Butterfingers

As a consequence of having some free time on my hands, I have been watching cricket - India's tour of Bangladesh and now England. It is a little strange because I stopped following cricket once I finished high school, barring a brief period during the 2003 World Cup. Some of my old enthusiasm for the game has returned, though no doubt it will disappear again once I return to the US, and it has also brought back memories of a time when I did play a bit of gully cricket myself.

Like all normal people, I used to play a bit of cricket in backyards and gullies. Even though I was never good at it, us Indians are so cricket crazy that you cannot avoid living without playing cricket. And so, by the time I neared high school, we were playing cricket in community sports grounds. I quickly developed a reputation for needing a by-runner within a few minutes at the crease - I'm not the athletic type and get tired quickly! And an even bigger reputation for having butterfingers. I was decent at catching flat balls... but whenever the batsman skied the ball, it would pop out of my hands when I tried to catch it. After that there is a 50% probability of me getting hands on it again before it hits the ground... and if I do, there is a 50% chance of it popping out again, and so on! Go ahead, picture it and laugh. I don't mind :)

In my whole five years of college in Chennai I only played cricket once, choosing instead the simpler sports of volleyball and roller skating. But that one time I played, I executed a couple of stylish cover drives that earned me a comment from the bowler, "Looks like we have a regular Rahul Dravid on our hands." Was that genuine or sarcastic, you ask? Well, you see, we were short of space as well as players, so we were playing with only an on-side. Five feet from the stumps on the off-side was the wall that collected all my cover drives!

These days of course, the only "sport" that occupies me is bridge... and perhaps a bit of ice skating. I will be flying back this week so my blog may be a little quiet for a while. But I promise to use my flying time to think of a new short story for the blog!

Cheers,
Prashanth.