One pitch

We had planned to play cricket the past weekend. We, as in a motley bunch of once-fit, once-athletic, once-agile guys at work. The right equipment had been gathered over multiple trips to India. Two bamboo clothes rods mysteriously vanished from a certain household and reappeared, sawed into size, as the wickets. Discrete emails were sent out and recruits were drafted in. "Special project" lies were readied and rehearsed through the week to hoodwink those wives that didn't believe in a weekend game of cricket being a man's birthright. And promptly it rained on our plans. Almost all day long. When the rain laden clouds had emptied themselves completely and cleared up in the evening, a group of four of us (from the original 12) still made it to the field only to be greeted by a partly submerged wicket and a puddle ridden outfield. Cricket wasn't even a remote possibility. Sigh and go home? Think again!

In a gesture tantamount to thumbing the nose at the rains, we sought out the local badminton court. The four of us surveyed the green patch with the neat lines and the net posts and it came together in a flash: one pitch cricket!. Confronted with rains,

M/s. Duckworth and Lewis came up with a mathematical formula that spoiled many parties across the world. (And immediately earned the instant hatred of nearly every follower.) But on the other hand, we had come up with something much more worthwhile.

The nearby light post was identified as the wicket. Rules were framed in no time: underarm bowling only, 3 overs per person, putting bat to the ball fetched a run, shots only on the off-side, leg side shots fetched no runs, getting 'beaten' 3 times got you out and so did aerial shots that fell past the court's boundary lines. And, most importantly, "one pitch" catches were legal. Dravids are not born, they are forged on rainy afternoons in wet badminton courts.

The two fielders crowded around the batsman, bringing out a keen tussle between bat, ball and postprandial stupor. The appeals and arguments were kept minimal, keeping in mind the obvious lack of overwhelming appreciation for the sport on this island. Especially on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Trust me, getting yelled at in Mandarin ain't no fun.

I can't remember the last time I played a game of one pitch cricket. But the next hour transported me back to the school/college days when all that was required was a concrete column, a bat and a ball (or even lookalikes) and a few friends to get a game of indoor cricket going in the living rooms, covered car parks, passages, hallways, class rooms, hostel rooms and just about any other place that had a roof above. November and December brought rains to Chennai but cricket continued unabated in many homes across the suburbs.

I remember abruptly curtailing the productive lifetimes of many window panes, light bulbs, lamp shades, decorative pieces and a host of other household articles that came in the way of a speeding Arun ice-cream ball travelling at some speed. (Remember those wonderful multi-purpose creatures pictured above? You could give yourself tooth decay, broken items and a visit to either the doctor or an electrician. All that for a few rupees. Not to mention the pleasant ring it had when it bounced on mosaic flooring.) I'd like to believe that, as kids, we did everything possible to maintain a robust economy by stimulating customer spending. Do you remember a recession in the eighties? Neither do I and thus rest my case. Of special mention is my cousin whose shots homed in on expensive targets with the accuracy of a sniper. I still remember like yesterday when his shot curved, in mid-air, like a Roberto Carlos free kick, and took out the rear view mirror of their neighbor's grey Lamby scooter. Stuff of the legends, if you ask me. Reprimands from the grown ups, who seemed to age much faster during vacations, brought forth stricter rules: "two pitch" catches were legalized, getting beaten only twice meant giving up the bat to the next guy or, gasp, even having an umpire, at the expense of a fielder, to adjudicate catches and thus eliminate noisy arguments. Fuming and cursing under the breath were still allowed though. Each innings lasted but a few balls and scores were more soccer than cricket. Armed with nothing more than passion for the game, we could make the ball talk and our elders yell.

Being the good ambassadors of the game, we carried forth this tradition to the distant lands that academic and professional pursuits carried us to. In grad school, entire indoor tennis courts were conquered by fine Indian gentlemen of athletic persuasions, who undid the nets and got a game of cricket going in no time. Reason: rains. We once had a friend crash through the French window in our apartment, trying to take a particularly difficult catch. You know who you are! We later argued ourselves out of paying for the replacement, citing a long pending repair work that the management hadn't completed in our apartment. They finally relented. But the point is, we got an important breakthrough in the game, if you will excuse the punnage.

But the ultimate gesture was what happened in a certain apartment complex in Fremont, CA in the summer of 2005. On a Friday night. Or, if you are detail oriented, 3AM on a Saturday morning. In acknowledgement of the impending weekend, K, B, S and myself had a few beers and watched a late movie. Still left with some more energy to expend, we struck upon the brilliant idea of, well, a game of indoor cricket. Mind you, 3 of the four people that played that night, including yours truly, posed as responsible professionals during the day. And the fourth one was actively looking for gainful employment. But I digress. We fished out a cricket bat from the deeper recesses of a car trunk. A couple of tennis balls were located and a game was underway in our second floor living room with most of the stringent rules in place.

Wood being the primary building material of choice across much of continental USA, the exertions of four fine specimens of the species gave rise to loud thuds and the vibrations carried through to the apartment below. Translation: the living room lighting fixture in the house below came loose and crashed. We could hear the crash and decided in favor of bringing the game to a halt. The heavy silence that ensued was soon broken by knocks on our door. Not loud banging but soft knocks. That was all the prompting that I needed. I was positioned as the point fielder by the window when I heard the knocks and in a show of extreme athleticism (and friendship), I dove into my comforter that lay in one corner of the living room and pretended to be fast asleep. Never mind the rivulets of sweat streaking across my face or the heavy breathing. If push came to shove, I could explain it away as having a nightmare of a stranger knocking on the door in the night.Well, early morning, if you insist. Just before I shut my eyes, I noticed that S had seen the merit in my course of action and had followed suit, taking refuge in his comforter at long-on, over by the other corner.

K-man and B had the bat and the ball in their hands respectively. Oh, and a knife stuck firmly in their backs too. Nowhere to hide, they both opened the door. I tensed up under the comforter, expecting to hear a few curse words casting aspersions on their lineage up to, at least, 3 generations before, a few dull thuds or even the clicking of a 9mm. Instead, I heard a male voice, with a heavy North Indian accent. (Imagine teknolawjee (technology), masheen (machine), peepal(people)). The voice introduced it's owner, who had stepped in to the living room, as someone working for Cisco and that he perfectly understood that we were young guys trying to have fun on a Friday night. OK, may be he was too sleepy to notice the time or the date. He was really OK with it. But since the light fixture had come crashing down, he wondered if we could henceforth stop playing cricket after, um, midnight. He then enquired about our interest for the sport and, I'm not making this up, offered to meet us up for lunch and also play some cricket, of the outdoor variety, of course, when we had time. With that, he walked away to resume his sleep or start cleaning up. Am I proud of our actions that night? Hell no. But that single moment was testimony to the power of one-pitch cricket to win people over and turn a tense situation on its head. And the fact that we could get away with even murder in the midst of a tense game.

Cut back to last Saturday. Thankfully we didn't repeat any of my childhood exploits and the general peace of the neighborhood wasn't shattered significantly. Collateral damage was limited to spoiled siestas. Our worst crime that day could be browbeating a few kids, with aspirations of playing a game of basketball on the badminton court, to go elsewhere. Those sulking kids walked away, probably to fiddle with their play stations. When we finished our last game, totally spent and drenched, it appeared as if time had frozen over. Those 60 minutes had worked wonders at many levels, reaffirming that there is joy to be had in small things. I relished every moment, one pitch at a time.