My earliest memory of cricket goes back to the three Test series that India played in Pakistan in 1978. It was an iconic series, perhaps the first time, we had live telecast of the matches on TV. I was too young to understand the nuances of the game. But the black and white images of Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, Zaheer Abbas and Imran Khan have not faded one bit. What began with this series is a love affair with cricket that continues to this day.
Cricket folklore passed on from generation to generation ensures that even heroes of a distant past, rub shoulders with the stars of today. That way, cricket memory has no beginning. Through the tales told and retold by my grandfather and father, both cricket freaks, the embers of cricket of an earlier era continue to burn bright. Mankad and Merchant, Pataudi and Chandra may have left the cricket arena well before my time, but it was as though, I saw them bat and bowl right in front of my eyes.
For a cricket enthusiast, it is not just a game. We play out our life, against the backdrop of cricket. Each of life’s flag-post events is matched up with a corresponding event in cricket and vice versa. When my daughter was born, I was as much excited about her arrival as about Sehwag getting to his triple hundred. And when it comes to cricket’s crowning moments, we know exactly where we were, and what we were doing on that day. Dhoni and team may have won the World Cup, but we held the trophy in our hands standing in the apartment balcony.
We are often asked why we follow cricket so closely. We may have played the game in childhood and derived some fun out of it. We do not actively play anymore. What is the point in following the sport so closely, investing so much time and mind-share? A cricket nut struggles to answer. He can only mumble incoherently — it is like love, it has no logic. There is a sense of inevitability to it.
Why do we follow cricket? It is for the sheer excitement of looking forward to something. We know after the IPL is over, India will spend the summer in England, followed by the T20 World Cup. The carpet is already laid out for the entire year. The thrill is in the wait, in the anticipation for the next cricket event to unfold and then the next, ad infinitum. Without this, life will be too drab, robbed of all fizz.
In following cricket, we ride a roller-coaster of emotion. When India was all out for 36 in Australia, it was a personal embarrassment. We sulked in silence; we could not show our face outside. Family members consoled us, “Why are you moving around with such a long face, as if some grave calamity has befallen you? Look! Even the cricketers have forgotten about it!” And then, when India won the next Test, the happiness couldn’t be contained. There was a new spring in the steps, cheer on the face and even this corona-ridden world, seemed the happiest place in the universe! Such is cricket!
Keeping in touch with cricket, we stay young. The body may age, but not the child in us. Spotting a red tomato in the kitchen, even now, we grip it, as we would a cricket ball, and give it a few turns like Kumble. In the process, the tomato may slip out of hand and lay squashed on the floor, leaving us red-faced, but that is another story. Or walking down a corridor in the apartment, the body suddenly breaks into a bowling action, forgetting even the curious onlookers around us.
The IPL extravaganza has just begun. I sit in front of the TV much like that schoolboy did decades ago. I wait with bated breath as the toss ritual gets under way. The first ball is about to be bowled. The bowler is at the top of his bowling mark. The umpire ends the suspense, drops his extended arm and announces, “Gentlemen! Let’s play!”
shankar.ccpp@gmail.com
