Was that a Six?

Last evening I again, left my cell phone at work. And this time one my friends actually posted on Facebook that I was dead, since I didn't pick up his call for half a dozen times. I had to email him saying I was indeed alive. And why did he call me? Just like that. Not to worry, I am not going to write about it today. At least, not so soon.

If you ask any Indian guy about what the British did for India. His face would lighten up like the sun and the response, even before the question is over, would be cricket. If you ask an Indian girl the same question, she would frown and curse them for taking the Kohinoor diamond. If you ask me, I would say the Indian Railways. Good things never last, they say. Its true, as Laloo Prasad Yadav is going to be in charge of it now. Which means, he would make sure he swindles more money to buy white hair dye.

Cricket has a long history. It was played in England as early as the 16th century. This is how I think it would have started. Two kids who were bored, probably saw a wooden plank lying around. One kid threw a stone and the other would have whacked it. They liked what they were doing and kept playing. Soon the other kids wanted to join, but there was only one plank. So they were made to stand around the kid with the plank and fetch the stones hit towards them. Some were injured in the process and they started using balls instead. 

Me and sports are sort of distant. Same as the Sun and the Earth. The only cricket match I try to watch is India vs Pakistan. But just the second half since I feel in the first half the team has no goal and just play aimlessly. I don't even want to start with test matches. Which other game do you know lasts for five days? Five days? Again, FIVE DAYS? If I had to chose between watching a Test Match or driving a Corolla, I'd choose the former.

The other weekend, God decided to show some mercy to us Chicagoans and raised the thermostat to about 55F. My friends wanted to make use of the rare opportunity and decided to play cricket. As there was no Corolla around I decided to join them. We are not talking full fledged cricket here, since we were short on equipments. For example, we didn't have a bat to begin with. So we had to invite one boring person since he had one. And another for the stumps. And he forgot.

We were going to play in a tennis court, which meant we weren't going to drill a hole to put in the sticks. A laptop box volunteered to be the stumps. We used a tennis ball instead of a cork for obvious reasons. The laptop box didn't have a laptop in it, so it kept flying every time the batsman breathed.

It was my turn to bowl. Somehow I managed to knock out the umpire. I mean, the last I played cricket was more than a decade back. I slowed down and this time the ball stopped even before it got to the batsman. The third was a wide, widest you can ever imagine. The fourth ball was right on. And so was the batsman. It went for a six. Repeat and rinse for fifth and the sixth ball. Batting is any day more fun. There were no surprises here. I swung like Tendulkar did. And missed like I normally do. 

I thought fielding is the easiest thing one can do on the face of the earth. It wasn't. I was ready to pass out after three hours. We played three matches and our team lost every single one. All though I must say I did hit a boundary. Unfortunately it was the bat that made it.