He paused as if to relive his childhood in the nostalgia of his old times.

“But the icing on the cake of their long stays was provided by the snacks that my grandma was wont to serve in the afternoons, which she never prepared in the normal course; wasn’t her son-in-law a privileged person being her daughter’s husband?” he said on resumption. “Well it was my dad who introduced me to carom in later days and I followed him with the so-called scissors strike, which might puzzle your opponent when you are in form but could frustrate your partner when you are off color. When I took to cricket in my school final and bowled for the first time, the batsman realized I was a born leg spinner and that the googly could be a few false steps away. Didn’t Bradman opine that leg spin is the most difficult to master for any bowler, and when done, it would turn out to be the most difficult ball for any batsman to handle? Whatever, thanks to my youthful distractions, I didn’t work to build on my natural ability to make a mark in the cricket world, and if not, who knows my name would’ve been taken in the same breath as Warne and Chandrasekhar; but being born in the latter’s era, when cricket was not a fetching proposition, it could have been a hand-to-mouth existence for me as well. But Muralitharan the smiling off spin assassin has been my eternal favorite, how anxiously I got glued to the TV set for his 800th wicket; it was another matter that a wicket more or a wicket less wouldn’t have made any difference to his stature, but then on the badge of honor, statistics have their own corner.”

“Isn’t it silly that cricket has become a religion with Sachin as its Godhead?”

“Maybe for those ‘score kya hai’ guys, whose knowledge of the game borders on zero while their interest in the game is limited to India’s win, and that reminds me of a cricketing joke of our days,” he said turning mirthful. “The naughty answer to a novice enquiry about the filed position in a cricket match was that there was ‘no cover, no extra cover, there is just a deep gully between two fine legs’, and my uncle couldn’t cal it foul when I told him about it. Why, in later years, I used to drag him to our stag parties though he was a teetotaler, and whenever the party jokes turned bawdy he was wont to cry foul; how charming he was in that ‘naughty umpire’ role. But he was not all that charming when it came to my auntie’s socializing, why he had indeed confined her all through to the four walls of their house. But when he began grumbling in the later years that she was good for nothing, I told him he was committing a foul; not having let her out in her prime time lest someone should ogle at her, that he felt secure for her lost appeal, how could he expect her to change the tack; well he allowed me to take such liberties with him.”




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