There goes the Neighbourhood

I was a street-cricket-playing kid brought up in a middle class (back then) neighbourhood, a paradise for retirees & ex-central government officials. The reason I used the "(back then)" was, nobody will believe you if you try saying "Besant Nagar is a middle class area" . Anyone who owns a house here can now sell it & buy an island in the Seychelles.

Coming back to street cricket, this is a place where friendships flourish & enemities first rear their ugly faces. In the street that was our 22 yards, the neighbours took quite a liking to shooing us off. It is in this serene atmosphere where you learn some of the best & first lessons in life.

Down the road (near my house) was what we called "No man's land". This famed piece of barren land was a local legend that it had molehills filled with snakes, the thorn in the weed-littered plants all around were poisonous and so on. Most of it was myth, but making 10 year old boys belive that is a strain.

The rules were pretty neat. One shot into any of the houses, you're out. No running runs. Funny how that term was derived. I'm sure it was used through the street-cricket fraternity of Madras. A running run, is when you have to run to get a run. Pretty simple ain't it? One pitch catches, 2-byes, 3-byes were like adding salt & pepper to taste to your favourite soup. If you felt like having it, you did. If not, it didnt make a big difference. Shoes were not worn much those days. Bare feet & a mean look on your face like you were going to become Tendulkar the very next day, were essential to winning mind games.

Bowling was generally what you call "Chucking" now. The batting teams useless batsmen were generally made umpires. One wheel of a cycle was used as stumps. There were some awesome 'bowled' wickets were the tennis ball used to get stuck to the spokes like you threw a knife to a dart board. Oh, tennis balls were a must. It was in the interest of protecting the players body parts (;-)) that rubber balls were banned. The toss was always taken with a one rupee coin & if a captain chose to bowl, he was considered an idiot. Captains were not chosen by a bunch of hypocritical businessmen like in the national team. Somehow, captains were "annointed" by the players themselves. If someone brought his stumps that day, he was captain. If a guy's cycle was being jeopardized, he was made captain to reassure his importance. And so on.

Out of this rag tag bunch of kids, you could seperate the boys from the kids. The ones who used to cry over getting out fairly (it always seemed unfair to them), the ones who played selfishly (kids who used to go home after getting out soon), the ones who were real leaders (leading the way in retreiving the ball from the Mad uncle's house) and the people who used to wuss out because they had to go drink horlicks at 6 pm sharp.

Street cricket built character, integrity & guts into the tiny, knicker fitted little mean machines. It was good we didnt have PS 3, Ipods, Xbox, PCs, DVDs, CDs & Satellite telivision back in 94. I could have never learnt the importance of playing outdoors, as I regret now that even If I wanted, the roads are too crowded. Too bad kids these days have to exprience street cricket in this obnoxious, choking environment of the city today we call "home".

Sigh! Sometimes you wished you could rewind time....