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V Gangadhar

The game goes on

Harsh comments, but true. A wife is a wife, but watching Saeed Anwar bat or Wasim Akram and Mushtaq Ahmed bowl... well... can anything be better than that? Yet, strangely enough, despite my obsession for cricket, I did not know anything about the game till I was nine or 10 years old. But today, even four or five-year-olds are familiar with the game and freely mention names like Tendulkar or Kapil Dev.

My earliest years were spent in villages and small towns like Ambasamudram, Tenkasi, Cheranmahadevi, Tindivanam and so on. Boys in these places did not play cricket. We spent our time on games like paandi (hopscotch), chadugudu (kabaddi), goli (marbles) or hide-and-seek. In school, we just ran around and marched in long boring lines during drill periods.

When did I first watch a cricket match? I think it was sometime in the late 1940s. The place was Tambaram, a suburb of Madras, where my father was posted. I was more of a dehati than Deve Gowda. In fact, I was so dumb that when asked by the neighbourhood boys to join in a game of I Spy, I thought it had something to do with 'ice' because it sounded like ice pai, which means a bag of ice in Tamil. The boys had a good laugh but took me in.

Three houses away lived Kumar, Shankar, Suri and their large brood of sisters. Every evening after school, I watched them hit a ball or throw it at three sticks fixed in the ground. I was too shy to ask what they were doing. But one day, they invited me over and explained they were playing cricket. I was asked to join in and did so with enthusiasm.

The Kumar family had a patch of open ground adjoining their house where they played cricket. But there were intrusions. The sisters were clearly interested in showing the brothers they were the bosses. Very often, they would interfere with our game, standing in the middle of the pitch and demanding they be allowed to bat. We cursed them silently but had to obey their orders.

I do not remember whether I started of as a batsman or a bowler. But I must have progressed well. Very soon I was playing cricket with a cricket ball and a proper bat along with the senior boys in the area. Of course, we did not have protective equipment and often nursed bruised knees, fingers and other parts of the body.

My school, Christ King Convent, paid more attention to hockey than cricket. Anyway, boys were in a minority in the school (three out of 48 in my class). I just remember one cricket match during my time. This was an inter-house match between the Victorians and the Virginians where the umpire (a fellow student) declared me run out even though I was well inside the crease. Later, I was told that the umpire had not taken kindly to my chatting with a girl student who was supposed to be his special friend.

My interest in the game grew by leaps and bounds. Our landlord in Tambaram was a patron of the local cricket team, Tambaram Cosmopolitan Cricket Club, which played in the second division of the local league. I was an ardent supporter and often flouted my father's directive not to wander in the sun to be present at all their matches.

The TCCC did remarkably well and won the league title, defeating the more fancied Harnath Cricket Club. I was in seventh heaven. Another match I distinctly remember was the one against Madras Christian College. TCCC were all out for 104. Christian College was 104 for nine when fast bowler Kulashekharan clean bowled their last batsman to tie the match. Oh, how we cheered him!

I got my first cricket bat immediately afterwards. This increased my importance and prestige among my friends. It was an Usha bat with a short handle. Surrounded by admiring friends, I spent hours applying linseed oil on the blade and knocking a cricket ball covered with an old sock. This was supposed to be the best method of 'seasoning' the bat.

While playing, it was difficult not to loan the bat to one's close friends. Cricket was a team effort. Some of the boys brought the ball, others provided the stumps and everything had to be shared. A good quality cricket ball cost around three rupees and lasted for 10 days.

Despite his disapproval for wandering in the sun, my father continued to surprise me. One day, he presented me with a closed envelope which contained the season ticket for two major cricket matches, South Zone versus the West Indies and India versus the West Indies, to be played at the Chepauk stadium in Madras.

At the age of 10, I witnessed my first Test match. The 1948-49 West Indies team led by John Goddard clobbered India by an innings. I can never forget the savage square cuts of Everton Weekes, who scored 90 before he was run out.

I had also been watching a different kind of cricket whenever I visited our hometown in Palakadu. Under the shade of a huge banyan tree in front of our house, three urchins only wearing loin cloth would assemble. They had three thin sticks to serve as stumps, a rough piece of wood which was a bat, and a torn tennis ball. The commencement of each game was preceded by noisy arguments:

Boy 1: I am captain.

Boy 2: I am vice-captain.

Boy 3: I am the umpire.

I did not know how they resolved this power struggle!

When father was transferred from Tambaram, I feared that my cricket career would end. That was not to be. It would require a separate column to enlighten the readers on how I played the game in Madurai, Vellore, Fort Cochin, Palakadu and Ahmedabad.

Illustrations: Dominic Xavier