Testing, testing…

Thy career shalt be doomed

If thou is 21

And thy still fight for a place in your college or league 15

- "Mark" thou words for posterity

That is from the old testament of cricket

Well, if we are to go by the scriptures of the old testament of cricket then what do I do ? I am more than 21, can’t I play the great game of cricket ?

The answer to this question are those various gully cricket leagues and the corporate cricket tournaments. While the gully is the answer to the seasoned book cricketer, the corporate league is for those who were wannabe’s. The ones who pissed on to their left thigh inners, trying to imitate that Kapil Dev’s poster without minding the moment, those who were called “poor spastic kids” for they aped Krish Srikanth’s oral fixation, those who invited a hunch for they could walk-in from deep point like an Azza or those who chewed gum like there was no tomorrow and walked with a swagger which made that drunken uncle next door look pretty, for they wanted to be seen as Sir Ian Vivian Alexander.

These are exactly the ones who take the corporate cricket seriously, the ones who manage to wake-up, wake-up despite a watery night. And drive / ride down for a game of cricket. But if we wanted only these guys to play corporate cricket then we wouldn’t have a eleven. To fill a team we would also need those who only played cricket of the mouth, book, mind, tongue, and also the wannabe’s.

I belonged to one of these categories and so did our protagonist. The corporate Chennaite would be familiar with the Bluestar and the Bluesky tournaments. This was a Bluestar tournament before it lost its sheen. And our man was a leggie, known in our office cricket circles more not as a cricketer but as someone who was a classmate (if I am not wrong or at least a batchmate) of a (former?!!) India cricketer. A spinner again, left arm but. His name being, Murali Kartik.

This particular match happened on the RK Mutt School Grounds, in T Nagar, Chennai. Our protagonist walks post putting on the pads the 8th man had left to dry. He was facing an offie who had been the most potent of bowlers in the match.

The offie, decided that he would try one of his special variations for our leggie. It was a floater, which was on air for a while more than how long those Biman Air flights would. Our man was, for whatever reasons heavily influenced by Sanjay Manjrekar that day. He had to leave the ball by itself, “Well left” as they would call.

He never realized that it was a rather straight ball, a dart on his middle stumps. He had anyway decided to leave. Being a right handed bat, he decided to get his right leg right parallel to the crease and his left leg. Yes, facing the bowler and the ball as if he were challenging the ball “I am the man, what the &^*@ do you…”

The ball darted in as if it were focusing on a triangular plastic target hidden inside a cotton trouser clad fork. And it landed, right in the middle of the box. It was one of the most agonizing slow motion “shots” I have ever seen in my life. I saw our man being floored, so slow that I could see his sleeves dusting the floor and his bat hitting the ground toe first.

It took all of 15 minutes for us to resuscitate him, of course sans a MTM for to his luck the girls in office failed us this particular day.

When he did stand up, he seemed like vehicle with a bent fork. Many in the team thought it was a permanent disability. So when the match did get over, some of the good folks managed to hit the old book stores of Triplicane, buying some old issues of Fun & Fantasy, Erotica and the odd Playboy's and Penthouse. The others went straight to Parry’s corner in search of movies that carried a public rating of 3 of the 24th letter in capitals.

We gifted the books and the CD / DVD’s to him asking him to test himself. For, introspection is the best test before you decided to prove your manhood to the world.

If you enjoyed someone enjoying a book / CD test then you must enjoy this…