That’s not Cricket!
Hearing about the cricketing exploits of our folks brought back some fond memories. When you enter IIT, there was this rule (is it still there?) that you had to participate in sports of some kind, or you will have the privilege of NCC. NCC isn’t much fun if you are not the disciplined kind who can make it to Saturday (early!) morning drills and such. Needless to add, NCC was to avoided, by qualifying for some sport.
I was a “rubber ball” cricket player in school; even tennis balls were costly in India at that time, so we had to make do with rubber balls. It is a lot safer (and that is not just for the players!) than cricket balls, but doens’t do you much good when it comes to play “real” cricket.
With that background, I still decided to try my luck in the cricket selection process. I figured I had nothing to lose. Cricket attracted a lot of students, most of them way better than I was. As I watched the selection process go on, I wasn’t even sure I should put my hat in the ring. Batsman after batsman went in and were showing off their stuff, and I was standing there thinking “No way can I face that kind of a ball”. The bowlers were so fast, I realized I had no hope whatsoever as a batsman (or as a bowler for that matter!), and was resigning myself to the inevitability of NCC.
As the day wore on, the crowd thinned. People got selected, or they tried their luck and didn’t make it and left. Most of the rejects were way better than me, so I couldn’t muster enough courage to even ask for a chance yet, knowing it would be instant death for my hopes.
Towards the very end, the captain of the IIT team, who was doing the selecting, announced “We are really short of leg spinners. Any spinners here?”. There were off-spinners plenty, but they didn’t consider themselves ready for the vagaries of leg spin. There were no takers. That is when I stepped forward and announced myself as a leg spinner. The captain gave me the ball.
I delivered the first ball OK, but there was no spin, off spin or leg spin, to be had. It was a slow delivery, but then that was all I knew how to bowl. I knew enough to at least bowl at the right length. Then the second ball was delivered a little short, and miraculously for me, the batsman attemped something big, and the ball hit the stumps. The captain said “That is good, you are in”. I wasn’t very sure if the ball had spun at all, but then it was getting dark, and the captain had to wrap things up.
I wasn’t much good to the team - in fact, the Captain realized within a couple of weeks how good a spinner I was, so I was relegated to stand near the boundary and watch the proceeding as my team mates practiced. I would often just slip away or not show up at all, saving them the agony of having to endure my bowling. Worked out well for both sides, I am guessing, because I never heard a complaint about not showing up for practice!