There was something magical about listening to Cricket on
the radio. My love affair with Cricket started in the winter of 1981-82 when
the England team was touring India for a 6 test series, yes a 6 test series,
something the modern cricket fan cannot fathom. I used to sit with the radio
the whole day listening to the commentary. I don’t know what was about Cricket
that I fell in love with it. I used to play other sport also like football,
badminton etc but Cricket just took over me. I played a lot of games but I was
never the rough sporting type or very athletic.
Perhaps the fact that my uncles and my father were are also
Cricket buffs must have had something to do with it. I grew up hearing about Sir Gary Sobers, Sir Frank Worrell, Tiger Pataudi, Bhagwat Chandrashekhar, Hanif Muhammad and the like. My grandfather was certainly not inclined
towards it. He was a very good football player in his younger days.
I quickly learnt about the intricacies of follow-on,
mandatory overs, or how a pitch having moisture makes the ball swing, that
pitch starts to help spinners from day 4 onwards etc etc.
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My first Cricketing hero was Sunil Gavaskar. Kapil Dev was
also a favourite. I was spellbound by Ian Botham’s big hitting. The next
cricketer to capture my imagination was Imran Khan. And that hero worship
continues to this day. I can hardly imagine a more complete package. A lethal fast bowler with a sublime runup, a
very correct batsman who can be explosive when needed, a great leader who led
by example and to top it all he looked like a Greek God.
My joy knew no bounds when India won the World Cup in 1983
as an absolute underdog. I can remember me and my cousin brother listening to
the commentary on the radio the whole night and giggling while everyone else in
the house slept. We could hardly believe what was happening. India successfully
defended a very low score of 183 against the mighty Windies. The unlikely
heroes were Amarnath, Srikanth, Binny, Madan Lal, Sandeep Patil. Kapil’s 175no
against Zimbabwe bailed india out of certain defeat.
Most of the test matches used to end in draws. Our main
fascination was statistics and records. Gavaskar was the king of batting
records. He was slowly moving towards Bradman's record of 29 test hundreds.
I became a walking and talking ‘wisden’. I had most the cricket
stats and records by heart.
I was hooked for life.
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