The Book of Growing Up: Sports and everything else

To be treated with the respect one doesn’t deserve is the dream of every talentless sportsman, Marcus Berkmann writes in his memoir Rain Men, which is primarily about the exploits of his rag tag bunch of thirty and forty-somethings getting together on the weekend and playing village cricket. In its blurbs, the book has been recommended for anyone who has “ever run out a team-mate on purpose or secretly blubbed at a video of Botham’s Ashes.” The four-and-a-half regular readers of this column would undoubtedly have noticed that the tragi-comedy (more tragi than comedy, clearly) that characterizes the existence of the unremarkable is a recurring theme here. The sharper ones amongst you would already have worked out that only the truly unremarkable can go on and on about being truly unremarkable. The remarkable are too busy playing defence-splitting passes from central midfield and running in from the baseline to play the perfect drop shot. Excellence, contrary to popular belief, is a full-time job. Not everyone is Chris Gayle. Yet, we-who-are-not-good-enough chase our little prizes with a fervour only matched by the English village cricketer for a pre-match and post-match and during-match pint.

A contest of the not-so-talented. But a contest all the same.

In the following chapters, you may or may not find stories that are similar to your experiences on the fringes of meaningful sporting achievement. But what I hope will strike a chord is the feel behind the stories – the fact that even stragglers such as us can plan for the evening’s gully cricket game with a passion that would make the combined coaching machinery of the IPL franchises hang their heads in shame, and throw away their laptops that are filled with all that performance analytics software.

Chapter I – Aluminum as the perfect foil

So it all starts in the breaks at school – where you’re not allowed bats and balls – when you play hand cricket with balls made of aluminum foil whose original function is to keep your lunch and snacks warm and un-messy. Most days you play amongst your own “group”; but once in two weeks, there is the “challenge” against a rival group. On the day of the challenge, they put you in to bat, and you hope that your openers see you through the short break (15 minutes), and that the middle order consolidates in the lunch break (45 minutes). Long before you know brave declarations to be fashionable, the leader of your group convenes a meeting on the school bus back home – the main agenda is whether your batsmen should pile up the runs in the short break the next day, or whether you should walk up to the rival captain before morning assembly and announce your declaration. On the third and final day of your “Test match”, you consider skipping lunch so that you have more time to polish off the opposition’s tail. The opposition, of course, would have none of it, and, with the sagely wisdom of ten-year-olds, would announce that “rules are rules” and the 15 minutes of actually eating lunch will not be compromised on. There is no question of complaining to the teacher, because cricket is a gentleman’s game. As you gobble up your lunch, you think of how lucky professional cricketers are – they actually take breaks from playing cricket, and here you are, having to play cricket only in the breaks.

When there are no declarations to deliberate on the bus back, you are trading Center Fresh cards, the most valued ones of which are Richard Hadlee and Imran Khan – men you have only heard about from your father and uncles. Your heroes are Azhar and Wasim and Waqar and Sachin and Lara and Sanath. You try to emulate Waqar’s grip in your tiny bedroom on a tennis ball, and in the space between your bed and cabinet, you play forward defensive shots to an imaginary ball. You pester your parents to be enrolled in cricket coaching, but the ground is too far and there is no time before school and you have to do your homework in the evening and you have to go to bed early. So many rules. Did Sachin ever have to do homework, you ask your parents angrily.

Chapter II – “I want to play forward”

It is 2002. Brazil have just won the World Cup in Korea-Japan, and the English Premier League is becoming more and more popular. Football is the new cricket. All the boys want to play forward and score goals. In the breaks, football replaces cricket as the game of choice. You sneak in tennis balls, and play football on the basketball court (not for the last time). During class hours, you begin drawing formations in the back of a notebook. When you do so yourself, you understand what the coach means when you hear him holler at the senior boys to arrange themselves in the “Christmas Tree” formation. You start following Manchester United because they’re winning and everyone else is doing so. When a boy wears a new United jersey on a school trip, you sit with your back to the Taj Mahal and debate whether it is OG (original) or not. The Premier League logo on the sleeve clinches it. Original it is, and you let him play forward in the 4X4 porch in your hotel that day.

You start going for football practice with the aim of making the school team. You just want to play, but Albert Sir (“I play forward for Customs, men. You should see backline in league, men. Big, big buggers they are”) makes you run four rounds of the stony ground, followed by drills and other passing exercises. Only after this, you get to play a “match”. Even among the paupers, there are princes and they are the ones who get to play forward. You are dedicated (showing up for practice even during unit tests), but you’re not good enough, and so you find yourself in central defence, with strict instructions to hoof the ball out at any sign of danger. When you score goals once in a while, your name appears in smallest possible print in the papers the next day. You try to explain to your extended family the significance of your name appearing on the same page as the talented English footballer who goes by the name of Wayne Rooney. All they want to know is how much you got on the maths unit test. You have a desktop at home now, and purchasing EA Sports’ FIFA from the game store is an annual ritual. In this also, it is important that it is original. The fake version will cause your computer to hang, and your dad to kick your butt for screwing up the desktop with your games.

The internet is so wonderful. You go to the Nike website, and learn that the superstars wear boots made of kangaroo-skin and are as “light as a feather”. You’re still trudging around in Niveas and Vector-Xs, but even that can’t dampen your spirits on the day before the start of every season when the coach distributes the new kit. You gratefully inhale its musty smell, and try on the jersey over your school uniform. You did not feel so good even when that girl you fancied asked you to come on a walk around the school grounds. Your group of friends organize matches with other groups, to be played on the school ground after hours or on the beach. You have almost had fist-fights over who will play in the hole behind the two strikers. Stevie G or Lampard? Van Nistelrooy or Henry? Only the Board Exams could have put a stop to all this. And they do.

Chapter III – The perfect antidote

You are in a residential college, pursuing a professional degree. Things are pretty crazy with all the academics, hormones and dirty laundry. But at least you’re getting to play forward now. Your college doesn’t have a ground good enough to play 11-a-side football on. That is good in a way. 5-a-side football on the basketball court under lights is the perfect place to disguise your lack of stamina and fitness because of the late nights, cigarettes and the alcohol. There are so many decisions to make now. There are several days when you don’t know where the hell your life is heading. There are some days when you’re slogging your back off to keep your grades high enough so that you can impress the recruiters. But you can leave all of this behind for a couple of hours when you play your quick one-twos under the lights. The perfect antidote for the madness that is life in college.

The perfect antidote

Every year, there is the inter-batch football tournament. Nowhere to hide here. 11-on-11 football. The real thing. The tension builds throughout the year. Trash-talk on hostel terraces, strategies made late into the night. On the mess table, formations laid out with pieces of tomato and cucumber. Yet, this doesn’t feel like your salad days. You’re no longer green in judgment, and cold in blood. You can’t afford to be. Placement Day is coming. But so is inter-batch. You try and make some money by writing articles, doing internships so that you can buy that pair of Predators or Mercurial Vapours. You get online and pick up training techniques from YouTube videos. You’re old enough to realize that tiki-taka is best left to Barcelona. You’d rather have a tight back four and sneak in a goal from somewhere. You lie on your bed at night, playing out your triumphs and fears. What do I really want to in life? Will I get a job? Am I good enough for her? Where is this relationship going? Am I spending too much money? But the last thought is always of a right-footed finish in the bottom corner, or the perfect tackle when the striker is through on goal, or a one-handed catch taken at slip. And with that, you go to sleep. Life goes on.