Part-1
Chapter -1
The mobile phone and cricket
Mobile phones weren’t part of our childhood in the village. When I turned 12, I saw a mobile phone for the first time in real life(the gen-z don\’t think I am a grandpa just because I am telling this truth – And don\’t ask me what I am doing when the world war II was happened – I’m 26 years old now, though officially, I\’m still 25.) Before mobile phones, only about 5% of the elite homes in our village had a landline phone with a spiral wire. The most popular mobile brand at that time was “Nokia,” and it was sent by one of my uncles from the Gulf. My friends and I played the Snake game on it. It was a shared phone for the whole family. Our relatives didn’t have their own phones, so we rarely called anyone except the uncle working in the Gulf.
When we played games, sometimes my grandma would come, and we’d run away. She didn’t like us using that precious device, worried that we might damage it and lose connection with her son who was working hard in the Gulf for the family. The irony is that no one in the family knows English or how to operate the phone. So, in the beginning, they always called me when they needed to use it(the compulsory rule was don\’t play games).
So, how did you spend your childhood without mobile phones and video games? For us, we teamed up with our friends after school and played cricket and football. I mainly played cricket back then. Gradually, I found peace in football after my teenage years.
The reason I’m mentioning this is because today, I’m going to talk about cricket. So, all football fans, bear with me for a moment. But I’ll have a positive comment for football by the end.
My village was made up of homes built on beaches by fishermen families. Over time, we became a close-knit community filled with real people and happiness. We didn’t have house names, only area names. In our certificates, we shared the same address as our friends from the area, which made us feel like we all came from the same home.
Every area had a cricket pitch made by the kids. We would roam around the village, from the ocean connecting us with other fishermen’s villages to the river, wells, and the arches we built on the beaches for shade. If someone found good mud, we’d all gather, mix it with water, and make our own pitches on the sand. It was a spontaneous team effort, led by the older kids. Then we’d play together. If someone skipped the activity without a good reason, they wouldn’t be allowed to play the first few games on the pitch. After preparing the pitch, we’d leave it to dry for two days.
Although cricket is a team game, sometimes it depended entirely on one player, whether for bowling or batting. That’s why, after each game, one person would be singled out for praise. Unlike football, where any player can be a hero from start to finish, in cricket, the game could hinge on a single player’s performance.
Like much of India, the kids in my village embraced cricket as an exciting and motivating game, so do I. I wanted to be a hero, just like everyone else. Only then would we receive praise, be treated well, and feel loved.
If you were a good player, you could make the girl you liked fall in love with you.
After school, we played cricket. On Saturdays and Sundays, we played cricket. Some mornings, we didn’t even eat. We’d wake up, brush our teeth, skip the bath and breakfast, head to the ground, set up the kit, and play until 2 PM. Then we’d come home, get beaten by our mothers, bathe, have lunch, and go back to playing cricket in the evening.
Some of us did our school homeworks before bed, but most of my friends didn’t. They dropped out of school after 10th or 12th grade. Some went to college, and only one friend and I made it to a master’s degree. But even so, most of them are earning more money than I am. And enjoying their life in my hometown and in different countries. Let me admit my jealousy😄
Chapter -2
The Personality Development Cricket Brings
Like I mentioned earlier, we had different areas with separate pitches. Each pitch had its own geographical quirks, made by different hands with different mud in unique shapes. No one knew how the ball would turn after the first pitch, except its own area kids.
Some pitches were close to the ocean, others were further away. Some were sloping towards the ocean, while others sloped away. And some pitches were even banned because kids hit old grandpas on the heads and noses with the ball while they were passing by on their way to the shore.
Jokes apart, one thing was certain: only the kids from a particular area understood their pitch. That’s why winning on another area’s pitch was considered winning a war among us. You will be treated like a warrior. The sense of acceptance from your peers back then was real, unlike my friends fleeting likes for my shitty posts on Instagram today.
Cricket was our social media, a way to make people admit that we are talented people. And it lasted longer than a corporate job appreciation from your boss. No one documented our cricket on a phone, but people saw it with their naked eyes.
The personality of all the cricketers of the beaches built by this validation. That\’s why all of them are searching for real values and happiness in their current lives. I barely see all those cricketers on social media seeking attention.
Chapter -3
The Different Balls and the Wind
The older boys in my area always won most of the matches against little us until we became teenagers. Then we realized the truth: they were afraid to play on other areas’ pitches. My friends and I broke that tradition by playing with kids from other areas.
We failed miserably at first. We couldn’t even score ten runs. They were using a tennis ball, shiny and covered in silky fibers, while we only played with cheap rubber balls, which were heavier and didn’t glide up on the wind like a tennis ball. Rubber balls have the ability to break the wind but not tennis balls. In the daytime, the wind always blew from the ocean to the land, so trying to hit towards it was foolish. You will only waste your energy and loose wickets. Thus, we made our first strategy: don’t always try to overpower nature. We observed how the other team played and realized they were aiming the ball with the wind. And we didn\’t know we were figuring out a very important life aspect through this. Six! We used their strategy, and there went our first six – that was an unforgettable winning game
Chapter -4
Speed of the Ball
(To be continued…)