Cricket

R #3
Growing up in India is difficult if you’re a boy and have no interest in cricket, or football, or any of the other sports involving running after balls. I would read a novel when others played cricket at school, or sit and chat with one of the goalkeepers when they played football. Despite trying to keep away from it, the cricket ball has always had an affinity for my face for some reason. Of course my own clumsiness with the ball, bad reflexes, bad hand-eye coordination, and the associated nervousness of demonstrating all these when a ball comes flying at me, would have together contributed to the predicament. In fact I still tremble when I pass by kids playing with a ball. It might come towards me, and even if it isn’t flying at my face, I might have to pick it, throw it or kick it.

Despite, my distaste for the game, I’d read the sports section of the newspaper, just to be able to participate in conversations. My family knew I had zero interest, so did my classmates, and the kids in the neighbourhood, but one does come across other people and doesn’t need to be the focus of this-boy-doesn’t-like-cricket amazement. Particularly when one is an introvert.

When I moved to Germany, people often would tell me, “Ah, you’re from India; please explain to me why you find cricket interesting—nothing happens there, and the game goes on for days and are yet called ‘tests’.”

Initially, I would defend the game, but then I asked myself, the big question: why? Why in Germany of all places, far away from my cricket-crazy nation? So I’d just agree with them and get rid of the topic itself. Yes, I did have to watch football a bit. It at least involves watching fit sweaty men in shorts running around the field. And sausages and alcohol.

And yes, one has come a full circle from childhood. While my straight contemporaries are content watching other people running after a ball on television. I do run after balls these days, the human kind.

28 Jun 2016