The trophy would be a 2 rupee coin or two coins of 1 rupee,
each contributed by the two teams. The venue – around the walnut trees along the
banks of Romush, a tributary of Jehlum. The stumps – twigs from the nearby
poplar or willow trees – three on the batting end and bowling one (or none) on
the bowling end. For that matter we would never change sides at the end of
overs. The balls – green, yellow, red or white plastic balls which we would
call as ‘tennis’ ball. The red one was preferred as it was easy to find it out
if ever it went into the bushes. And the name, brand of these ‘tennis’ balls
was, usually, SKumar and this name
was as preferred as SG or Kookaburra in international cricket. For practice
purposes we would, sometimes, use a stuffed ball - moaz ball - made up of old shreds of cloth stuffed into a sock! Yes,
the sock was washed before being put into use, I guess! The seniors would tell
me that if I could play the moaz ball
well I could well play the leather ball. We used to get the leather ball – for ‘leather
ball matches’ – from the village ‘A-team’ after they had played a couple of
matches with that. We would play matches with the same ball for the whole
season or until the seam of the ball ripped apart!
There would be a list of clauses which had to be verbally signed by the two
teams before the toss – the toss in which no coins were tossed but a bat was,
the choice being sadak & pahad instead of head and tail. The clauses
included – whether or not ‘wides’ would be counted in the score, if a stumping
would count as a wicket or not, who takes responsibility if the ball gets lost
or rips apart during the play, what if a shot got intercepted by a branch or
trunk of a walnut tree, whether or not the batsman would be deemed out if he
hit the ball into a neighbour’s courtyard and who, in such a case, would have
to make up the courage to bring the ball back!
All clauses signed, the match would begin. No scoreboards,
for that matter no scorebooks, not even a piece of paper to jot down the runs! Both
the teams would keep track of the score on their own and in case of any
conflict, the players would have to give hisaab
– details of every ball bowled – as if it was the judgement day! //…then there
was a wide, then a single, then a four, then a dot ball, then a single; but he
didn’t complete the single on the last ball; oh sorry! I’ll deduct that run// Run-outs
would be the most controversial ones and more often than not the umpire would straight
away rule a batsman not out (the umpire was always from the batting side!). The
batsman on his part would show the mark of his bat’s landing in the crease as
proof enough that he was ‘in’ when the ball hit the stumps (or the clay brick
substituted for stumps, at the non-strikers end)! There were rarely any bails
on the stumps and sometimes the ball would go in between two stumps without
even disturbing the stumps – again controversial!
If the batsman ever hit the ball into the Romush and if it
was agreed upon that it won’t count as ‘out’, he would get 6 runs and start heaping praises
upon….not himself but upon Shahid Afridi! “This is Afridi playing, mate!”,
would be a typical brag (sic). I personally would never say such a thing. Partly
because I would never hit such big shots – I was more like Dravid (and people
would call me so!) being content with not-so-big shots, partly because I believed
in being myself (without attributing my shots to any other player) and partly (or
should I say hugely) because I was an ‘Indian’ and I could not say, “This is
Jadeja playing ,mate!” lest I make a laughing stock of myself among all others
who were (and are ‘Pakistanis’)! The bowlers had their own patrons – Shoaib Akhtar
for example.
At times when we would play with the leather ball – the
rugged one which we got from the village ‘A-team’ – it would be much more
engaging. It was as if we were graduating from domestic cricket to
international cricket. This is where the classification of bats would set in –
there would be a ‘leather ball bat’ and a ‘tennis ball bat’! Common sense would
dictate that we could play the tennis ball with a ‘leather ball bat’ as a
tennis ball was way lighter than a leather ball. But there were strict
instructions from the team management that the ‘leather ball bat’ should never
be used to play the tennis ball. The stated reason – the bat may lose its stroke! Stroke – it was defined as a
quality which only a few experienced players could analyse. If a batsman would
middle a shot perfectly and despatch it beyond the boundary or into the Romush
or onto the neighbour’s iron sheeted roof he would declare, “This bat has got a
very good stroke!” The same thing – stroke – would fit perfectly as an excuse
for those who failed with the bat!
To be concluded
.JPG)
