Some Cricketing Memories...

Sachin Tendulkar's 93 and 70 has brought a smile back on every indian face. Last 3 1/2 years I didnt miss much cricket because his form and fitness had gone downhill ever since. And though Arun Hari wrote about our sporting interests I thought of some cricketing memories that were worth penning down. When we played a good team in college most of us were reduced to bits-and-pieces cricketers but playing against ourselves on the medicos grounds or against average teams we totally trannsformed into the Cyber Tigers that we gave as the name of our team. Sometimes we played like 10 10-over matches at a stretch on a single day...and those days happened quite often in a college were we encouraged student leaders to call a strike for the most craziest reasons like a new mohanlal film releasing or sometimes for no reason at all. Still remember a strike called in CET where a senior let loose water from the tank and the guys called a strike for water-shortage!!!

The medicos basketball court surrounded by trees and overgrown plants and wild grass was our home-ground. We would travel on bikes and arrive at viswan's house...take his bat, grab water-tumblers, caps, he would put on his sun-glasses gotten free from buying boost(he claims they were ray-ban though) and we would arrive with a lot of hullabaloo and a feeling of great self-importance at the ground. The fighting starts from the moment the teams are selected, Viswan more often than not unhappy with the team he himself wuz involved in selecting, moving over to the toss, a quarrel whether the toss went heads or tails, to a fight inside the batting team on the batting order...chaos, chaos all the way. But then I guess we were all so spirited and ethusiastic, and did it all in good fun. The fall-guy wuz always the umpire who had to be from the batting team...a decision he made could never be good or bad completely. If he gave a batsman out or ruled a run against his own team...the choicest abuse in malayalam wud be hurled at times at him, if he ruled against the fielding side he risked getting beaten up...but then the funny thing wuz at the end of every match whatever happened it wuznt odd to see one man, looking sour and complaining how his team-mates underperformed and very seriously planning his strategy for the next match...he took a loss so seriously he would listen with sharpened ears to everything the rival-team said, hoping to glean their gameplan - that is if there were any in the first place.

Once I remember after a game, everybody else was resting but not Viswan - he wanted to fine-tune his bowling and told me to take guard...i hit a huge straight-six which landed on the terrace of the men's hostel and he sportingly went to get it. When he returned I wuz surprised that he still wanted to bowl and to even my own surprise I hit another six to the same terrace. Now Viswan wuz mad, he wouldnt get the ball and forced me to go. From the terrace, I threw the ball back and headed down. On the way down wuz met by a irritated yet gleeful Arun Hari. Viswan had forced him to take guard disrupting his rest and he too hit a six to the same place!!! Another time, we started playing at 10 in the morning...and after sometime two souls...totally disoriented arrived shakily on a bike, shan and anoop. A little into the game, anoop's shoulder dislocated when he fielded carelessly, we rushed him to medical college, where the doctor said..."njanum vellamadikkum, but raavile 10 manikkadikkunna oruthane njan aadyamaayitte kaanuva". Anoop in unbearable pain shouts out, "Panna *@$%*!# mone, vaachakam adikkaathe ente kai sheriyakkada"!!! We thought he wuz in for it, but the doc was thankfully a jolly, young fellow. And then chakka shouted at shan saying "Nee, kaaranam alle avanithe pattiyathu" and to our utter surprise, Shan the then-ruffian broke out inconsolably into tears...it took us a lot to comfort him that day, even to this day we make fun of his sensitive side which got revealed many times since that day. Then there wuz this incident which became part of our folklore...one day viswan was so woefully out of touch with the bat, that even after a hard day's play he made ken bowl at him for close to an hour to regain his technique. Oh! those were the good days.

So many more incidents like this...like Kevin unarguably our best player, who we joked, would bowl,then run to get the ball where the batsman hit it, even if one of us lazy souls were close to it, in case it got lost in the kuttikaadu he wud find it, aim at the stumps and more often than not knock it down...he made up for the slackness his teammates displayed and always inspired us to match him. But then, Viswan would wonder why even the Kevin magic failed to work when he had him in his team. But as a captain, viswan was a player's dream...he would buy us juice and sambharam to energise us in between a tournament or even our internal medicos games so that we wud win him a game. Dont think we'll all ever have the time or the numbers to play a game again...but those cricket matches, will always remain among the best memories we took out of college.

P.S - Snap - 1 : Our Eden Gardens - Medicos ground
Snap - 2 : Ball Lost!!!
Snap - 3 : A Kodak Moment - Viswan's legendary mischeivious smile caught on camera!!!