It is nothing new that you develop interest in cricket if you are from where I am from. Also, it is very common that you tend to invest time, emotion and more into this sport as it pulls you in like one of those many ghosts you see in the movies. Once that happens, you are in for a ride, you are captive in its chains. No amount of exorcism can get you out of that. You are a prisoner for life!

There are different methods of getting sucked into this abyss and I am one of those guys who is neck deep or more if that is possible. The high I get when I am in the middle of the field and do well for the team rivals all the ecstasies the world has to offer.

So, it was 1995 summer holidays and for some reason, my parents believed in my cricketing ability and enrolled me into a summer coaching camp. For the first time, I got all those cricketing gear that I have only seen on television. I used to stay at my aunt’s place as that was near the camp (you have heard this somewhere already isn’t it? ) and my father used to drop my mother in her office, then come to my aunt’s house to pick me up and then drop me for the session and later pick me up again and drop me at my aunt’s place and then continue with his work. Life was good for me. I got to play all morning and then come back and play soft ball cricket with the neighborhood kids till the light faded and then watched TV and slept.

But that was that. Once the schools reopened, everything stopped as there were no coaching centres near home and it was practically impossible to travel across the city on weekdays after school, to pursue what I loved. The kit I so adored went to the loft and started gathering dust, as I shuttled between school and then later private tuitions to make marks meet. One fine day though, we got this local newspaper thrown into our home and as I picked it up to hand it to my father, a flyer fell out —in between this day and the kit resting up above, I got nicely spanked for taking out my oil bat (that was what it was called back then) and playing soft ball cricket with my neighborhood kids. It was well deserved in a sense though. My parents felt that the bat was very expensive and it makes sense to them that it saw spider webs up in my bedroom than feel a tennis ball on its face– So coming back, that flyer had a photo of Sachin, possibly Dravid? I can’t remember correctly, what with him being unsung and all that, but it caught my attention, and I read it and got excited and ran towards my father to tell him that they are opening up a coaching centre very close to our home and that the coach is also a prominent guy in the state cricket circle. The fees according to me was nominal. (you can’t possibly argue with me on this please) So my parents got into a discussion and they came up with a clever proposition. I have to promise them that I will study well and get good marks at school. Only then, they will allow me to go for cricket training over the weekend. Sounds easy right! It’s only a promise. You just tell them what they want to hear and get into doing what you love. But my righteous self didn’t want to give any such guarantees. Fate already had made different plans that I rather do product configuration for a banking software than hit a silly sphere with wood. So with my mind thinking like what the hell am I talking, I started saying the words out loud that – “Sorry I can’t promise all that. If you believe in me doing well in cricket, then you have to allow me to give my full concentration to that. Remember Sachin didnt pass 10th standard” (for crying out loud who talks like this at the age of 11). You got to know that 10th standard is a minimum requirement for educational qualification and in a middle class home, if I talk about failing, it has some irreparable consequences and so it did. The cricket kit in the loft must have watched me utter those useless words and cursed to itself that of all the places it has ended up here – with me.

Yep, the millennium was born and if you want to know what else happened with me apart from school, I joined violin classes. Turns out you don’t have to make any promises to join that. I like music as much as the person next to me, if the person next to me likes music, that’s it and not more. For anything for that matter, to truly cross that sheep in the herd stage and to come out trumps with proficiency, you should have mad dedication and love for what you do. Unfortunately I didn’t have that with music, so when I had an option to quit violin classes to focus more on my 10th exam, I took it with both hands (sadly for my friend though who loved music like I loved cricket, it was the end of classes for him as his parents thought, if I who gets more marks than him opts to stop extra-curricular activities to focus on education, then he must definitely stop it as well. Really sad, but that’s how it works with parents) .

Sorry for the little detour. Now coming back to cricket. Nothing serious happened. I begged and got into another summer coaching camp, this time at school. But that was just guys turning up in the morning and playing cricket as they pleased. Nothing was coached as such. Played some games for the school but the guys who went to actual coaching were preferred ahead of me. Also there was this weird age criteria which always came in my way for U14 and U17 tournaments. So I kind of made peace with the fact that this sport, in this lifetime, is just for watching. Then came college and it was the same story, proper coaching and all that. I did play soft ball tournaments and did decently well to quench my thirst but it isn’t the same. Real cricket is playing with the cricket ball, the best sound ever to exist is the sound you hear when that stitched leather hits the sweet spot of that willow (if you are anything like me, you just heard that sound in your head now).

Next up – Birth of Weekend Cricket club.

To be continued…

PS: I will definitely continue this time, you don’t want to waste more than 5 minutes reading about me per day or week. So I will cover this in as many little parts as I can.