I was strokeless. I couldn’t hook, pull or hoist the ball on the cricket field. I was runless too. My top score was a workmanlike 23, notched up against a bowling attack as formidable as a litter of Labrador pups. As a bowler though, I was full of runs. In one match, whenever I came on to bowl, the cheering squad for our opponents would go, “Sixer! Sixer!” As a fielder, I have played a decisive role many a time, changing the complexion of the game in favour of the opposition.
Butter-fingered fielding, toothless fast bowling and unexciting batting could not however keep me from playing competitive cricket for 10 continuous years. I decided to retire when the going was good and offer my place to a youngster restlessly and murderously waiting in the wings. I was 21 when I gracefully called it a day.
My cricketing days were set in the Eighties and the Nineties. And it was a different ball game. We played with rubber and tennis balls in what was called ‘nagar cricket’, nagar referring to a residential colony.
Anyone who had played cricket back then would tell you that nagar cricket gave rise to engaging rivalries between colonies. With life in a majority of our neighbourhoods characterised by an air of cold impersonality, locality-based teams and nagar cricket have become rare.
Considering what nagar cricket did for the sport, it is a huge loss.
Nagar cricket was extremely flexible accommodating players with diverse skill sets. At one end of the spectrum were the supremely talented cricketers, who would eventually go on to represent the country. At the other end were the likes of me.
Often, a nagar would consist of just two streets and cobbling together a quick playing XI with talent drawn from them would entail making a few unhappy choices. In those days, apartment complexes were rare. Each of the two nagars I played for had just two streets with many vacant plots.
The majority of the top-notch cricketers of those times were initiated into competitive cricket through inter-nagar tournaments, some of them played with tennis balls and under floodlights.
The memories of one match are still vivid, largely due to the walloping we received from the opposition. It was a floodlight match between Veerappa Nagar and Ramakrishna Nagar, both of them colonies in the Valasaravakkam region. Veerappa Nagar had me. And Ramakrishna Nagar had Sadagopan Ramesh — yes, the left-hander who played international cricket. Do I have to explain any further where each team stood? At that time, Ramesh must have been an eleven-year-old, but that did not prevent him from continually dispatching our clueless bowlers to the fence. He opened the batting and hit three consecutive fours in the very first over.
Ramesh does not remember the details of that match. However, he fondly recollects the playground. The Ramakrishna Nagar ground was ringed by houses.
It was an unconventional ground, with the portion behind the batting wicket considerably shorter. If the batsman guided the ball and it hit the compound wall of a house, one run was granted to him — IG, as it would be called.
Nagar cricket derived its charm from the unconventional shapes of the grounds — most of them unoccupied housing layouts — and the unstructured formats in which matches were played. These conditions contributed handsomely towards making a player smart.
Says Ramesh, “In the 20-overs-a-side floodlight matches, the tennis ball would be chucked. The batsmen would have to spot the ball quickly. Most of the time, the ground would be inadequately lit, making this difficult. Exposure to such playing conditions helped a batsman spot the cricket ball easily while playing in a conventional match in broad daylight.”
T.A. Sekar, who has played for India as a fast bowler, says unstructured cricket played at unconventional grounds helps players innovate. He believes children aged around 10 are better off playing cricket with tennis balls. The regular cricket ball is too big for them to grip it properly. Learning to bowl with a cricket ball, at that age, often leads to wrong gripping techniques.
Sekar, who played nagar cricket in the 1970s, has a firsthand experience of tennis ball cricket doused in floodlights.
He is also familiar with inter-nagar Test matches. “Teams would play matches patterned on Test cricket. It would be duration cricket, with the match spread across two weekends. Both the teams would contribute towards the purchase of a tennis ball for the match. The winner took the tennis ball,” recalls Sekar.
As anyone who has played nagar cricket would tell you, it would be a team’s treasured possession.
