The master blaster in me...

Reading all the hoo-hah about a certain Sachin Tendulkar scoring a double hundred and this, I thought it might be prudent for me to share with one and all, my own 'Master Blaster' days.

I suppose a 'setting the scene' paragraph is in order. I was brought up in a boarding school. For the avoidance of doubt, I must clarify that the operative word is 'brought' up in a boarding school, as opposed to 'went' to a boarding school. It was home, you see. Like all boarding schools, this one would be closed for almost three and a half months of the year. For a majority of these months, the only souls on the entire 750/900 acre (size varies depending on who you're talking to), there would be a sum total of 5 families on campus. Including ours. That included 6 (b)rats that the pied piper called holidays could not get rid of. At the disposal of these brats were approximately 8 tennis courts, 3 basketball courts, 4 badminton courts, 1 swimming pool, 1 club house with 2 snooker tables, 2 table tennis tables and 3 carom boards, and roughly 10 play grounds. Cricket was the favoured sport of this band of brothers with the occasional peppering of seasonal games such as football, basketball and tennis (depending on which tournament was on TV at that time). This post is about Cricket.

Sidin, being the Genius that he is, has brought up the 'what exactly is a one day cricket match' question. In our case though, these matches were more likely 'day into night' cricket matches. You see, one day cricket matches just say one day, they do not specify 8 hours. Hence we would commence proceedings at the crack of dawn (usually around noon) and go one until one of the following happened:

a) one of the mothers came after us wielding a particularly stout stick
b) one of us lost a tooth and/or an eye
c) we lost all the balls and would need to retire in order to grovel and beg for a few more the next day from Manick or Raju, the sports room in-charges
d) a massive disagreement between teams resulted in a sulky cancellation of proceedings, and most often,
e) it became so dark that even with the aid of the lone streetlight at the end of the ground, it would become impossible to see a yellow tennis ball coming towards the batsman/fielder at speed, resulting in a wicket or boundary, which quickly degenerated into situation under (d) above. On the rare occasions that we would play like real men, with a cricket ball, we would call it quits as soon as (b) above happened. You see, we had only 1 pad per team, no gloves and no helmets, and several budding pace bowlers.

Keen and alert readers that you are, you would have, by now, no doubt, raised an eyebrow in protest saying a cricket match would require atleast 22 people. Not ours. All we needed was an even number of blokes and even when that wasn't possible, we would manage admirably by either having a floating team member or even better, convincing the weakest player that he wants to be an umpire since he is the fairest, most keen eyed and technically knowledgeable bloke in all of Lovedale. Usually worked like a charm.

That said, however, 6 people are not even near the full complement required to field a full ground. That instantly ruled out Top Flats, which was the largest ground in the northern hemisphere at that altitude, or something like that. In order to give the fielding team a fair chance, the most likely choice was the basketball court just below Prep School. It was the perfect size if the batting team also did part time fielding. However, it's size did have some disadvantages, a well placed hook could get a boundary and hence 4 or 6 runs depending on which part of the boundary wall the ball hit (the upper part being a 6), but more importantly, it could also:

- get one in trouble with Ms. Jerry Nash of Girls School if one hit the ball too hard and so much as touched a window of Girls School
- get one out if you hit hard enough for the ball to cross the boundary wall. To any ball wanting to escape the relentless throwing and hitting, crossing the wall was the ticket to freedom, for it is, to this day, virtually impossible to retrieve a ball that went into the dense undergrowth beyond the wall.

If this team comes across as an amateurish team, now would be a time to change opinions, for I am about to introduce some of the most (in)famous bowlers in the history of Cricket.
 

• Ganesh, seeing this gentle giant thunder down from the boundary wall is a sight to behold. With the arrogant laziness of an elephant and pretty much the height of said elephant, this guy would unleash the ball from a height of 9 feet. A normal ball would come across to the average 4 feet batsman as a life threatening bouncer. Needless to say, the lone pad would be in huge demand every time this bloke came to bowl with a cricket ball. Injuries which can be brushed aside for the next day's match were fine, any further absence due to injury was a risk not worth taking. Ganesh was also the senior most bloke in the squad.

• Renju. Next in seniority, he would try to bowl pace and to be honest, at that age, it did feel like pace! However, he was nowhere near the life threatening pace Ganesh wielded.

• Sudhakar. This guy was a regular part timer and said he was a swing bowler, but it was more like a slowish straight ball.

• Praveen - Yet another part timer. This bloke was (in)famous for chucking allegations a la Muthiah Muralidharan. Many a times he has left the ground in a huff because one of us appealed against his chuck...er, bowling.

• Shibu - Renju's kid brother, until he began to realise he was being played, he would be the preferred umpire and when he realised should be playing, rather than being played, Shibu tried his hand at spin bowling. To his credit, on several occasions, the ball did reach the batsman before being smacked out of the ground. It was this quality of tempting the batsman to smack the ball to smithereens that made Shibu a prolific wicket taker.

• Me. You could replace my name in Shibu's profile and it wouldn't be too inaccurate.

Now that I have introduced the bowlers, I should introduce the batsmen:

• Ganesh. I have already established that this bloke was/is tall. While his height was a definite advantage in bowling and fielding, it was sometimes a liability in batting. You see, in order to ground the bat, Ganesh would have to bend over in half, but then again, it was not possible to bowl him a bouncer, the highest any of us could reach would be his hip, which he swat with disdain. He could also cover the length of the pitch in around 3 footsteps, and was hence adept at taking quick singles.

• Renju. Was a decent middle order batsman, he was like Rahul Dravid, would take root at one end and pretty much stay there until a fight broke out. As I write this, I wonder if he can be called middle order. He would usually come in one down (which means he'd step in after the team lost one wicket). I suppose calling him middle order is correct since coming in at number 2 in a team of 3 does make it middle order!

• Sudhakar. He could hold a bat and swing it, at times connecting the ball in the process. Pinch hitter would accurately describe him.

• Praveen - memories of his batting prowess elude me, primarily because he would get into a fight over his bowling action and leave in a huff before he could bat nine times out of ten.

• Shibu - for as long as I can remember, Shibu was only as tall as a bat, hence he wasn't the most effective tool in the box from a purely logistical perspective, but he had an uncanny ability to connect ball and bat and was capable of dropping the bat and scurrying between wickets like Jerry (not Ms Jerry Nash) running from Tom and was a dependable bet to get runs.

• Me. For the record, I was slightly taller than Shibu. Under poor lighting conditions, I was more than capable of somehow connecting ball and bat, however, enthusiastic cheering from my team mates would often get the better of me and I would often smack the ball into the jungle, which led Ganesh to give me the nickname 'Master Blaster', a name which to this day sticks...

Aah, fun times :)