Random musing of a beleaguered engineer

It was a windy evening in the autumn of 1999 at YCC ground where fielders were bit irked by the infrequent chirping of birds. I was asked to do wicket keeping by my senior peers so that my involuntary reflex to catch balls could be developed in an efficient manner. It was a mixed bag for me where I was able to pick some difficult catches and drop easy ones. When I got a chance to bat, I was terrible in timing the ball and the newly bought “Milo bat” didn’t do any wonders as I couldn’t get it right in connecting the strokes.

  In the ensuing weekend, I had started practicing to play leg glance and defensive strokes with varying levels of bounce and pace. The old tennis ball which I had been using for more than a year didn’t bounce much and it kind of assisted me to deal with low bowled deliveries. Three years down the line, I was able to time deliveries of varying pace with flair. The worrying part of my batting stance was that I couldn’t play strokes through front-foot posture. This weakness had hindered me to play cover drives and square cuts which always put me in a position to place deliveries on on-side. The notional narrow area on and just outside a batsman’s off stump was a teething problem for me (any batsman!) to decide whether to leave the ball ,play defensively or play an attacking shot. This delivery was named as “Corridor of uncertainty” by famous commentator Geoffrey Boycott.  Though I was able to score runs, I couldn’t do it with elegance and poise due to thwarted movement of my front foot. My awe for the new rookie in the Indian cricket team named Virender Sehwag grew manifold as his ability to bludgeon the pace bowlers with just back foot strokes and ultra-sharp reflex movements was unparalleled. It took almost a year for me to learn the art of placing the deliveries on off-side with the meaty part of the bat.

                                  The long holidays after the CBSE board exams (10^th standard) had some etching memories ingrained in my heart. It was the time where I got completely swooned by the charm of willow bats. I was fortunate enough to own a BDM bat as I found the blade quality and curved nature of the edge superior compared to the other brands sold at that time. Owing to the tenderness of my wrist and bat weight, I had faced little bit of difficulty in playing the “roll of the wrist” shot for some days. On one occasion, I had smashed a hook shot in the last over of a chasing match that secured a win for my team. This was the defining moment in my life that made me realize that I had honed my reflex skills to near perfection and made me aware of my muscular agility since I had cleared the ball out of the park convincingly. It took a while for this alchemic feeling to sink in.Professional and academic bounties still look irrelevant today when compared to the gamut of emotions I had gone through on that day.