Cricket Days
Cricket days are invariably exciting — more so now with G. working from home. Breaks involve lengthy strategy discussions and cricket criticism between G. and his dad, with them sometimes taking staunchly opposite ends, resulting in pitched battles. Both of them have a head for cricket statistics, and reel off names and numbers like nobody’s business. If they are watching India bat on for a draw on the fifth day, they will tell you how, some time in the seventies, a certain last-wicket partnership achieved the same feat. They will name the ground and the cricketers. They will tell you when the ground last hosted an international match. If it is in India, they will predict its next fixture.
If I leave the door open when I’m on a call, my colleague knows that a cricket match is on. He hears the intense discussions and asks: “Cricket?” These are pleasant background sounds that cut through the quiet of our neighbourhood. The children don’t come out to play much, with some construction and parked cars taking up their pitch on the road. There are no decent playgrounds nearby. The park has small patches of straggly grass, but is not large enough to run around in. What a difference it makes to have endless spaces, open skies, and flower-scented fresh air! I am very grateful for my childhood in a steel township, and the amount of greenery I grew up with. The downside is that I miss open spaces, but I can’t complain too much, living here on the coast.
But coming back to cricket — there never was a time when cricket was not on TV. Before the advent of multiple formats and channels, we had reliable Doordarshan with its sober telecasts. World Cup finals meant friends gathering together, something to look forward to, even if you knew names and faces better than the deep rules of the game. We gathered collectibles that came free with Uncle Chipps, Kissan Jam, and a hundred other things that capitalised on our fascination for cricketers. They have always been as much a topic of discussion as the weather.
I always opened the newspaper on the last page, because even if I didn’t follow any sport keenly enough (until F1 since 2001), the prospect of competition, of a day made by a hard-fought victory, was more enamouring than that of yet another scam or crime. The pages were (and are) mostly filled with cricket news, but other sports also found themselves slotted in — a paragraph here on sailing, another there on the Dakar rally, a quarter of a page for horse racing.
Thanks to all these years of the Hindu, names of sportspersons are now randomly lodged in my head. On an odd day, I might find myself thinking of Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, and Novak Djokovic, when they emerged together on the scene as Serbian tennis sensations. About every four years, luge makes an appearance, with an update on Shiva Keshavan’s progress. Frankie Dettori and the elaborate hats from the Royal Ascot (which taught me the word “fascinator”) sometimes pop up in my memory.
But above everything else was cricket. I read the opinion pieces and was intrigued by the politics — not just in the game, but around it. The Kolpak rule, apartheid and quota systems, match fixing scandals, the ever-present involvement of politicians in Indian cricket — sport was never just sport. It opened up so many questions that it became a study in psychology, history, geography, and politics.
Tomorrow being a holiday, I will probably read Around India in 80 Trains with some cricket in Brisbane and Galle for company. And as I write this, I am reminded of a local cricket match we stumbled upon on a walk through the hills of Kodaikanal. Imagine emerging through swirling mists on paths lined by conifers, past mysterious, isolated cottages, to the familiarity of a game of cricket! Nowhere are you far from cricket in India, and I am very glad of it.
