The word “cricket” will help you a lot if you want to deal with Indians. British introduced it and Indians nurtured it with great love and passion. Cricket is part and parcel of life in India. In such a country where several languages, religions, castes and ethnic groups  coexist, cricket is one of the most important unifying factors.

Street Cricket

It’s a natural thing that happens to most of the kids in India. Kids acquire it so naturally, as if they knew this before they born. I enjoyed a lot by playing cricket in my childhood. Cricket gave me many sweet memories in my life. In my childhood (1980s) whole village is our play ground. As big grounds are occupied by adults, our hunger to play cricket converted every nook and corner into a play ground. Our play grounds are busy roads, small narrow lanes, back yards, front yards, verandas, flat-roofed houses…virtually anyplace where we can stand and hit the ball around. We didn’t have proper cricket kit in those days. Playing cricket was considered as waste of time by my parents in those days, so they never allowed us to buy a cricket kit. Amazingly, we never stopped playing cricket because of money issues. Money scarcity helped us to become more creative. We used to make our own wooden bats and stumps with the help of a local carpenter. The only thing we used to buy was ball. As the ball is made up with very hard cork, it used to last very long. No gloves, pads, box or helmet for protection from injuries. Injuries were common, the well-known treatment when ball hits any part of our body is to use cold water or rub the place hard and that’s it all gone and ready to play the next ball. To minimize injuries and money costs we also used to play with rubber balls and tennis balls. It was very common to see someone hitting the ball into waste water drainages. These drainages are very dirty and unhygienic. Well, game should not stop, so just close your eyes and nose take the ball out and give it a rinse and start the show again.

Chess Cricket

When our parents locked us inside the home to keep us away from playing cricket in the ground, we invented Chess cricket. As we used to play this type of cricket with chess pieces and glass marbles, we named it as chess cricket or potti cricket (small cricket). The rules of this game are very similar to real cricket. Player has to choose either white or black pieces of chess and hit the marble rolled on the floor by the opponent. Our invention of potti cricket has become so famous in our village. Happy with its huge success, we released the second version of “potti cricket”. In the version 2 we asked our carpenter to prepare a very small bat, a size of ring finger. This version was also become famous as more than two people can play in a larger area than the first version of “potti cricket”. Our parents were happy to see this cute cricket as we would be playing inside the house.

Imaginary Cricket

Cricket is not possible to play if you don’t have your friends around. But, for Indian kids, it won’t bother them. When no one was around I would become bowler, batsmen and fielder in my imaginary world. I would throw my imaginary ball in the air and quickly run to the opposite side to become batsmen to hit the imaginary ball, after hitting the ball hard I would become the fielder to catch the imaginary ball in the air. It was very common to find kids with bowling or batting actions while walking on the streets. It is this cricket craziness that helps Indian politicians to grab easy votes by distributing cricket kits for free during elections time.

Cricket Gods

Sports are very important to human wellbeing. I’m glad that cricket provides this physical activity to millions of Indians. It also provides metal comfort and joy to many people in the subcontinent who can not play the game (see the image where blind girls flocked around the radio to hear the commentary for India vs Pakistan 2011 World Cup semifinals). It is this passion, devotion and love of Indians for cricket that gave birth to cricket god Sachin Tendulkar, who unites the nation with his amazing skill and relentless determination. I think as long as we have great respect and love for any sport the birth of people like Bradman, Sachin etc is inevitable. 1930s generation enjoyed The Don’s dominance, our generation is lucky to witness The Little Master’s mesmerizing master class. I hope future generations will have even better people to entertain them. Good luck!

Photos are from here, here and here.

I thank the owners of photos and videos for capturing amazing moments.