Sharmaana Chod Daal Baath Dil Ka Bol Daal.....

Ok….so here we go…….
It was in the end an easy choice to make…… a chance to compete with the best at extempore (for the coveted prize of a trip to London) or a chance to roll your arm over in the cricket field? I chose the latter…… not because I thought I had a better chance of winning at it – just that I knew I would enjoy myself more only on the physical playing field.
And so I became the part of my school cricket team dreaming of making it big (win a trophy at the MAC?). We modeled ourselves on the Windies team of the late 70s……bombastic batsmen, athletic keeper and a battery of pacemen……Kournikova had once said when someone hinted that Hantuchova would be a threat to her stardom – ‘An original is always an original’ and so was it with our cricket team.
Terrifying batsmen were replaced with batsmen who forgot their abdomen guards and remembered in horror seconds before it hit them. Spine chilling fast bowlers were replaced by medium pace trundlers whose fastest ball reached the keeper in the second bounce. However to our credit, we did have good fielders – a bit too overenthusiastic though; much like a puppy at the sight of a bone thrown to it. We skidded and dived and made fantastic leaps. However where we dived – the ball went underneath us, where we slided – we slided a bit too soon and while momentum was taking us eastwards, the ball slowly went past us westwards.
Ok, with this introduction about our ability, I am sure none of you would have a doubt as to what the outcome of our opening match would have been? Well we were not creamed – we were just…….err…….raped beyond repair. But enjoyment we had a lot, add to it the inherent shamelessness that you see in people of my ilk – we also had the gall to give advice to our opponents on their techniques.
You must have noticed I have kept really quiet about the scores? Well in order to prove there is indeed no shame – let me let it out too. We magnanimously chose to bowl first on winning the toss (You see there is no point batting first, getting blasted and then being able to bowl only 3-5 overs in which they canter home). Those guys lost three quick wickets – it had got to do more with the surprise element (the speed at which a ball reached the batsmen was inversely proportional to our arm rotation speed – we were honest triers you see). It was then the real pasting started. We packed the off side field in order to cramp them, but our lack of andharooni kaabiliyath (core competency J ) ensured that despite such a field we bowled a dolly on the leg side – and there she flies to the boundary with the speed of a rocket. It was the same story – just the field settings, our bowling varied. The runs from then on was always on the upward curve. At the end of it, they scored 189 in 30 overs. To cut things short, we were bundled out for 92 in 16 overs, of which 49 were extras. Yeh hai meri kahaani….yeh daasthaan purani…..thagde ballebaazon ke haathon se maar khaathaa hoon……

I would still stand by what I started out with….in the end…it was an easy decision to make.