The curious case of improved catching.

The folowing article has been written by my dear friend Kaipa Kartik.

Usual Suspects:

Chintoo == Afro == Me

Chacha == Himanshu Govil

Ikka == Piyush Srivastava

This one is about cricket which will henceforth be referred to as phatta henceforth(for the uneducated this is the game in which Chintoo hurls a round object at Chacha who is holding a stick some way off), friendship and ultimately so much more. Its tough to know where to start this piece so I suppose it would be best to start at the very beginning.

It began in the summer of second year. I was just walking back to my room when Chintoo shouts or rather comes up to me(I think it was one of the above. Can't be too sure. and asks if I want to play phatta. Now those were the days that I wasn't much of a cricket fantatic. Chacha and Chintoo have changed that quite drastically though. Theek hai I said. Little did Afro know what he had bought upon himself in the near and far future.

So we begin playing. I face the first ball and to my, everyone else's and especially Afroz's utter surprise I get my left foot to the pitch of the ball and play a cover drive that would have made Rahul Dravid proud. As Andy Zaltzman said it was as if Wally Hammond's red kerchief was hanging out of my pocket and Viv Richard had taken over my soul. Of course normal service was resumed next ball when I played all around a full toss only to see the stumps displaced.

So once that perfect cover drive was played, a lifelong fascination for the game of cricket was sealed. I would play phatta with loads of enthusiasm(which means making an effort to move) though without the ability to match. Usually I would fail but the days that it came of were glorious. (You tend to value things more when they happen infrequently, a hard learned lesson from phatta).

Having been a middling player for around two years, my game happened to take a most unexpected jump in the fifth year.(Everything seemed to happen in fifth year for some reason, the best meals, loads of reading and movies, the best of times, the worst of times, placements and of course sleeping). In fifth year for some strange reason I was actually able to hit sixes(Although admittedly the boundaries were short but a six is a six nevertheless(especially when you have been struggling your entire life hoping that the ball finds the middle of the bloody bat))

Another very strange thing happened. My fielding improved almost to the point where I couldn't recognize myself and truthfully speaking my fielding became absolutely spectacular when Afroz was wielding the bat. I don't know why this happened but it happened nonetheless.

Now Afro is an angel off the cricket field but an absolute devil on it. With the ball in hand I think he would bowl beamers at Mahatma Gandhi if angry and only God can save you if you get him run out. (People have tried and have just about managed to escape within an inch of their lives.)

It started off innocuosly enough. I don't recall who the bowler was but it was a heavy ball and Afro absolutely knocked the cover of it. So the ball is coming straight at my throat. I think of moving but no, my hands move before my feet, Before I know it the ball is nestled safely in my fingers as if its found its home and there is no where else that it would rather be. Clean as a whistle, of course there is no way I would drop the catch, the ball seems to be saying.

Sometime later, Afro hits a ball in the air. Everyone thinks its a six, everyone but me of course. I run across, probably jump higher than I ever have and take it one handed. Of course its clean. The poor ball doesn't have a chance. Afroz is livid, but he controls himself. Perhaps he reminds himself that a friend is a friend he reminds himself no matter what he does on the cricket field.

Around five days later I move to a different position on the field. The one where Afroz doesn't usually hit the ball to give the poor fellow a break. I have tormented him enough. The very next ball the ball is hit towards me. I need to run forwards for this though so I run. Someone else is backing up but I still run forward. He's blocked my view now, the ball just escapes his grasp but of course yet again the ball has absolutely no chance. Its home. Unfailingly the ball follows a path from the bat of Afroz to my hands(which are all but butterfingers where other batsmen are concerned). He drops the bat, there is a murderous glint in his eyes. He runs after me. I run to save myself. Thankfully he cools down during the chase and leaves me alive to write this.

Besides the catches there were fours stopped, all balls coming to hand without as much as bobble as long as it was hit from the blade held in Afroz's hands and as you might be able to guess I was never able to field half as well when someone else was batting.

The scariest times for me were those in which Afroz was bowling and I was fielding. I was quite literally holding on for dear life.

On another related note Afroz for some reason tends to bring out the inner sporting hero in everyone. When Afro plays badminton, Ikka plays much better and Afro is probably the only guy on campus who has been beaten by Ikka.

Emperor, empowerer

The original article has been taken from here. It appeared at Cricinfo on 28th March 2008.

Reproduced here:

Viv Richards

Emperor, empowerer

The King had the extraordinary ability of lifting the teams he played for

Scyld Berry

March 28, 2008

No one has proclaimed such a message as Viv Richards did when he hit the ball © Getty Images

Before anyone thought of the phrase, Viv Richards walked the walk. After a suitable pause, following the applause for Gordon Greenidge or Desmond Haynes, Richards took the field like an emperor returning to his domains. Head held high, nose aquiline, jaw working his gum; the maroon cap - never, never, a helmet, for that would have been an admission of fear; and brandishing his choice of weapon, normally a Slazenger, in his right hand. Nobody has walked to the crease as Richards did. No choreographer, equipped with spotlights and sound effects, could have improved upon his natural entrance.

Nobody has batted like Viv Richards either. Sure, a few batsmen since his day have hit the ball as hard or harder, like Matthew Hayden or Adam Gilchrist. But nobody has proclaimed such a message as Richards did when he hit the ball. His batting was all power and dominance - his mental power, and the power of an awesomely muscular yet athletic 5' 10" body; and his dominance of the opposition, if not from the moment he made his grand entrance, then from the first ball, when he planted his front foot down the pitch and outside off stump and whipped it through midwicket for four. By the second ball of a Viv Richards innings, if not before, there were few teams who did not recognise that in their midst was a Master.

Richards has to rank among the half-dozen greatest cricketers of all time. It is not a matter of statistics, although his Test average of 50 was fine enough. It is a matter of what he did with his power and dominance. He not only led West Indies' domination of Test and one-day cricket in the eighties, as invincible captain in the second half of the decade or as the vice-captain, No. 3 batsman and figurehead of Clive Lloyd's side, he also empowered the teams he played for to an extent which has not been sufficiently appreciated. Ask this question about every cricketer you admire: did he leave the teams he represented stronger than when he started? Richards did so, which is why he won my vote ahead of Sir Garfield Sobers as one of the Five Wisden Cricketers of the Century. Sobers was the finer cricketer, no doubt the finest all-round cricketer ever. But Richards had the greater impact, greater even than Lloyd or Sir Frank Worrell, who were his forerunners.

What was West Indies before 1976? "Easygoing Calypso cricketers" was the stock description. In that year, mostly in Australia and England, Richards scored more runs in Tests (1710 at an average of 90) than anybody had done in a calendar year before. Andy Roberts was already knocking batsmen over, one way or another, but soon a whole platoon of fast bowlers gathered around the West Indian banner that was - though it was Lloyd's side in name and fact - held aloft by Richards. Thus were the world champions born.

He did the same for his other teams. When Richards made his first-class debut in 1971-72, the Combined Islands had just been allowed to participate in the West Indian first-class domestic tournament, the Shell Shield. Until then, any cricketer from outside Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana was powerless. Richards' own father was a decent player who represented Antigua but never got the opportunity to play a first-class match. When his son got going, the Combined Islands became too powerful, winning the tournament in 1980-81, and were split into the Leewards and Windwards: the outer islands became the dominant force in the Caribbean, as Worrell had predicted.

	Ask this question about every cricketer you admire: did he leave the teams he represented stronger than when he started? Richards did so, which is why he won my vote ahead of Sir Garfield Sobers as one of the Five Wisden Cricketers of the Century

The same applied in Antigua. Richards and Roberts put their native island on the map as nobody else could have done. What was a backwater after 1950, when the brutal sugarcane plantations were finally abolished, was transformed into a highly desirable tourist destination and Test venue by 1981. Quite an advance for an island of 80,000 people.

Richards empowered Somerset and Glamorgan too, the two counties he represented. Somerset was the Antigua of English cricket until the 1970s: a backwater. They had never won anything in their history. Led by Richards (though Brian Rose was the actual captain), they became the one-day team of their era in English cricket, the Liverpool or Manchester United, winning five trophies in five seasons. Almost single-handedly Richards won Cup finals at Lord's, striding out and making a hundred, instilling self-belief into small-town players who had never possessed it before.

Glamorgan were the same, or even worse, by the time Richards joined them in 1990 - famous only for internal bickerings and bad signings. Richards propelled them to the Sunday League title in 1993, in his final competitive season. In an innings of power and self-belief, if fading dominance, he had to ward off a young tearaway called Duncan Spencer to see Glamorgan home in their final match "after 23 seasons of often abject failure" as Wisden put it. Nobody has called the county a joke since.

It would be hyperbole to assert that Richards empowered Afro-Caribbeans everywhere. But by means of his cricket he gave those of them interested in cricket a pride and sense of responsibility - to themselves, to destiny - which they had never known before. "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery" sang Bob Marley at the same time as Richards walked down pavilion steps and on to the field. "None but ourselves can free our minds." And Richards was the man who did exactly that.