The last time I played for my club team Students Jr CC (now renamed as Writer Ramaswamy memorial CC) in December (in Salem, TN: http://salemdca.com/), I looked at each of the team members from a non-cricketing perspective. We had just won the second division trophy last year and had got promoted to first division and were playing the first match. We are all amateurs with a great interests in 'playing' the sport and some of them having immense talent.
When we are in the ground we rarely talk about non-cricketing things. So when I found that our opener was complaining something to our team's one down batsman, about some non-cricketing problems, I started realizing that we were in fact in a completely different world away from the identifications that we have in the outside world.
opener (a lorry driver): See, these policemen keep bugging us around. What do you suggest on keeping them friendly?
1 down bat(a Police constable, with a smile): If you treat him (with cash!), Police is your friend
The ball-game in amateur cricketers is quite interesting. The hands which were till the day before (or sometimes minutes before) were wresting a lathi, a computer keyboard or a lorry gear, suddenly starts doing magic with the bat and ball. The game here is not the leisurely tennis ball cricket with rules framed by ourselves, but the cricket which produces the multi-millionares of the countries (read: Indian cricket team members) who play among these amateurs to raise their levels.
There's quite a different world of cricket in the states and districts quite far away from the IPLs and ODIs that the general public in India these days are interested in. I will try to throw a glimpse or two on this alien world in this blog sometime later.
Our team:
No comments:
Post a Comment