Kids playing cricket in India

I was like any other kid in India growing up in Chennai. Like most I was drawn to Cricket at a very young age. A wooden plank and a rubber ball and you are good to go. Cricket is one of the most inexpensive outdoor games anyone can play. For me as a kid I started playing the game even before I understood the rules. Even the harshest critic of the game now would have at least had a couple of hits during his younger days. I still remember the first time I watched any cricket match. It was India Vs Pakistan and Sachin Tendulkar smashed Mushtaq Ahmed for two consecutive sixes in Sharjah.

Since then I have been hooked on to this great game. Cricket has been a part of my life in one way or the other for almost 18 years now. I used to watch almost every game that India played, kept track of the records Sachin broke (I Still do) and played the game whenever possible. We even had a team in our locality in Chennai and we used to play some matches with random teams in the play grounds when we were young.

The playgrounds in Chennai during the weekends were an incredible sight. Starting at 6:00 AM in the mornings teams used to run to the grounds to catch a spot to play a match. The matches mostly will be fixed between two different teams and they will agree to play in a particular place at a particular time. It will mostly be a bet match. The money never used to be huge but still enough to keep the teams competitive.

It was fun and we also played our share of bet matches. We did not win too many games but it was great fun. On a Sunday, getting up early in the morning, assembling outside a team member’s house. Riding our bicycles to get to the ground to catch a good pitch to play our game used to be a thrilling experience at that age. We have had our share of losses but even though we played the game as hard as we can, we always had a hearty laugh about the game later when we met again in the evening.

I remember the first ever time my team had a tie and the first game we won. It’s all part of a memory I will always cherish. The game has been so close to my heart and has remained a passion. When I was a kid I always wanted to be involved with the sport. I used to think, even if I don’t make it as a player I would at least become a presenter or commentator or writer or even a statistician. Even though I could not achieve my goal and ended up as a software engineer, the game still lives close to my heart. The main reason I started blogging was due to my love for the sport.

Cricket is a game of extreme emotions and unlike other team sports it is played for a longer duration. In the other team sports you don’t have enough time to go through various emotions during a game. Cricket is a game where you can be happy a minute and shattered immediately after that.

I have learnt a lot from the game. It has taught me the virtues of life like patience, competitiveness, team spirit etc. Even though I hardly get to watch any games these days and mostly follow the scores online, I still try to keep in touch with the game. I write about the game whenever I get time.I still have a dream of reporting cricket for living in the future but that might not happen.

The game has been really close to my heart for all these years and will continue to be so throughout my life. I am not sure how involved I can be with the game in the future but I will always cherish the memories the game has given me till date.