You
might call me a day late. Well I don't give a rat's ass what this
as-much-patience-as-a-six-year-old-kid-in-a-candy-shop generation has to
offer.
As
a kid, I loved the game of cricket in two ways, playing and watching.
The entirety of the Sun's afternoon westward journey would be spent
punching numbered buttons on landlines, repeatedly pressing the switch
stuck outside wooden doors, calling out your friends' primary
social-circle-acceptable identifier at the highest decibel level your
throat could achieve, clearing the field of "kids" on the basis of you
were a regular, it was your time to play or by just bossing them around;
and then laying ‘the pitch’ by either showcasing your artistic skills
at sketching three straight parallel vertical lines or placing a rugged
piece of construction brick because drawing with it on thin air is an
impossibilité.
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| This is only for your visual pleasure. I'm serious. |
The
next one hundred and fifty minutes would be the most favourite part of
our day. Half a quarter of this was spent drafting teams at the pace and
satisfaction-level similar to a Round Table Conference. The rest was
lost in trying our hand, or sometimes to put it literally, hands, at
just about everything and not to forget, the primary (and sole) aim of
any kid’s life - winning. And as I was typing the latter half of that
previous sentence, something tried to tell me that all these childhood
evenings could be the cause for my never-say-lose fixation. Or, maybe
it’s just The Sopranos talking.
Retracing
my steps backwards and putting an end to this tangent, I’m going to end
with the singles and hit a six. Unlike my bowling style which wasn’t
specifically borrowed from any one player, everything I did with the bat
was governed by the principles of a cricketer in his prime back then,
having been awarded the ICC Player of the Year in 2004. And here I do
admit that I may never have been fully successful in executing his style
of play but it was one that I identified with the most. Call it my
defensive-mindset which has transcended since then into my likeness for
the position of the defensive midfielder in football now, but it was
something about the way he batted that appealed to me, both as a player
and a viewer. And just the way he was branded ‘The Wall’ by the media
for his impregnable manner, I was deemed slow and boring for hogging a
major chunk of the limited overs. Except on the days when I helped them
cross the finish line.
Trust
me when I say it, because I’ve seen him do it over and over again,
there’s no one who ever put more elegance in two of the most difficult
shots to play- the forward defensive shot and the square cut. And if it
wasn’t for the uselessness of the latter of the two owing to the lack of
width in most of our playing spaces, I probably would have given it as
much attention and practice as I did with the former.
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| Visual ..explanation. What did you think? |
And
even though I’ve given up actively-following the sport since the past
few years, I still felt sad yesterday when this legend decided to
terminate his forever-lasting and starlit career. I didn’t feel that a
lone status on the world’s most popular social networking site
incorporating the word ‘miss’ somewhere and attached with a couple of
colons and brackets, either forward or backward, stringed together would
be just for a person that I have admired, loved and been inspired by
since my early years; not just on the field, but off it too.
And
it is my honour to have met this man, though it may have been at a
young age and all that I accomplished with my mouth was flash my perfect
set of teeth as he pinched my cheeks which I’m sure were as red as a
beetroot.
And
on this (emotional) note, I’d like to end my personal tribute to one of
the greatest cricketing legends this world has and will ever know.
Rahul Dravid, I will miss you.
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