Cricket Cookies
Vengrai Parthasarathy
India is Cricket country. And this is Cricket season. .Just as Baseball and humour are serious business in America, Cricket is a passion here. The World Cup is up for grabs and many countries are sweating it out to win it. A lot of prestige goes with it, specially in the Commonwealth nations and former British colonies. “A dazzling opening ceremony, showcasing a vibrant blend of sub-continental traditions and modernity launched the 10th edition of The Cricket World Cup, setting the stage for 43 days of high-voltage cricketing extravaganza” was how the media reported the inaugural ceremony.. Many people are sitting at their TV sets to watch the game, ball by ball. That is the serious part of the game.
As in every serious matter there is always a humorous side; So it is to to Cricket. It has its downside too especially if it means India getting beaten black and blue as it happened in England to our Test team,,Let us try to forget that as a bad dream and try to build up a new team of winners.
Well, I read somewhere that this is how Cricket was viewed by a man who believes in succinctness. “You have two side, one that is in and one that is out. Two men from the team that is In go out and when one of them who is In is Out, the next men in goes out . When the team is All Out, the side that is out comes in and the side that has been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. When a batsman goes out to go in, the players who are out try to get him out. and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. …When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, twice………..that is the end of the game” Cricket for you in a nutshell ! Or you can tear your hair ‘out’ ‘ in’ despair like the Abbot of Aberbrothock..
Can you imagine a scenario of Gandhiji with a Bat? Chet Williamson, fiction writer(yes, fiction) wrote an article titled “Gandhi at the Bat “ in the New Yorker magazine in 1983. In it mayor John O’Brien invited Gandhiji to see the Yanks Play Philadelphia in Baseball. Gandhiji did not know anything about Baseball. But he told the Mayor that he would try hitting the ball.
In went the “Nabob of Non-violence”. Gandhi started down the first baseline using his walking stick….. and so on it goes. Quickly, the manager offered him a permanent place in the team but Gandhi said “Thanks but no thanks”, Next day the Cleveland Indians (not from India) did make the offer but Gandhi was already heading west towards the History books”. .Imagination takes off from this point.
It is said much to the chagrin of the Americans that Baseball is developed from the English games of Cricket and Rounder. Cricket is often compared to Baseball but there are major differences between the two games. The Americans feel that nothing seems to happen in the five-day Cricket Tests which are played at a lackadaisical pace and long pauses.. and that it must have been ‘invented by an opium-eating, retarded dunderhead for arthritic Seniors’. They have such contempt! They think that when you have terms like ‘ Leg-umpire’ and ‘Silly mid-off’ and ‘googly’ and ‘square leg’ and ‘short-leg’ and ‘China man’ there must be something seriously wrong with the cerebrum of the chaps who play it more than they who invented it “Most Americans”, says Rob Nixon “ view Cricket as quintessentially, unfathomably English—less a sport than an eccentric kind of picnic and baffling”.
What are the major differences between Cricket and Baseball? In Cricket you have a wicket of three stumps, (while in Baseball you have a phantom strike zone, an imaginary, illusory non-physical space–No chance of stumping!) Mark Wangin says: . Cricket has 11 players, but Baseball has nine. In Cricket all eleven players bat (two on the pitch at a time) . There are many ways to make an ’out’ in Cricket viz., Clean bowled, Caught on the fly, Lbw, i.e., Leg before Wicket, Stumped or Run-out In Cricket the bowlers bounce the ball into the batsman. In Baseball the pitcher (as the bowler is called) does not pitch the ball on the ground. Test matches last five days and even in one day matches hundreds of runs can be. scored. (Tendulkar the Indian Ace scored 200 runs in a one-day match recently) The Cricket field is 360 degrees round, even though one of the grounds in England is called ‘Oval” .In Baseball they have what is called a ‘diamond’ in a vast field.
Cricket is many things to many people. You can call Cricket as a bat-and-ball game played by two teams of 11 players. Or, you can call it dark, coloured insect, cousin of the locust. Or kirikiti as the Samoans call it. Games in the islands are known to have fifty, yes fifty players a side . The Samoans use a concrete slab (72 X4 feet) for the pitch and they use paddle like colorfully designed three-sided bats weighing 5 to 7 lbs.They score points, not runs and their ball is the size of a baseball with a hard centre. Cricket is not the same everywhere. It takes all kinds Now let’s watch the game. Dhoni has won the toss and decided to bat…
One last question. What is Howzzat? It is a war-cry raised by the fielding team for a snicked catch or lbw. But it is only the spectators and not the players who have their faces painted. Kirikiti anyone?