Yester Years Revisited

As many of my friends know, Cricket has been my all time favorite sport. Given a chance, I would love to play it rather than watching. I’ve missed watching quite a few great encounters because of playing; few to name are Independence Cup 3rd final in Dhaka (India-Pak) and Rahul-Sourav Tauntan “Run Feast” during world cup 1999 against Sri Lanka.

I’ve done few crazy things too to play the game e.g. turning all of the clocks and watches of my home 30 minutes faster (except of my father’s, he is such a cool gentleman that he’d have never minded and he was always to my rescue when mom get fierce over me on over playing, may be the sportsman inside him is much closer to me), riding a by-cycle to reach to play a tournament, which was held 25 KM away from my home and I was unable to grab the bike keys from mom, keeping all my stinking shocks outside my house in the lawn away from my mom’s eyes, keeping my playing kits and gear away from home and wearing it unwashed for almost a month, spending all mine and bro’s pocket money on buying my sports gears (I cannot pay back your debt bro, you are a gem), all those superstitions on match days and many more like this .

Today after a long time I took the field again which reminded me of my yester years. Thou this was not as passionate as it used to be. I thought that it’ll be a better way to reduce my growing paunch. Anyways, no one in the field today had ever seen me playing, so they hardly knew how good or bad player I’m and how affectionate I’m about it. Also I’m a better player of leather ball. That does not mean I’m bad in time-pass tennis ball.

During the weekends all the cricket crazy species flaunts their talent in the parks available to their neighborhood, the parks, grounds are jam-packed and you’ll find many-a-teams playing diagonally, perpendicularly and in all sorts of mathematical definitions possible on two dimensional boards

Waking up early in the morning has never been a big deal for me. I still wake up at 7 AM - 7:30 regularly, which is supposed to be early given the IT professional’s standards. So I woke up early today around 5:45 AM and drove to my nearest park at around 6 AM. I found few of my mates playing in the park and joined them to showcase my talent; thou I got a little chance to do so because of too many players playing a side leave too less for an individual. But I’ve got a chance to meet few of my good friends, who do live just few apartments away from mine, but we hardly get time to meet. Also we (8 or 9 of us) quenched 19 glasses of “Shikanji”, an Indian classical refresher, after the play was over as our bodies were running out of water. The poor chap owning the Shikanji Stall had hard times fulfilling our demands. Today it was less draining as it was relatively cool morning and cloudy one too.

Coming back to my hobby-horse, cricket I mean. It was nice to see I can still hold the bat firmly, I can middle it, I can play few shots but the only point of concern was stamina, I found my agility missing, which is the aftermath of working for an IT software firm. Tomorrow again I’ve planned to play as it is Sunday and to showcase my other aspects of the game as well.

I’ve been regular in writing my blogs these days (touchwood). There is so much going inside my puzzled, baffled, confused, befuddled and sometimes tolerant brain, I need some place to store them all and clear my head ;-). It’s time to move in front of TV. Kings XI Punjab has clinched an enticing victory over The Deccan Chargers, Hyderabad. Now the battle between the last year’s finalists has begun (RR: 42/1 7.1 Overs).

“Akhil”