A hope for redemption

I vividly remember the day when I first fell in love with this game. My father bought me a miniature version of a ‘POWER’ bat which I was barely able to wield at that time. I actually had no idea what it was for. To be precise, I was barely two and a half years of age when this event occurred.

There was this place near my school where I used to stay when I was first admitted to the nursery. I have crystal memories of the time when my mum would make someone in my neighborhood bowl at me and then she would hold my hands in hers and make the bat swing, completing the slogging of the ball over the neighbor`s compound. I would be ecstatic!

I would drag mum out of her daily chores and force our maid to throw a plastic ball at me while I rejoiced my new found love of swinging the willow wildly. I wasn`t allowed to do it inside our home, so I would get out in the open and after hitting the ball, run to fetch it myself, give the ball to the maid and then resume the routine.

There was a TV in our home probably 10 years old or so. I saw Srinath taking a tough running catch and tumbling over in the field as he held on to the catch, an English batsman paying the price for a lofted heave. My eyes lit with magic as I saw him running like mad after taking the brilliant catch. And then there I was, the following evening, telling my mum to throw me diving catch where I could do the same. As per my mum, I would first run to the ball, catch it first, deliberately tumble over and then run around screaming for having accomplished the impossible catch.

When I turned 5, we moved to a place quarantined from the main hub of activity in the town. Open fields, grazing cattle, ample fruit bearing trees of all species, lone roads, 6-7 houses besides ours, fear of thieves, unforgiving mosquitoes, and solidarity- Oooh! I loved this place…though my parents thought otherwise. To top it all, I soon found out boys of my own age living nearby. What more than to discover they were all cricket-fever stricken chaps and I too was more than happy to have been bitten by the same bug. We chums, guys of my age, would parade to the luscious and green meadows with bats and balls where there weren`t any houses within our range, each and every day for 8 memorable years. My papa knew how much mirth I gained while playing this game, he never objected to nor ever bound me by any restriction of playing my heart out. He was in fact proud of me, I felt.

I soon discovered the batsman in me and would bat for long innings, sometimes too long that my friends wouldn`t allow me to bat before they all got out first. I admired Rahul Dravid and wholeheartedly reverend his style and class of batting.  I would spend all my afternoons emulating him, shadow practicing in front of our house. Heck, I even made the front of my house a cricket stadium. The white and blue painted walls then wreaked of black and brown round spots all over the place within a couple of months. I would even play in the field under the hot sun at 2o’clock. My mum would come with the ‘belan’ and chase me out of the ground or if my luck would run out, I would get a sound thrashing in front of the other kids too! The occasional breaking of the neighbor`s windows, the windshield of a car or two, destroying a beehive and then being avenged by the bees, shattering the glass of our own TV and then going to the hospital to get the pieces of glass out of my heel, releasing all the cattle of our milkman ‘by mistake’ in a valiant effort to get the ball out of a cow`s fodder…it was all in a day`s work! And yes I forgot the part where I let loose my pet dog after a boy bigger than me in size, when he threatened me and refused to return my 1^st tennis ball.

Of course my mum never let me play before I completed my homework (or so I pretended everyday for 8 years). I would do anything in my mind to make sure I was on the field and batting. This game meant more to me than anything else. It had become my life, my source of survival and happiness.

We came down to our new place of residence, where we presently live. I was shocked when I first came into the locality. No open fields, no trees, narrow roads…I hated the place at first. I would cycle my all the way back to where I previously stayed and continued playing there for an year. In the mean time I saw the locals of my own place playing in a confined space, in the lawn of the government Inspection Bungalow. I started playing with them thereon. I was welcomed gladly in place where I was still a ‘kid’. It was a confined space and I had to adapt my style to suit the turf and the limited space. The situation demanded a variety altogether in my stance and approach; I was virtually two timing-one in the small lawn and the other in the limitless greens.

I discovered my batting prowess in these later years. Wide array of shots in my repertoire, a signature leg glance, hooks, pulls, drives…and the list goes on. I even grew as a dependable fielder and improved quite a lot over time. I started playing in each and every nook and corner of our town, with people twice my age, people with little acquaintances sharing a common interest, far and near stadiums…I was everywhere and everyone in the town who played a little bit of cricket knew me well. Cricket had become my identity, more than my passion. I would play a lot of matches and would even bunk a boring tuition to bat for my team elsewhere. And the credit for hitting a 6 in the last ball of a match as the winning runs lives with me forever. I was at my zenith!

I spent my entire 2 years of my college wandering about the town, having played in nearly all the fields and all the guys in the place. But life has it`s own way of clipping your wings when you fly too high; and when you soar high, the fall has it`s own toll. Came May 07, the month when all hell broke loose upon me. All my life`s luck ran out in the following days when my board results were declared. I had scored worse than I had expected. The results were unexpected on my part and then to add salt to the wounds, I had scored disastrously in each of the entrances. I was at dire straits. The final hammer on the nail was hit by my mum when she out of the blue blamed my playing cricket to be one of the causes. I was shattered. Of all the things I didn`t think there was a single iota of doubt that it was not the case as my mum was putting it into. Maybe I was too complacent in my attitude towards the board or some other things best known to me, but I couldn`t find how playing cricket 4 days a week could cause that. Mum retorted to a similar explanation of mine by saying, “If you played so much of the game all these years, what are you doing here in my house? You could have got selected somewhere and playing there now instead of standing here in front of me”.

This statement was a point blank headshot from a shotgun. I was left stunned and went into a very serious contemplation of the fact my mum had said in her fit of desperation. Tears came out of my eyes and I walked through the door quietly. It stung me pretty bad and I was left in a daze for a few days; all love lost and my mind playing blame games with all the reasons which had contributed to this event. I cursed myself for letting my love gain freedom for this game which was inseparable from me…till now. Whatever the reasons, I began to believe that this might be a reason for my fall. Since that day, I lost some of my lustre. Cricket was just a game for me now.

I still play the game with all my heart but with a crippled variety of shots and a complacent aggression. I still play matches with friends in the same small lawn but for the sake of fun, not for the sake of testing my paranoia for the game and we have great time. Years have passed by since then when I had played my best game. I left the game which made me, but I found out that I am altogether a different personality when I am in a field and playing; I despise myself for  not having that flair in me off the field what I have on the ground.

Even now, whenever I hold a willow in my hand and look at a bowler charging towards me, I have a surge of adrenaline rush through my body and give everything into the charisma and stroke of my bat…and a vision of the ball already out of the park sailing into the blue…just like the old days. The dream lives on…A hope for staying in love, a hope for salvation…A hope…for redemption.