The home of cricket

After saying bye to Paris (the ladies were emotional, I was happy to move on.. except for the Louvre I was not going to come back for anything.. well maybe the Laduree macaroons and that was it), we got up reluctantly on Day 11 to drag our suitcases along Parisian pavements for 30+ minutes to go to the Gare Du Nord station. 

There was a long line to clear immigration at a train station so we could board the Eurostar to London. We made it two mintues before the train took off. It was a pleasant ride and given we were hungry, we ate some of the desi snacks that had been in our bags all along for breakfast. 

The previous post on this series is here...

The train stopped at Kings Cross station, one place we wanted to visit. We didnt realize we will be visiting that station that many times as our hotel was right across from the station. 

We were told that the earliest we get our room is 2PM. That was a challenge because we were booked on a tour of the Lords cricket ground from 2-3:30PM not to mention plans after that. 

So we left our luggage next to the front desk and tried to find something to eat. It so happens that in England, the most common restaurant is Indian food. A word of warning.. the Indian food joints serve a version of Indian food that is not exactly Indian. Some restaurants serve you food that is frozen in pre-independent India times.. things that bring back vague memories of when your great grandma used to cook at family functions when you were 4-5 years old. Others make you question "what exactly is the Indian part here other than the color of the food and the Paneer in it?". Then again, there are some that hit the right notes and make you eat way more than you normally would..

Our first search (stepping down from hotel entrance) showed 3 Indian places just looking across. We found none of them opened before Noon. So we wandered around for some time, got the kids food at a 5 guys burger joint and went to a Tandoori place for the adults. Then it was time to hit the Lords ground.

I have more family portraits with smiling faces at this one location than any other place in the entire trip. Must have been the perfect English weather which happens so rarely..

Also please note that usually I am allowed to post one family portrait per post based on censor restrictions.. but in this post there are 4. If you note carefully, my hair actually is going through what the grass surface goes through during the first 4 days of a Test match at Lords..in just under 90 minutes... 

This was a much anticipated event for me on the trip. The kids were also looking forward to it, given all the IPL watching in recent times and the test cricket they catch glimpses of on weekend mornings with me.

They don't play but they know the game. San was also excited to see Lords although she wanted to see a game there. Unfortunately the game with India was just a few days away and we were leaving Europe that morning. The tour was actually great. The guide was great, giving us a fun fact filled description with enough jokes to keep us laughing throughout. 

Two slide shows of what we saw..

I did not know that the Lords board for hundreds does not have the names of Sachin or Lara but has Agarkar in it...also did not know that Stuart Broad is the only guy who has hit a 100 at Lords, taken 5 wickets in an innings and 10 wickets in a match at Lords. Always had mixed feelings about Broad because he didnt walk once after he knowingly hit a ball and was caught, but he is a damn good all rounder. Let's just say I did find some new respect for him after this tour. 

We walked the entire perimeter of the ground and went into the press box as well as the players rooms, and the pavillions. It was an experience that will be cherished for a long time.

Panos of Lords ground..

After this we got back to the Kings cross area and put our luggage in our room. It was actually as small as the room in Paris with only one bed. We had to change rooms in the morning or later that night. The next stop was south Wimbledon to meet San's childhood friend. 

We took the train again and visited her friend. We all had a great time at her friends place and after dinner we all sat down to watch the second semi final of the World cup. We had booked tickets for this trip almost 8 months in advance and if you had told me then that we would actually end up in Paris on the night of the France semifinal and in London the night of the England semifinal, I would not have bet on it. 

England lost the game and given the English history of reacting to loses in big matches, our friends told us to put up a sad face and stay quiet on the underground. It was a long ride from South Wimbledon to Kings Cross and there were a lot of drunk folks on the train, but they were trying to sing songs that still supported the English after the loss. 

Our family looked as though we just came from a funeral, maybe we over did the sadness part.. but all said and done we made it back to the hotel. Folks were all red eyed and crying as we watched a contrast to the previous night.. 

Day 11 was done. . it was a tale of two cities.. in a much different context!

Cricket

As most of you know have stopped following cricket for years. In fact don't even watch TV anymore.. News from Google, Youtube videos and the occasional movie at the local theater during holidays or on blockbuster. That is pretty much the sum total of entertainment outside what the kids provide (which is plenty)!

It has not been a loss. Friends tell me this was a good move considering Indian cricket is at an all time low..

There was a recent joke where folks were saying

"pretty soon Australia will be the first team to declare their first innings for a score of 0/0 and still beat India in three days.."

If such humiliation is even comprehensible as a joke things must be pretty bad!

Went and checked Cricket news just now.. Looks like the Indian team is finishing 5 day matches in 4 and is now going towards 3 day completions. Will come and check back in two more years and see how it goes...

For now, back to the crickbernation..

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The rules of the game

Cricket, the wonderful game with which I have a love hate relationship, is gaining popularity even in China, according to the news buzz!

In truth, I have always loved the game. It is the players, the umpires (referees), the coaches, the cricket control organizations, sports media, gamblers, bookies etc. that I really hate.

A nice game turned into a mockery, sometimes even a soap opera!

When my brother was here visiting, we were watching CSI. He commented that, there was less crime and more cleavage, and it was something else other than the scene that was being investgated and my response was :

prime time shows : soap opera in stage
Star trek : soap opera in space
CSI : soap opera in lab
24 : soap opera in counter terrorism office
Law and order : soap opera in DA office
20/20 : soap opera in cricket field

If you noticed the previous post, you would have noticed that both Jr. and the little one are now courting plastic cricket bats, thanks to their australian cousin's refusal to share his bat, while the men and kids were waiting in the verandah, after being kicked out of the house during a "ladies only" ceremony before the BIL's wedding!

All these kids are growing outside India, but the aussie dude has an unfair advantage in that he is growing up in a land where Cricket is played! He even knew who Sachin was, and Jr. ignored his critical knowledge and insulted his intelligence by holding the cricket bat with one hand, baseball style, and generally swooshing the bat in arbitrary directions and coming up with a higher success rate at connecting the ball with bat.

Sachin in pink and Dhoni in yellow set me back fifty rupees on Station road in West Mambalam and the weird game of cricket played by three kids with three bats and three balls along a single pitch, started. We even had great grandpa (from San's side) keep wickets, for fear that the ball might end up in the open toilet!

This game as usual, brought back a rush of memories. The rules of cricket are simple and can be explained to non cricket playing folk in California terms as follows:

1: Dude hurls ball at another dude who has a bat
2: Bat dude hits ball
3: fielders converge on ball
4: Bat dude runs across and trades places (bases) with another bat dude while fielders get ball
5: If the ball clears the outer boundary of field, with bounce they get more runs, without bounce is even more runs.
6: If ball is caught before bounce or if bat dude misses the ball and it hits the wicket (equivalent of plate), he is out and next dude comes in.

the official rules are here! and as you can see, are a lot more elaborate than the ones mentioned above. However for most practitioners of the game on a field, the rules cover 80% of what normally happens.

The keywords here are "on a field"!

We now venture on to practitioners of this wonderful game on the streets of Mandaiveli. Come on, you knew that was coming way before you even came to this paragraph, didn't you?

As a touring member of the Mandaiveli Therukkutheru Cricket Club, myself and my brother must have spent approximately 45.75% of our middle school years playing cricket. Of this ~ 82.37% was spent around Devanathan street. The most important lesson learnt from all that time?

The game is defined purely by the boundary! Guess this holds true even for the "real" game. If you play on a smaller field, every tom, dick and harry can hoist the ball across the boundary and give the bowlers more than a "run" for their money.

In street cricket though, the rules are very different. It is almost like living through the story "A table is a table", where a bored fellow decides to call a Table a chair, a chair a bed, etc. till he becomes so wrapped in his new world he is unable to communicate with others!

Let me explain. Let us say, you are using the electric box on Sambandam street as the wicket.... Oh wait, you don't necessarily know the local map. So I have taken the liberty of using google maps, which by the way does not do justice to the street layout! The U shaped road marked in that map is Sambandam street.

(thank you Google)

Going back to the electric box wicket, the rules were, if you hit the ball straight out to Devanathan Street you got runs, if you hit to your right into the middle Sambandam street, you got runs (with the exception of the house with Django the dog) and you were out if you hit it into any of the three houses with musudu maamaa's and or maami's who would keep your ball! Django was another story altogether, and did I forget to mention that if you hit the ball into the house with the glass windows owned by angry thatha, you had to sit out the next two games?

If you have not got the picture yet, the danger houses from those times are all marked with red, orange or yellow dots depending on the % chance that you would get your ball back. Needless to say, the rules when the electric box on Chandrasekaran street was used as the wicket would be completely different based purely on the danger houses!

When playing the boys in another local street, they would first explain the rules on their street for the first five minutes before the game proceeded! This reminds you of the National Geographic videos where people from one polynesian island sail to another island and the locals explain things like "if you enter any womans hut, you have married her, and if you come out immediately after entering the hut, you have married her sister as well!". Once the rules were clear, you would just throw caution to the wind and hit the ball, hoping that you were not out by the local street "rules" and would stay on to play the next ball!

Now, don't even get me started on Uppukkuchappas! (something you won't find in any cricket rule book).

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Cricket turns pink

Will leave you with the pictures for now!

busy day!

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To burn in effigy is not far from...

As an ex-ardent cricket fan, who is currently on a self-imposed ban, the only snippets of cricket I see are in the SUN news highlights.

Today, they showed a mob burning effigies of an Umpire (Referee) who gave some decisions against the Indian team in their games against Australia last week.

Apparently, India lost to Australia and these decisions played a big role in the loss.

But to burn the dude in effigy??? is only a step away from burning the dude for real. What kind of craze is this?

I seriously have my doubts about Cricket being called a game or a sport. This should not be considered a sport anymore. There is nothing sportive left!

In religion we have gradations like

moderately religious
religious
orthodox
exteremly orthodox

and for a lot of religions there seems to be a militant wing somewhere between the orthodox and exteremly orthodox and in a lot of cases, they are branded as extremists or even terrorists!

Religion : Extremism :: Cricket : "that mob that was burning the umpire in Effigy"

Cricket has finally transcended Religion. Sharad Powar, the BCCI (board of conrol for cricket in India) president gave a press conference later saying he was happy that his appeal to replace the umpire had been accepted by the International Cricket Council ...

This man could teach the TV Evangelists a thing or two about making money in the name of religion. Cricket is all about money now. Coaches get murdered, bookies and the mafia have dipped their hand deep into the game and politicians and governments are getting into it.

We should not be surprised if Cricketers start running for elections or start campaigning soon..

The self imposed ban, continues!

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