Cricketers of yore

Friday night would be spent on phone strategising every aspect of the impending match for at least a good 30-40 minutes. That would be my father and his good friend getting mentally all geared up for their upcoming match on Saturday mornings. It meant a lot to them and if you could only hear and not see them you would in all probability think they are professional cricketers playing in an important tournament, exchanging notes (not the green ones) before the most crucial match. Such was the enthusiasm and the intensity week after week. It was difficult as a kid not to get influenced and land in the cricket field to watch these much talked about matches.

For all his laziness during the weekends, my father would be out of the house at a reasonably early hour for the matches. As and when we (my brothers and I) would get up we would trickle in the cricket field to watch these men in whites. Average age of this faculty team would be between 40-45. Early morning heavy jute-like dark green mat would be rolled out on the pitch and nailed to the ground. More often than not I would have missed the toss and the early overs. My elder brother (SB) on the other hand usually would be there early enough because he at a pretty early age had been spotted and recruited as the official score keeper. SB apart from being very good at it had this keen interest in passing on the family tradition to me. In his own unique way of training me, he would all of a sudden give me the job of scoring with minimal instructions. And every ball bowled would make my heart leap, as data had to be entered at three different corners of the sheet: in the records of the bowler who bowled, in the records of the batsman who faced and in the records of the team. At the end of every over while everyone relaxed I would be frantically adding those extra dots that I missed here and there looking in my split vision at the invisible stick that SB had in his right hand. To compound my troubles, once in a while the referees would lose count of the number of balls left in the over and I would hear a yell “how many left?” I would rattle off a reasonable number hoping the bowler wouldn’t remember otherwise. Some of these old guys had perfectly nasty memories when it came to the count of the number of balls they had bowled.

While some of these faculty club members had immense passion for the game, invariably they would just about be able to garner eleven of them on a given day. Such were the dire straits that any new hiring of the institute would be checked out very discretely for their interest in cricket and joining the club and curiously enough even their marital status! Much to the club members joy an occasional new comer would start off with great enthusiasm. But to their dismay only to loose all of it the day he got married. Even such desertions were taken in stride and an approaching season was prepared for with great gusto. Bats were shopped and brought to the home of the member who kept the kit. The edges were taped with those thick sticky tapes one uses to bandage to prevent the edges getting injured. Coloured grips were rolled on to the handles. Then some slow impacts were made on the blade to open up the stroke. Even a newly arrived baby would get jealous of the amount of caring these cricketing equipments received. Baba would be seen in front of the long mirror sometimes shadow batting, perfecting his stance and what not. Even a book on cricket coaching was bought at some point so that every shot in the book had been looked up.

Since getting enough people on board was a difficult job in itself getting someone to referee the whole day was asking for the moon. So a workable solution in the spirit of the game was to have someone referee from the team that was batting. This of course led to some tricky situations specially in the matches between the faculty and the staff. Faculty, the scrupulous intellectuals vs the wanting-to-get-even-at-the-field staff members. While the faculty team would never give the benefit of the doubt to the batsman since it was their own teammate, the staff team would have no such things weighing on their minds and would freely interpret every rule of the game to their convenience. You would not be off target if you conclude that by the end of the match most of the faculty members would be disgruntled with each other’s decisions, the staff would be making merry. It is anyone’s guess who won most of these hotly contested matches. Then all these men would pull out those big iron nails out of the ground and the dark green mat would be rolled, wickets would be slid under the mat, two men per wicket on either of side of the mat would carry it back to the store room. In the hard work of carrying the heavy mat back together they would forget their differences and all would be well till the next time. In the night post dinner, the match would be dissected and bisected over the phone. The turning point, the most crucial over, the most important wicket , that elusive correct batting order and a lot of patting each other’s back would take place.

About my father’s game in particular:

The dismissal: every year in ninety percent of the matches, he would get out the same way! There were ‘lbw’ years and there were ‘run out’ years and then there were years he would get bowled week after week. It was an incredible case of consistent performance

The appeal: after years of seeing our father play, finally myself and my younger brother came to the conclusion that our father’s strongest weapon was his appeal. He would scream so loud and gesture so animated that even the unscrupulous referees found it hard to turn him down. It was easier to face a disgruntled team member than let down this old man.

The bruise: I still remember seeing the bruise my father got on his thigh. Coloured purple, a circle with the shape of a key at the center. The bicycle key which was in the pocket over which he got hit. While we oohed and aahed at the perceived pain, we could see the pride in his eyes. His love for the game pretty much stamped on him.