Rekindled!!

I used to believe that my English is good enough to express my thoughts exactly as I want. But I find that my belief was simply a myth. I would suggest that whatever feelings I express hereon; the anticipation, the excitement, the agony and the final disappointment, should be raised to the power of 10 and that would be something close to what happened over the last few days.

I guess its no secret that I am an avid cricket fan. There were times when I would blabber lines like "I eat, sleep, drink and breathe cricket" or more interestingly "Cricket is life... the rest is mere detail!!" and so on. I've also garnered serious thoughts of making it my career, but somehow it didn't happen. Things moved on from then, engineering studies to Masters and then the job. Somehow the passion to play cricket just subsided. I definitely followed the game (EVERY SINGLE MATCH... almost) but the urge to play cricket was never like it used to be. Little did I know that things were about to change :)

I got introduced to "Bay Area Titans" through a friend of mine. He invited me to a practice session and me too agreed. I went for the practice session expecting ... "There'll be a bunch of people playing something with a 38 inch wide wooden 'danda' and a round bouncy object made of rubber. They would be calling this 'Cricket'. After all, how else can cricket be in the US? We are 'saat samundar paar' from where the actual action is".

But when the practice session started ... the first sign of things being extremely serious appeared. Everyone gathered and there was serious thought being put into who bats, bowls or fields. Some analysis of the previous match and also how should things be for the next one. My mind went back a few years ... the same eagerness, the same urge and the same passion to succeed. I kinda realised how much I had missed this for all these years. But I was enjoying it... every moment of it. I bowled, batted and fielded putting in all my effort. I felt a little rusty at times, but who cares... I was enjoying it ... BIGTIME :)

I was told that I was good enough to play a match after a couple of days. I felt a sudden rush of blood and a sense of joy that I had almost forgotten. This had certainly rekindled my passion for playing cricket.

The day of the match of exhillirating. I'll be honest here. I couldn't sleep well the night before the match. I was feeling as if I am going to play a World Cup match :). How should I bat (Sachin? Sehwag? Rahul?), how should I bowl(Lee? Steyn? Clarke?), how should I field (Jonty? Jonty? Jonty?), how will I take catches ... gosh... my mind was flooded with so many things. Neways, before the match began, I made a firm resolve that I will do "Whatever it takes" and give my best ever performance. The match began, we opted to field. Fielding at covers, I started off reasonably well. The batsmen would dab the ball ever so often towards me. They were not able to take any runs and that certainly helped my confidence. The first 10 overs were really good for our side.

After the drinks break, I was asked to bowl. I braced myself for a good show and measured my run-up. I started off with a horribly short pitched, slow ball on the leg stump. BUMMER!! A better batsman could have hit it for six. This guy managed a couple of runs. I hadn't expected that. I didn't know exactly what was going wrong for the next few deliveries either. Things just went on from bad to worse. Short pitched balls, wides, no-balls... you name it. I felt horrible. I was letting everyone down... what would the rest of the team be thinking about me... "He's gross!!" ... "Why did he even come?". My mind was nowhere near cricket now.

People were extremely extremely good to me. They egged me on, trying every which way they could to settle me into that role and make me comfortable. But I was in a territory I had not imagined at all. If it wasn't for their support, I would've probably hid behind some tree for the rest of the game :D.

My batting was nothing to write home (or "to write blog") about either. Others played exceptionally well, but we lost by a narrow margin of 5 runs. I felt really really bad... had I bowled my two overs reasonably or ever batted with a little more sense, I could've seen the team march home.

I guess I'll get some more chances to prove that I'm not that bad. But the lesson learnt again: Don't think of becoming a hero overnight. Work as hard as possible... "herogiri" will take care of itself :D. God knows how many times and in how many ways am I going to learn this same lesson. But I know when I will put this into practice. Next Game!!

-Shri