The fragments of small-town cricket memory
Knock on wood
Credits to the photographer who has taken it. In an alternate universe, I was that young cricket fan.
Berton Braley wrote in a poem, Baseball:
…
Chuck-full of glamour,
Tumult and clamor,
Sparkling with vigor and zipping with zest,
Gingery, tangy
Flippant and slangy,
Brimful of action and banter and jest.
Sport of the multitude – held by its joys again,
Staidest of the people are nothing but boys again!
…
For the next 45 days or so, these lines hold so well for Cricket fans around the world. Staidest of the people are nothing but boys again!
My home town is 80 km away from Vizag. I started and breathed the incredible game of cricket there. Last I visited there in 2009, though physically not there my mind always wanders over there. Here are some of the fragments of my memory of playing cricket there.
My earliest memory: The match was played between J-Type and I-Type boys. My elder brother and I were so young in that team, that we were just added to the team as we were just enthusiastic and available to play. We belonged to the J-Type team and it consisted of pairs of brothers. The relatively strong team was I-Type boys, with 3 brothers playing in it. My earliest memory of fast bowling was from Kumar, the eldest of 3 brothers of the I-Type team. He used to rattle the stumps at will and the most embarrassing the opponent team did was to measure the length of how far the wickets flew through post the batter’s dismissal. Mind you, the wickets were sticks plucked out of an unnamed tree. The ground we played was given the name, Seval Stadium by some mischievous boy (loosely translates as burial ground, it was right after our cricketing pitch) as corpses used to go through our cricketing pitch after the batter (bodies) had scored some runs in their life and reaching their ultimate pavilion. As a mark of respect for the body, when a corpse used to come, we all boys used to move away and a sense of calmness and discomfort prevailed. Boys don’t know much about what death is at that time.
Seval Stadium: This ground mostly consisted of school friends of our senior and neighbor Goutham, my elder brother’s friends, and my friends. Rain or shine, we played the games so competitively. The only player who could hit sixes at will was Prem Singh, our school cricket captain. The six would sometimes go near the entrances of the burial ground and as a boy, it was fearsome to collect the ball from there as a fielder. And this guy used to wake the spirits every time he came to bat. Six after Six the bowlers feared for him and the corpses too. There were only a few other people who could hit that long as far as I remember.
Art of Bowling: When our cricket expert, Shiva Kumar told us that Fanie de Villiers practiced bowling with one stump. Most of the jytpe-quarter-39 boys followed the same. Years later, I felt that this helped our game. We used to play the game on hot and sunny days under the shades of huge neem, guava, and mango, unnamed trees. Our wicket was marked on the trunk of a guava tree and the bat was a made-up round stick with a plastic ball. Everyone enjoyed the game there, senior to junior, college to school boys mostly due to Shiva Kumar’s brilliance and presence. He was the only guy who used to listen to commentary to the last word. We used to watch matches as a group and imagine watching live when Venkatesh Prasad plucked that wicket of Aamir Sohail. Hell broke loose in the quarters. No parent objected to this loud cheer from the boys.
School Champions: Lagaan movie came in 2001 but before that, our school boys (Saraf High School Boys – SGDSH – batch of 98 and 99) exhibited this characteristic on the grounds of Vizianagaram (MR School Stadium and Viji Stadium). We used to travel 25 kms. as a team of 11+ boys in a tempo auto match after match and boy those memories are just unique and must be like a lost lover’s kiss. En route, we used to stop and pray to a goddess for victory. We don’t know what turfs really are… we never played much on matting grounds…we are not so used to playing with cricketing kits (pads, gloves, boxes, shoes, etc.) and whites. Not so familiar with a stitch or match ball as it was called. We were ordinary boys playing on soiled grounds with a tennis or rubber ball and 1 bat maybe, yet we became the CHAMPIONS beating the proud district school boys. Some victories are so satisfying and you make life-long memories out of it. The star players in the tournament as I recall were Prem and Gowri who were proper athletes and natural sportspersons. Gowri Shankar, son of policemen was like our Bumrah, who gave us the key breakthrough moment of knocking the stumps of the state player in the opposing team in the final. Ranjith (technically sound opener), Girish (Sehwag of those times), Lokesh (a handy allrounder), KV Sivaramakrishna (the town’s best wicketkeeper batsmen), Tinku (a very power hitter), Karthik (a good all-rounder) were other star players. The one thing I regret is I did not have enough power to bat or bowl at that time but just did okay. Our team had a good number of all-rounders who could bat, bowl, and field. In the final match, when my brother bowled a peaching swing delivery…it hit the opposing player on his pads with such force that the batter got retired hurt. The joy knew no bounds when we went clapping, cheering the 25 kms. with our joy of victory. We must have made the school and town proud. The senior cricketers of the town appreciated us when our captain showed the WINNING cup to them.
Growing days: As time passed by, we moved from J-Type to two-room and mini-three-room quarters and played in a nearby sports ground named as “Football Ground” and ironically, we played Cricket in there more than Football. I very much remember skipping some of the tuitions to watch Kaif and Yuvraj play their under-19 World Cup. Most of our school friends gave each other a call in the early morning to watch some hockey games. Two brothers used to play cricket in the hot summer afternoon. Two brothers used to play football – offense and defense in the late evenings. There were many passionate cricketers and sportspersons in our town. Played with big boys and seniors now. It improves your game a lot. Watched and played many inter-city games and tournaments.
Cricketing teams: There was a team by the name – Paragon captained by K Sudhir, they were invincible and unbeatable in tennis ball cricket. They displayed Australianism a lot. To win. They had a lot of wonderful players who could bat, bowl deep, and win games. I was also part of their team for some games. My brother and his friend's team played many matches with the Paragon team and gave tough competition. There were still some senior men's town teams who had wonderful cricketers such as PVSN Raju, and Ramu who were the talk of the town. They were called as “Bucks” team, I think so. Every youngster looked up to them and we were told stories about them. I bowled as a practice net bowler to Raju during my start of engineering college days, probably the town’s best batter and I used to enjoy every time I was able to beat him with my bowling. There was also a wonderful wicketkeeper by the name of Saranga or Sarangi, from Orissa who came to study in our town’s college. There were really some good fast bowlers, forgot their names. The games were so tight.
Influence: Every best fielder was called Jonty. Some attempted to mimic Sachin with people throwing brick-bats at them - You are no Sachin, stop it, please and they used to pluck their wickets so quickly. Some mimicked the bowling action of Srinath and Brett Lee. I tried to mimic many - Kallis, and Saqlain as I cracked how to bowl Doosra in smaller places and tried a change in bowling hands as I wanted to mimic Wasim Akram and stopped it only when I was scolded by my senior neighbor that I was spoiling my natural game. I always wanted to be a captain like Sourav Ganguly. Though Rahul Dravid was my all-time favorite cricketer and role model. Once my brother’s friend told me how the crowd went berserk when Rahul Dravid came from Pavilion to bat in Vizag Cricket Stadium. It stayed with me. We skipped the college classes and ran from the back door to watch the epic batting of VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid in a friend's house near the college.
My favorite books on cricket:
1. Democracy XI
2. A Century is Not Enough
3. Autobiography of an unknown cricketer by Sujit Mukherjee (incomplete reading)
4. The Commonwealth of Cricket by Ramchandra Guha (incomplete reading)
Final over: My elder brother and I played a lot of cricket. I miss that very much now. My father always used to tell only the tales of Eknath Solkar fielding brilliance or sometimes a Farookh Engineer or CK Nayudu and my brother and I knew them before he spoke anything on cricket, we both were discussing. Paternal grandmother liked Paul Reiffel bowling. Once we were in a campus interview, and the candidate told us that his mother liked Patrick Patterson bowling, and hence his name contained Patrick. I am confident that every parent of a boy named Sachin in India was probably a fan of Cricket. Rest in Peace and Cricket to a wonderful cricketer from my town, Nagaraj, who bowled me such a fast ball once that it imprinted the ball on my left thigh.
Who’s got trouble?
Who’s unhappy?
Who’s unlucky?
Who’s got nothing?
Who’s happy?
Who’s lucky?
Well, smile up then, and once again, let’s knock on wood.
As the old song in the incredible Casablanca film goes by, for many the game of Cricket is that knock on wood figuratively and truly on the ground for a few.