday that he would want to be a cricketer had turned up for it. So after a rigorous and futile exercise session in the morning I eventually got to play only a few balls.

In school, every cricket player was a champion in his own neighbourhood, so I was not even in consideration. I remember telling a girl at my school picnic that the reason I wasn’t playing out there with my classmates was because they were playing under-arm cricket and I, the excellent cricketer that I was, played only over-arm. :(

And thus is the sad story of my experiments with cricket… I swear, I am gonna spare my kids of all the agony that I have gone through and teach them to play Kho-Kho and Kabaddi…!

P.S.: Does reading my blog post title give you an inkling feeling that you have read it on the cover of some popular book? Bingo! Well you can read some of my earlier works of self-confessed plagiarism here: The Art of Choosing to Copy and The Facebook Effect. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that this is a filthy little trick by me to promote my blog posts :-p.