Cricket, a game that I have loved ever since I can remember. The earliest memories of my childhood are related to playing cricket. Playing the game with a plastic bat and then by age 4 quickly graduating to a wooden bat. In fact, there was an occasion when, due to a miscommunication, both my parents ended up buying me a cricket bat each on the same day. Of course that was a happy miscommunication.
There are too many memories associated to cricket. Stories of celebrating an off day at school with cricket, coming back from embarrassing bowling performances by focusing on fitness and skill development, my insecurity coming to the fore and running away from a University Tournament, observation of leadership by cricket team captains and much more. But nothing beats the sheer joy of playing the game.
But what I have noticed is that what started as a love without reason has now reached a stage where I try to explain or maybe justify my love with reasons. I am not sure if it is a good idea to do that. Let me explain a specific instance. I once came up with the following reason to love cricket. In cricket, the tradition was for the umpire to ask the fielder whether the ball had bounced in front or behind the boundary rope; which determines whether to add 4 runs or 6 runs to the total of the opponent. Or the umpire can ask the fielder whether his body touched the rope at the time of making the contact with the ball or not. Again, the implication is how many runs to be added to the opponent's total. In both cases, the umpire goes with the word of the fielder when the fielder has a clear incentive to lie. Such a practice can be expected to give fair results only in an environment where a culture of integrity is valued and practiced by everyone; at the very least, a very very large majority. I keep coming up with reasons like this to explain the love for the game, a love that I have had since I was 4 or 5 and using reasons that would not have been appreciated by me until I was 12 or 13 even if were an extremely precocious child (which I was not sadly).
Love leads to discovery. And as we discover more, our love grows stronger.
There are too many memories associated to cricket. Stories of celebrating an off day at school with cricket, coming back from embarrassing bowling performances by focusing on fitness and skill development, my insecurity coming to the fore and running away from a University Tournament, observation of leadership by cricket team captains and much more. But nothing beats the sheer joy of playing the game.
But what I have noticed is that what started as a love without reason has now reached a stage where I try to explain or maybe justify my love with reasons. I am not sure if it is a good idea to do that. Let me explain a specific instance. I once came up with the following reason to love cricket. In cricket, the tradition was for the umpire to ask the fielder whether the ball had bounced in front or behind the boundary rope; which determines whether to add 4 runs or 6 runs to the total of the opponent. Or the umpire can ask the fielder whether his body touched the rope at the time of making the contact with the ball or not. Again, the implication is how many runs to be added to the opponent's total. In both cases, the umpire goes with the word of the fielder when the fielder has a clear incentive to lie. Such a practice can be expected to give fair results only in an environment where a culture of integrity is valued and practiced by everyone; at the very least, a very very large majority. I keep coming up with reasons like this to explain the love for the game, a love that I have had since I was 4 or 5 and using reasons that would not have been appreciated by me until I was 12 or 13 even if were an extremely precocious child (which I was not sadly).
Love leads to discovery. And as we discover more, our love grows stronger.
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