The Ordeal of Watching a Cricket Match

PROF. GANGADHAR GADGIL

Well, doing it once was about enough. I decided that going to stadium to watch a cricket match was not the kind of thing I would ever do again.

Frankly, I never was frightfully keen about cricket. Well, as a boy I did go along with my friends to the sports ground to play cricket. But soon enough the cricket ball hit hard by the batsman hit me on the chin instead of settling in my hands as it should have done. Thereafter I lost interest in the proceedings on the sports ground and the interest was never kindled again.

Later on I discovered that cricket balls could even hit innocent chaps in the vicinity of sports grounds. I was hit on my back by one while I was walking past a sports ground. It was quite a few days before I could breathe without a pain in my ribs. Since then I am not very much in favour of people playing cricket.

But the general public in Bombay has a totally different view of cricket. They are quite crazy about it. Watching a test match at the stadium is the one thing in the city. To, be seen watching it from the club house confers social distinction. On the other hand, a chap who for some reason cannot watch the cricket match, becomes an object of pity.

When the test match is on, everybody I run into asks me, “You got a ticket, didn’t you?”

“Well, I am not frightfully keen about cricket, you know” I reply with a short nonchalant laugh and a toss of my head.

This does not prevent an expression of shock and consternation appearing on the face of the chap who is taking to me. He says, “Good heavens! Not interested in cricket! Can such a thing be? Well, I am going to watch the test match for all the five days. There are a lot of urgent matters I have to attend to. In fact our German collaborators wanted to come here to finalize an important deal. It runs into crores, you know.” But I said, “Nothing doing! I am going to watch the cricket match for the next five days, and that is that.”

Well, I certainly won’t have to postpone deals running into crores, if I decide to watch a cricket match. I, poor chap, only have deals with my grocer, which run into just a few rupees. Yet having nothing much to lose by spending time in watching a cricket match, I keep away from it. This to him seems to be a matter for great pity.

He admonishes me saying, “Gadgil, you must enjoy life. You ought not to bury yourself in books all the time.”

I responded with a gay, light-hearted laugh. At least that is my intention. But it sounds hollow and lifeless. The chap stares at me. The only thing to do under the circumstances is to walk away and thus put an end to the encounter.

I do not feel equal to more such encounters and remain almost in hiding till the test match is over.

I now accept this predicament philosophically. But I used to feel quite embarrassed at being chided for not watching a cricket match. This once drove me to watch a cricket match much against my wish.

That certainly was an enterprise beset with difficulties right from the beginning. I had to talk to a number of influential friends to obtain a ticket which ultimately was given to me as a great favour. It reminded me of how I was driven from pillar to post during the war years to get a canful of kerosene.

Commuting in Bombay is a painful experience at all times. One is pushed, thumped, bumped, bullied and crushed by hordes of commuters. But the rush was much worse on the opening day of the match. Various parts of my anatomy were bruised by umbrellas, elbows, heels, binoculars, tiffin carriers and various other objects carried by the cricket enthusiasts. On the train I was squeezed by crowds from all directions until I did not occupy much more space than what an umbrella does. I wished that my body was as hard as a cricket ball to withstand all those hits, bumps or thumps.

I eventually settled down in my seat at the stadium in a mood characterized by a marked lack of enthusiasm. The two umpires that walked into the sports ground seemed to suffer from a similar lack of enthusiasm. In their white gowns they looked like a couple of doctors who had set out to examine a seriously-ill patient. They were followed by a team of eleven, who seemed to be in no hurry at all to reach the pitch and get the game started. In course of their leisurely walk the guys were amusing themselves by throwing, the ·hard ball at each other. When they had progressed halfway towards the pitch, two gentlemen carrying cricket bats came out of the club house. They were engrossed in conversation and were also not in a hurry to get the game started. At last, when they arrived on the pitch, I hoped that the play would commence. Alas! I found that a lot of things had to happen before that.

The proceedings at the pitch were remarkably similar to what happened at a concert of Indian music. It is only after the maestro sits comfortably on the dais, that the elaborate process of tuning up the tanpura and various other musical instruments starts. First one tanpura is tuned. It is then respectfully handed over to the maestro who tests it and shakes his head in disapproval. So it is tuned more precisely once again, and this continues until the singer stops shaking his head and nods his approval. The same process is then repeated in the case of the second tanpura. The tabla player, who until then seems to be lost in meditation, suddenly springs to life and vigorously hammers away with a will on the leather straps of the tabla to achieve the desired resonance. When at last all the instruments are tuned, the singer closes his eyes in order to achieve the desired concentration. At last he opens his mouth and begins his recital in such a low tone that one can hardly hear him.

Something very similar was happening on the sports ground. The batsman was trying to position his bat exactly in front of one of the three stumps and in doing so, he was being assisted by the umpire at the opposite end. This involved bending low, to bring the eyes to the level of the stumps and bringing the stumps at both the ends and the bat in a single line. I am quite astonished by the precision with which this is sought to be done. Frankly, I have never been able to make out what possibly could go wrong if the bat is positioned an inch or two to the left or to the right.

At last the batsman located his bat at the precise point of his choice and I heaved a sigh of relief. I expected the play to start right away. In that I was sadly mistaken. For it was now the turn of the opposite team to start an elaborate ritual of its own. The captain summoned the bowler and handed over the ball to him with appropriate ceremony. Both of them thereafter confabulated and positioned the fielders on the sports ground making them to move back and forth and to the left or to the right. This involved considerable signaling and running around, until the field was arranged to the bowler’s satisfaction.

I heard a sigh of relief and said to myself, “Now surely the play will commence.” But it didn’t. The bowler took off his cap and handed it over to the umpire for safe keeping. He then rotated his arms to loosen up the muscles, and even went through the motions of bowling a ball. When at last the muscles were sufficiently loosened up, he walked to the stumps, turned his back on the batsman and started walking away in measured steps. He walked and walked and kept on walking although he had covered almost half the playground. I wondered where he was headed. It looked as if for some reason he was deeply offended and was going back home. I watched him in considerable alarm and was greatly relieved when he eventually stopped and began to mark that point by vigorously rubbing his foot in the ground. I was told that it was to be the starting point of his bowling run. It seemed to me very odd that a bowler should run for twenty-five yards in order to throw the ball over less than half the distance. But that, I was told, was the way cricket was played.

At last the bowler had marked the starting point of his bowling run and it seemed that at last the preliminaries were over. The bowler began his run. But the batsman abandoned his stance, stood up and looked around to see how the fielders were positioned. The umpire raised his hand to signal to the bowler to stop which he did after having run a few yards. The batsman looked around and carefully scanned the positioning of the fielders. After he had scanned them all to his satisfaction, he once again took his stance and the bowler once again commenced his run.

By that time I had given up all hope that the play would commence before the end of the playing hours. But commence it did. The bowler run his run and hurled the ball. The batsman swung his bat. The wicketkeeper jumped up and clapped his hands and the ball was thrown back to the bowler. It all happened so quickly that I failed to observe what exactly had happened.

I had heard that those bowlers play all kinds of tricks with the ball. They pitch them at various lengths, they bowl leg-breaks and off-breaks and then bowl inswingers and out-swingers. Sometimes they bowl what are called yorkers and sometimes they turn nasty and bowl bumpers which rise high and hit the batsmen on their beads.

I had heard that batsmen also do all kinds of wonderful things. They cut the ball, drive it, chop it, push it and hook it. This seemed amazing to me as I had barely managed to stop the ball with my bat during the few days that I had played cricket as a boy.

I was very keen to closely observe the bowlers and batsmen doing all these things. So I kept my eyes peeled and watched the proceedings very carefully.

The trouble was that I could not for the life of me manage to catch the ball with my eye while it travelled from the bowler to the batsman. All I could see was the batsman swinging his bat and the wicketkeeper leaping in the air.

I therefore had to make use of deductive logic to grasp what was happening. When the bowler swung his arm through the air, I deduced that he had hurled the ball towards the batsman. When the batsman brandished his bat to the offside, I deduced that the ball was bowled to the left of the wicket. If the bat was lifted high, that was a clear indication that the ball had bounced high in the air. When the wicketkeeper leapt in the air and caught it, it meant that the batsman had missed that ball.

I found it fairly easy to go on deducing what was happening on the sports field. But I discovered that watching cricket by a deductive process of reasoning was not a very exciting and enjoyable experience. The prospect of doing so for five days was grim and depressing.

The fast bowler bowled three balls, which the batsman could not or did not hit. He did hit the fourth ball and ran across to the other end of the wicket to score a run. This brought the other batsman to the batting side. He naturally had to position his bat precisely at a point of his choice. This took quite some time but eventually he did dig a hole in the pitch to mark his position. Thus there were now two holes dug by the two batsmen on the pitch. I wondered, how, each one of them could distinguish his own hole. The problem was likely to become more and more difficult as all the eleven batsmen came in to bat. I certainly was glad that I wasn’t the eleventh player in the team, who would be called upon to recognize his hole amidst the eleven, on the batting pitch.

After the bat was positioned and the hole was dug, I expected that the game would be resumed. But it wasn’t. There was, however, considerable commotion among the fielders who were running hither and thither to be at new positions on the sports ground. When I inquired about the reason for this commotion, I was told that the second batsman was a left-hander which made it necessary to change the placing of the fielders. When the field was rearranged, and another ball was bowled the lefthander scored one run and once the right-hander was at the batting crease, making it necessary to rearrange the placement of fielders. This left-hander proved to be a pain in the neck to all those engaged in playing and watching the game. However I was told later that, that was precisely the role he was expected to play by his captain. Such dirty tricks, it seems, are very much a part of cricket.

After watching cricket for an hour, I discovered that during that hour cricket was played for barely twenty minutes. The rest of the time was spent in the long walks of the bowler to the start of his bowling run, the rearrangement of fielders and the shift of play from one end of the wicket to another at the end of each over. It seemed that human ingenuity had been used to the utmost to create as many interruptions in the game as possible.

The consequence was that I lost what little interest I had in the proceedings on the playground. It seemed that quite a few of the other spectators shared my feelings. They naturally started amusing themselves in other ways. Initially a paper ball landed on my head. This was followed by peels of bananas and oranges, I knew that it was only a matter of time before an egg would break on my nose and I waited patiently for it to happen.

It seemed that a large youthful section of the audience had a musical turn of mind. They began to sing, what appeared to be devotional songs. That surprised me greatly. When, however, I carefully listened to those songs, I realized that while the tunes were of devotional music, the words contained rather explicit descriptions of the goings on between young boys and girls. The sin sing became more enthusiastic with the passage of time and eventually the youthful gang leapt out of their seats and began to dance in the aisles of the crowded stadium. They became more and more playful and began to force other spectators to join them. This resulted in a number of scuffles and eventually a big fight broke out when they tried to pull a girl out of her seat. I saw a few chaps tumbling down the steps of the stadium, and fearfully waited for that to happen to me.

Suddenly the spectators roared, “Out!”

That reminded me that a cricket match was being played and I had come to the stadium to watch it. I looked at the sports ground. The play had stopped and a batsman was walking away towards the club house. I asked the people around me, “What happened?”

I was told that he had been caught In the slips. I felt quite cheated. I had all along wanted to see the fielders poised behind the batsmen catch the ball flying off the batsman’s bat and I had lost a golden opportunity. So I kept my eyes peeled and watched very carefully the game being played with a ball which I could not see most of the time. I watched intently for half an hour. But, as you must have guessed correctly, nothing interesting happened during that half hour. Eventually even what little was happening came to a halt. The players stopped playing and began to walk towards the position. When I inquired what was happening, I was told that they were having a ten-minute break for drinks. Considering that they were having a break at the end of each over, there seemed to be no need for an extra break from doing nothing most of the time.

While they did not need any break, I certainly did. Apart from being bored stiff, I was stiff in my limbs after sitting in the hard wooden seat at the stadium. I was feeling quite thirsty too. So I went out and tried to get a drink–at the refreshment stall. However, lots of other chaps were thirsty too and they were crowded six deep around the stall. It took me quite a while to get a drink and I had to wait equally long to get my turn at the toilets. By the time I was climbing back into the stadium, the play had resumed. I heard a tremendous roar of the spectators while I was on the stairs.

“What happened?” I cried.

I felt cheated again when I was told that the batsman had hit a mighty sixer. I had heard chaps back after watching a match talking eloquent about the sixers hit by the star batsman during the day. But I had missed watching that heroic achievement.

I hoped that the batsman would hit another sixer and I kept my eyes fixed on the sports ground. I didn’t even blink. But, as you have guessed correctly again, nothing of interest happened. Well, a couple of boundaries were hit. But that was about all. No sixers, no great catches, no shattering of the wickets by a beauty of a ball.

My eyes were quite strained due to exposure to the bright sunshine on the sports ground. The sun too had slowly crept towards my seat in the stadium and I could feel its heat and glare. My throat got parched and eyes began to burn because of the hot sun. But I sat glued to my seat so as not to miss the mighty sixer or the magnificent catch about which I could talk eloquently to my grandchildren in my old age.

As the lunch hour approached, people around me went away to get seats at nearby restaurants. I, however, stuck heroically to my seat until the last ball of the morning’s play was bowled. Unfortunately no sixer was hit nor a wicket taken during the pre-lunch overs which are often described as crucial.

I had heard many stories of great batsmen losing their concentration and consequently their wickets as the lunch hour approached beckoning them to savoury dishes. I had also heard of cunning bowlers getting as many as four wickets in a row in a deadly pre-lunch spell. But nothing of that sort happened before lunch on that day. The batsmen were very cautious and just stopped the ball with a dead bat. No hits, no risky strokes, no runs, nothing. Watching the match was like watching one of those modern plays in which nothing at all happens.

At last when the play stopped, I was hot and hungry and keen to get out and get a good lunch. However, everybody had the same inclination and I had to struggle and jostle for more than ten minutes before I could get out of the stadium. Long queues had formed outside all the restaurants in the vicinity and there seemed to be no possibility of getting any lunch there before dinner time. So I walked briskly half a mile to the area around the Museum where a number of restaurants were located. I thought it was very clever of me to do that. But I found that the same clever idea had occurred to a lot of other people, who were standing outside the restaurants there in long queues.

I walked another half a mile and at last found an old, run down Irani restaurant which had no queue outside it. I walked in and sat at a table only to discover that it had very little to offer by way of food and whatever it had to offer was pretty stale. I was so hungry that I gulped down whatever I could get and rushed back to the stadium to watch the post-lunch game.

I, of course, could not reach there in time and the game had been on for twenty minutes before I got into my seat. During those twenty minutes, however, a great deal had happened. Three wickets had fallen in quick succession and the fortunes of the home team were in doldrums. In short all the drama in the day’s play was crammed in those twenty minutes when I was not there.

I hoped there would be more dramatic developments in the hours that followed. But the game again took on the character of one of those modern plays in which nothing happens.

There were other developments that were not to my liking. The sun, which had been creeping towards my seat, now caught me in its full hot blaze I soon experienced very vividly what a peanut feels like when it is being roasted. The gang which had sung devotional songs in the morning now presented a programme of western music, in which a lot of trumpets blared, cymbals changed and drums improvised out of cans were beaten. The music was accompanied by dancing of a kind I had never seen before. This generated considerable liveliness around me and I was hit on my back and head with orange peels, empty cartons and paper arrows with remarkable accuracy. There were scuffles among the school boys who sat behind me and I was recipient of various thumps and kicks which were really not intended for me.

This went on for what seemed to me to be several hours. Actually it was only a couple of hours before the play stopped again so that the players could have their afternoon tea. Cricketers are very particular about having all their meals at the appointed hour. They play cricket only in between their numerous meals.

The cricketers had tea waiting for them in the pavilion. It wasn’t however waiting for me and I just could not muster enough energy to be pushed and jostled while leaving the stadium and getting a cup of tea. I, therefore, sat in my seat in the blazing sun. It was then that I experienced the first throbs of a headache in my forehead. As time elapsed the throbs became powerful thumps and that threatened to split open my head.

The game after the tea break was a little more interesting. But by that time I had lost all my capacity to take any interest in the game whatsoever.

I was not equal to facing the rush of traffic at the end of the day’s play. So I left a little early. I therefore had the privilege of being among the first fifty waiting for a bus in a queue. It was a long wait for over forty minutes before the bus I was waiting for arrived. I could not naturally get a seat but I could stand clutching the strap over my head. In that condition I travelled for an hour, swaying back and forth while being bruised by elbows, brief cans and umbrellas and also being butted by shoulders and heads. At last when I reached home my body was sore all over and I could barely stand on my own two feet.

My wife greeted me saying, “You must have had a wonderful time.”

I attempted a broad smile, amI said, “Yes of course! It was very enjoyable. I was feeling very guilty about going all by myself. So I decided to make up for it by letting you watch the cricket match tomorrow.”

“I? Watch cricket? No. I can’t make head or tail of what is going on. In any case, knowing how keen you were about watching a cricket match. I would like you to watch it on all the four days.” she said smiling very sweetly.

I realised that when you are in trouble not even your wife comes to your succour. So I reconciled myself to going through the ordeal of watching the cricket for all the four days.

On the first day I had learnt about the various problems which a chap watching the cricket match has to face. I therefore decided to prepare myself to face all the eventualities on the days that followed. I equipped myself with a hard hat and ear plugs and goggles as protective gear. I also borrowed the binoculars of a friend of mine in order to be able to see the ball which had remained largely invisible to me, the previous day. I also took with me a large water bottle and a big thermos flask full of hot tea. My idea was to have tea at the end of every hour of play. Knowing how difficult it was to get lunch or anything to eat at the stadium, I took half a dozen sandwiches, half a dozen bananas, half a dozen oranges, quarter kilo of potato wafers, another quarter kilo of lemon drops and several packets of salted peanuts. Two items were added as an after thought. One was a towel to wipe perspiration and another was a small transistor radio, on which I could listen to the running commentary on the match and thereby make some sense of the largely incomprehensible proceedings on the cricket field.

It was quite a big and heavy load of provisions and equipment and to travel with it on a bus was not easy. But I suffered the torture with the patience of a Yogi. I refused to be put out by the angry remonstrations of other passengers on the bus, knowing the happiness those things would give me at the stadium.

These expectations were not belied and I had a wonderful time at the stadium. Initially I had a problem because one of my hands was engaged in holding the transistor near my ear and the other held the binoculars in front of my eyes. That left me with no hand with which I could eat. I soon found, however, that it was not necessary to watch the proceedings on the spot is ground when they were being vividly and very knowledgeably described to me by an expert over the radio. I therefore deposited my binoculars on my knee and stopped watching the game. I could then eat with relish the various goodies with which my bag was loaded. At the same time I could understand that the ball that was just bowled was a fastish inswinger and the stroke of the batsman was a square cut. All this would have escaped me if I had watched without listening. Oh! It enjoyed it all very thoroughly and impressed the chap sitting next to me by commenting on the foolish mistake made by the bowler by bowling a full toss.

My only problem was that the eats I had brought with me were disappearing pretty fast and it was likely that I would be left with no lunch to eat by the lunch hour. I, however, solved the problem by going out and replenishing my stock while others watched the match. Even when I went out, I missed nothini because the radio was glued to my ear all the time. The binoculars presented another problem. Seeing that I was not using them, everybody around me wanted to borrow them. They had passed from hand to hand and travelled nearly a furlong. I had great difficulty in retrieving them and proving that they were my property.

I had a wonderful time that day. My happiness was marrcd only by the tiresome bus journeys I had to make to and fro. After returning home I tried to think out the solution to that problem. It took me quite a while but eventually I found it. In fact, it was absurdly simple. I realized that it was not at all necessary for me to go to the stadium to watch the match. I could sit in my armchair with a bagful of eatables and listen to the radio commentary while eating them.

Well, I did exactly that on the next day and have continued to do so ever since. In course of time I made one improvement in the ritual. I included in it a nice long nap during and after the lunch hour till tea time. I make up for what I missed watching by reading the newspapers, in which scribes eloquently described the match.

Mind you, nobody knows that I sit relaxed in my armchair at home while others suffer the agonies of going to the stadium and sitting in the sun. I discuss, the match with them so knowledgeably that they are convinced that I must have been there.

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