For the love of the game

(Special Thanks to Malini for sowing the seeds of inspiration a long time ago and for having patiently waited through the germination period.)

The watchman picked up the hammer and hit the piece of rusted railroad track suspended from a metal chain at one end of the open middle courtyard of the school. He started off slowly, like he always did and then picked up the tempo until he reached a rapid crescendo that rang out through all corners of the school and was even heard in the pet rabbit pen that was tucked away far into the west corner of the property. He finished off with a flourish at the end with a one-two and then laid down the hammer with an air of satisfaction. It was 3:30 pm and school had ended for the day.

The quiet and stillness that had lingered in the air through most of the three and a half hours after lunch lingered nary for a minute more before all hell broke loose. Within the next minute more than two thousand boys of varying sizes emerged from all corners of the three buildings that surrounded the courtyard and poured into it en-route to the big black gates, which were now open splitting the iron-worked school emblem in two right down the middle. All were in their navy blue trousers (the lower grades in their shorts) and white shirts, mostly disheveled in appearance but all with that emphatic sigh of relief at the day being over evident on their faces.

Mohan from 8^th grade ran out also, with his overflowing and quite visibly heavy satchel over one shoulder (having just snapped one of the straps) and holding his smaller lunch bag in the other hand. As he stumbled (he will insist he was running if you asked him, but with his ungainly bag over his left shoulder and swinging the lunch bag in his right hand, stumbling was the best he could manage) down the steps into the courtyard, he yelled at his mate Raju, “I will be there in 30 minutes sharp. You get the ball and I will bring my bat.” To which Raju replied, “OK…Oh no…wait! I forgot; we need to buy a ball. Remember we hit it into the bushes last evening and never found it?”

“Oh no!” groaned Mohan. “Do you have the money to buy one?”

Raju emptied his pockets into the palm of his right hand, “I have...”, he counted the coins, “three Rupees and 50 paise only”.

“How much is the ball at Bharathi Stores?” asked Mohan. “Five Rupees?”

“No they have raised the price to Five-fifty now.” Raju was visibly worried.

Mohan, ever the cheerful sort said, “Never mind. We need another two rupees. I think I might be able to find that in what is left of my pocket money at home.”

By this point in the conversation they had reached their bicycles in the bicycle yard. As usual, Mohan found his bicycle flat on the floor, the handlebar turned in a weird angle. He set his bags down and with a sign of resignation picked it up and straightened the handlebar gripping the front wheel between his knees. With a little bit of effort, Mohan pulled apart the spring-trap of the luggage carrier behind his cycle and pushed his satchel into it. With the lunch bag slung from the right handlebar, he was all set to pedal away. Raju was already waiting to push off.

As they left the school gates, Mohan yelled, “I’ll meet you in front of Bharathi Stores in 30 minutes then.”

With that plan made, they both raced home on their bicycles dodging dodgy drivers and careless pedestrians and getting their fair share of finger pointing and being yelled at.

* * *

Mohan reached home, stretched out from his bicycle seat to unlatch the gate and pushed it in. It clanged loudly and Mother knew instantly what the source of that commotion was – like she did every evening almost exactly at the same time! Mohan ran into the house and in one fluid motion lost his shoes, dumped his satchel unceremoniously into a corner and his lunch bag went on the dining table. “Maaa….what is for Tiffin?”

“I am making dosais kanna”, she answered. “Go wash yourself and comb your hair. Remember to wash with soap!”

Mohan had already dashed off and was back in a jiffy and a little short of breath, “Maa…ready…I only have…” he consulted the clock on the wall, “…five minutes Maa….quick quick!!”

“You have to eat at least three dosais before you can go to play. And drink your cup of Maltova….Mohan, you do not have to stuff your mouth like that….you are going to choke!” Mohan frantically polished off two and a half dosais and gulped down his cup of Maltova and got up. Mother’s blood pressure kept rising like mercury on a summer morning.

“Mohan, finish off the last half now…sit down…do not run off…oh no when is this fellow going to learn to be more responsible!” With a huge sigh, mother cleared away the plate and cup and went into the kitchen rather pleased that in spite of feeling like she had just emerged from a mini twister, Mohan had not noticed that he had actually eaten three and a half dosais from his plate! Mother had her cheeky ways too!

* * *

Mohan pedaled furiously. Two minutes down the street and two left turns later, he found himself in front of Bharathi stores. As he parked his bike, Raju arrived too and both went inside.

“Anna, one hard tennis ball!” The store-keeper (“Anna” literally meaning elder brother and a term used as a respectful address) brought out a tube of tennis balls. Mohan and Raju tested the hardness of every one of the dozen in the tube by bouncing them all over the shop floor before settling on one they thought was the perfect one. After all, they had learnt by experience to identify the defective balls in a tube and pick the one with the correct amount of bounce.

“Did you not buy one yesterday Mohan?” asked the irate store-keeper. “Have you lost it already?”

“Good for you isn’t it? You get to sell one more at your unfairly hiked prices!” retorted Mohan and Raju murmured assent grinning. Mohan and Raju dumped the five-fifty in coins on the counter and ran out leaving the store-keeper gaping and slowly shaking his head at them in disbelief. Mohan and Raju were gone so soon that they did not hear him comment, “Brats! And they will be back again tomorrow! What a headache!” Not that it would have surprised them the least – not least the part about coming back tomorrow.

* * *

It was a three minute pedal to the ground. The ground in question was actually a couple of vacant plots of land in an advanced state of neglect and disrepair in the corner of a block. It was mostly hard and pebbly. Mohan and his friends had, over a period of time, moved the pebbles and made it playable on for a game of cricket. They even had marked out a pitch approximately in the middle of the ground.

As Mohan and Raju arrived, they could spot a couple of their friends already at the ground, throwing pebbles at each other, with neither being able to score a hit! When they heard the clamorous tring-tring of the cycle bells, they knew it announced the arrival of the bat and ball and that they would have a game that evening after all!

Presently more friends started to arrive and very soon there were nine boys on the ground.

“Where is Girish?”, asked Raju.

“He has not come yet, which means he probably will not”, responded Thomas nonchalantly.

A collective groan went up.

“What will we do for stumps!”, lamented Karthik, voicing the collective anxiety. Girish owned the only set of cricket stumps in their group.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find something to use as stumps instead”, said Mohan, ever the optimist. “Let us see if we can find broken branches around the ground that we can stick into the ground as stumps.”

Everyone dispersed looking for branches and soon three thin dead branches of varying lengths were found. That made for stumps at one end of the pitch.

“Let’s just make do with a flat stone at the bowler’s end”, said someone and all agreed instantly. No one wanted to spend any more time organizing things. They all wanted to play.

“Is connection allowed?” piped Srini.

“What does he mean by connection?” asked Jacob, who was a relative new-comer to the group.

Mohan explained, “You are allowed to run a batsman out at that end by just collecting the ball when you are touching the stone. Usually you put one foot on it as you stretch to collect the ball thrown in by the fielder, and that would run the batsman out if he is out of his ground.” Jacob liked the idea. “Oh that is interesting. Very well.”

All was settled then and play could begin. Oh, not just yet. Teams had to be drawn of course!

Mohan and Karthik assumed the captaincy of the two teams. Raju yearned to be captain too, but he also wanted to play on Mohan’s team. So he shrewdly chose the wise option and accepted the vice-captaincy. Occasionally, Mohan would allow him to control things for a little while.

“Who’s got a coin?”

A coin was found on somebody and was tossed. All crowded over it to see what had come down. Mohan had called correctly. He chose his first teammate, “Raju!”. Karthik picked next, “Thomas”. So it went on and both teams had four players each. That left Jacob yet to be picked. Jacob had to accept the fact that it would be him that would be overlooked until the very end for a little while. After all, wasn’t he the newest member of the group and had yet to prove his prowess?

Mohan graciously offered Jacob to Karthik’s team, but Karthik declined to have him in his team as he did not know how Jacob would fit into his plans. Magnanimously, Mohan invited Jacob into his team, even though he wondered how he would fit into his own plans!

“How many overs a side?” asked Srini.

Raju looked at his digital Milo watch, which he had won in a crossword contest recently and said, “We have just an hour before it gets dark, so we’ll play eight overs a side, ok?”

It was agreed; the coin was found again and was tossed. Mohan called correctly – most of the others could not believe how many times Mohan managed to call correctly at the toss – and obviously chose to bat. You did not entertain any other options now, did you?

Of course, Mohan opened the innings with Raju as his partner.

“Two batsmen, bowler, wicket keeper, rest all field. No umpire, so no LBW. Non-striker to call no-ball on the popping crease and wides will be generally agreed upon.”

“The telephone post at mid-wicket will be the boundary there and the brick wall the cover boundary. Behind the wicket, it would be the border with the street.”

The rules were set, the batsman had taken guard – without an umpire to give him one - and the game began.

* * *

Srini opened the bowling and bowled a tidy over costing only five runs, all run in singles. Thomas was next. He tried off-spin. Mohan and Raju managed to smash a boundary apiece and took the score to sixteen without loss.

Mohan was good with the bat and scored on either side of the wicket. Raju was more an on-side player but did connect with a lot of balls. In the middle of the third over, there was a stoppage in play as Srini had stepped on a rather large and ugly looking thorn from fielding near the bramble bushes by the boundary. So a couple of them helped him hobble to the centre and someone pulled the thorn out of his foot. A little blood seeped out and it stung badly, but Srini would carry on gamely. It was a matter of honour playing for the team and there would be enough time later in the evening to fuss over it with cotton wool and Dettol!

The innings resumed. Five overs into the innings, both openers were out, but had made decent scores and the total read 38/2.

It became 44/3 after six and Jacob strode out. Oh yes, he was the last batsman in the team – what did you think? Somehow they managed to last until the fourth ball of the eighth over and finished on 55 all out in 7.4 overs with Jacob hitting the last two balls he faced for boundaries before looping a simple return catch to the bowler.

In all the innings was a good one. Mohan and his vice-captain were seen deep in thought. The score was not too high but was very defendable if they bowled well. There had been two catches taken by the opposition, a run out and one bowled through the legs. Srini had scraped his shin on the ground – to add to his thorn-in-the-foot accident - trying to stop a boundary and was bleeding slightly. He was going to need a lot of cotton wool and Dettol not to mention the possibility of having to go to the GP for an anti-septic injection! For now, he put that hideous thought away and tried to concentrate on the game at hand.

So the second innings began with Raju opening the bowling with his medium pacers. He started with a tight over only conceding two runs and also toppling the off branch with a neat delivery to dismiss the opener.

That was a great start for Mohan’s team and they already started feeling a bit confident. To this day it is rumored that, in fact a little gamesmanship and banter could be heard from some fielders although Mohan would never admit to it, cricket being a gentleman’s game and all that!

The early confidence was to be short-lived though for Sathish started to swing his bat around, which coupled with three wides made it a very good over indeed for Karthik’s team. The score read 21/1 at the end of the second. This was not good at all for Mohan’s team.

Mohan decided it was time he bowled himself. The idea was a good one because with his off-breaks he immediately got rid of Sathish, who came charging down the pitch only to miss the ball and was stumped by the wicket-keeper in spite of first fumbling the take. What a wicket and at a crucial time too! Mohan finished a good over.

Soon the score read 49/3 in seven overs. Twilight was setting in and visibility was beginning to fade. This had become a tight game indeed! Actually, it was slipping away from Mohan’s team. He had himself bowled two overs and had used up his quota. However, he had saved one over for Raju exactly for this kind of a situation. Mohan tossed the ball to Raju. “Good luck Raju. Get us the last wicket.”

First ball of the eighth over. As Raju ran in to bowl, all fielders – at least the ones on Mohan’s team - clapped in unison. Raju bowled a good length ball on off and was pushed towards point for a quick single. 50/3.

Mohan decided to make a couple of fielding adjustments. The second ball was a full delivery and was smashed back down the pitch and Raju dived in his follow through to stop what would have at least been a couple of runs if not a boundary. What an important fielding effort! Raju got up and dusted his pants and took one look at his scraped palm. No, he could not dwell on such minor injuries now.

Four balls remained. A single and a two followed bringing the score to 53/3 with two balls remaining. Karthik’s team needed 3 runs to win and Raju needed the one wicket.

Mohan made a sign to Raju, pointing to his toes, as he reached the top of his run-up. Raju steamed in and tried to bowl the Yorker but it ended up being a full-toss. The batsman did not anticipate it and only managed to scamper a single.

Final delivery and 2 runs required for a win. Now, everyone was tense. What a match this was turning out to be!

Raju tried his yorker again. It worked better than the previous delivery. The batsman managed to jam the toe of his bat down in the nick of time and got the ball away towards square leg and took off for a run. They started back for the second, but Mohan running from mid-wicket swooped low on the ball, collected it cleanly in his right hand and flicked it under-arm to Raju. Mohan stumbled and fell flat in the dust, but Raju was waiting at the non-strikers end, left foot on the slab of stone and arms outstretched to receive the ball. He caught the ball just before the batsman slid his bat over the line and ran him out! What a finish! The score stood at 55 all out, both teams level, the scores tied!

It would be a gross understatement to say what ensued was chaos.

“That is not out, he reached the crease in time” – someone from Karthik’s team.

“Certainly not! I ran him out clearly. He was miles out” – Raju in response.

Everyone pitched in with their version of what had rightfully happened and whether the last batsman was run out or not. The batsman in question would obviously maintain that he ran as fast as the wind and made it in time! In a minute no one could actually hear what anyone else was saying because each was screaming his version of what had happened at the top of his lungs!

Eventually they gave up. Everyone was tired and covered with dust, some with dried blood. The sun had gone down and it was becoming dark rapidly. Still arguing they all went to their bicycles and started home. They had all had a thoroughly enjoyable game and a nice evening and were fully satisfied.

* * *

Mohan arrived home for the second time that evening and this time the gate did not clang, simply because Mohan did not have enough energy to push it all the way. Laboriously, he parked his cycle and went in and Amma was already waiting for him. “Do you see the time Mohan? It is already seven! Look at you! Did you fall into a ditch? So tired…how are you going to finish your homework? Haven’t I told you to play a little less on weekdays?”

Amma dragged Mohan to the bathroom and made him have a shower. Hot dinner was ready for him when he stepped out and Mohan ate greedily.

Dinner done, Amma sat Mohan down at his desk and asked him to bring out all his home-work. Ok, so there was Maths, Science and even some History home-work to write! They killed him at school, his teachers! Mohan let out a big groan! “My whole body is aching Maa…”

“Did I not ask you not to tire yourself so much? God knows what you find interesting about your game of cricket on a dusty ground?” Amma heaved a sigh. “Now concentrate on the home-work. I am going to attend to Appa and will be back in five minutes, ok?”

“Huh! What does Amma know about cricket?”, thought Mohan.

Amma came back in five minutes, only to find Mohan fast asleep with his head flopped on his books, a sentence half in the writing, his pen trailing off on the paper. Amma tried to wake him up but Mohan was already in la-la land, playing another cricket match. He was batting with his idol Sachin Tendulkar together in the world’s largest cricket ground, the MCG. He was facing up to Brett Lee. He was about to cover drive Lee for four, when Amma’s voice came through, “At least go sleep in your bed Mohan. I will wake you up early in the morning so you can finish your homework.”

Reluctantly he sleep-walked in a zig-zag line, prodded along by Maa and mumbling to himself. He fell on his bed and then with a smile on his face finished his cover drive with grace and poise. Maa shook her head, tucked him in, turned the light off and walked away, also with a smile on her face.

The End

(Dedicated to Harbhajan Singh of the Indian Cricket Team and Andrew Symonds of the Australian Cricket Team for their stellar performances forgetting the real reasons for playing cricket during the Sydney Test of Jan 2008.)