Cricket, lovely cricket

Cricket is perhaps the most visible relic of the British empire in the Indian subcontinent. Little could the white sahibs of the East India Company have imagined that the game they introduced to their subjects, probably to amuse themselves during weekends and holidays, would one day become a passion of epic proportions with the native population. Cricket madness spares nobody, it seems, cutting across social and cultural barriers.

As a former cricketer with a keen interest in what makes the other three-quarters of the world tick, I sometimes interact with achievers in other walks of life, including the performing arts. Even as I am constantly looking for greater insights into the psyche and work habits, not to mention the home and social backgrounds, of my subjects, they invariably divert the conversation to cricket. Thanks to the likes of the Channel Nine team, Geoffrey Boycott, Sunil Gavaskar, Harsha Bhogle, Ravi Shastri and Navjot Sidhu, their knowledge of the game is quite prodigious. I may be seeking illumination on matters relating to the nuances of classical music, but all I will get to discuss is the aerodynamics of reverse swing or the relative merits of Steve Waugh, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne and Subhash Gupte, Gundappa Viswanath and Sunil Gavaskar.

Recent writings on Indian cricket, especially by western, mainly British, writers, focus on the frenetic ardour with which our cricketcrazy millions follow the fortunes of our Test and one-day stars. This is thanks largely to the huge role played by television and the cola giants in propagating the game as it is played today - high fives, electronic gadgetry, action replays, coloured clothing and all. What these post-modern analysts may not know is that the Indian love of cricket was not always confined to merely hero-worshipping superstars.

The cricket fever was of a different intensity when I was growing up in the sleepy Madras of the 1950s. No doubt a Madras Test was an exciting adventure, demanding much advance planning, right from the buying of season tickets to queuing up bedroll in hand the night before the match outside Corporation Stadium or Chepauk. But cricket was not all about Test matches. In our suburban neighbourhood, for instance, life revolved around cricket, just as I am sure it did for countless other children in other parts of the city. In a family of cricketers, as mine was, all adult discussions seemed to centre around cricket, as indeed all our juvenile duels and pitched battles.

Other than bat and ball, charcoal stumps drawn on compound walls were the only accessories we needed. Across the street, we had a huge playground to ourselves for years before Madras became the vast concrete jungle that it is today.The wicket on our ground was a beauty, levelled by innumerable humans and cattle using it as a short cut between two streets. The lush outfield was manicured by grazing buffaloes. When it rained, the hoofmarks of the buffaloes on wet soil hardened into dangerous ridges from which the ball reared up steeply, challenging the technique and courage of barefoot batsmen, and transforming our military medium-pacers into demon fast bowlers. Batting then became largely a matter of survival of the luckiest. On this ground, we played the first matches of our lives.

Everywhere else in Madras there were countless such private grounds, which the cricketers simply entered one day and occupied, so to speak. Until the Rip Van Winkle who owned the plot woke up suddenly to build his dream house, shattering the dreams of many prospective Prasannas and Venkataraghavans, Pataudis and Bordes. But the dreams were resumed in glorious technicolour as soon as the intrepid young cricket warriors conquered their next new territory. Informal or 'sign' matches were played almost throughout the year. A 'sign' match was one at the end of which the losing captain affixed his signature to a written statement on the outcome of the match, attested by the two umpires and the rival captain. It was the ultimate humiliation.

Those who did not have easy access to open grounds made do with quiet streets and alcoves or residential compounds, or even the corridors and halls of their homes, much to the chagrin of their elders. Cricket did not stop even in the classroom, where boys played book cricket by opening pages at random and affixing runs or dismissals to the two imaginary batsmen; they could be Mankad and Roy in one generation and Gavaskar and Viswanath the next. If, for example, you opened page 54, the second digit was the reference point for keeping score, and the batsman got four runs (or two, under a different set of rules). If the page number ended in a zero, the batsman was declared out and so on.

In my extended family, we invented our own brand of home cricket, an ingenious adaptation of the bagatelle board in which we gave cricket values to the various points on the board. 150 was six runs, 125 was four, LTP was bowled, 75 was two runs, 90 three. We had different positions for different kinds of dismissals - caught, lbw, stumped, run out, even hit wicket. A skilful player, experienced in steering the little steel ball bearings we used for marbles, could score 300-400 runs, if he held his nerve. It gave you perverse pleasure to make Laker and Lock or Desai and Surendranath score centuries after the top order had failed.

A Test match in which maybe four participants took turns to play the two innings of the match could easily take all day. During summer vacations, nothing, not even Monopoly could be a better way of spending your days. This is the kind of cricket madness most of us growing up in the Madras of the 50s and 60s carried with us when we stepped into adulthood to play or devotedly watch league cricket.

I listened to John Arlott and Johnny Moyes, Pearson Surita and Berry Sarbadhikari; I read Fingleton and Gurunathan; I took rickshaw rides all the way to Corporation Stadium to watch Test cricket; I started my own cricket career as a member of the school junior team. Like many other boys of my generation, I knew no life outside cricket as I approached my teen years. It was the perfect life.