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Showing posts from January, 2009

Domestic Cricket Tales

I have no clue when exactly I got introduced to cricket. I try hard to recall my first memory of cricket. It must be having a light cream colored plastic bat and a red plastic ball. I still have a photo of mine holding that plastic bat, head still in deep concentration, stance as balanced as you could get. I wonder how I had learnt about the stance - considering that there was no television those days. How did I know that I had to place the bat just behind my toes? How was it that when you hit a straight drive, the elbow stayed parallel to the bat? Television ensured that an interest turned into obsession. My earliest cricket memories are not pleasant. I remember the way Graham Gooch used to sweep the Indian spinners as though he was cleaning the pitch off the minutest dirt; of Javed Miandad hitting a last ball six; a joke of a batsman otherwise known as Mr. Maninder Singh getting out in the last ball against Australia when India needed just a run for a tie. I presume those were the ma