As a child I always wanted to get into sports. I didn’t have any specific sport in mind, though. It all started with Kabaadi, when I was 10. After a short stint with that, which lasted only three matches (of which two in the bench), I had to be carried away to safety. The reason was that I was trying to punch an opponent away thinking that it was a boxing match. My coach sat me down and tried to explain the rules of the game, which seemingly didn’t go in. So fearing for my safety, the coach had to literally take my name off the list and send me home. The sacking was also accentuated by the fact that the boy I tried to punch away, was few kilos stronger than me and was the son of our district MLA. I moved away from Kabaddi and tried to concentrate my time and energy (those were the only things I had) in tennis. After about 50 valiant attempts to put the serve across the net, the coach sat me down and said “Hey, why don’t you try table tennis, I guess you will have a good future there”. My father didn’t accept that as a compliment (though I did) and wanted to get a second opinion. The second coach said that I will be better off playing badminton. My father understood that there was at least one thing in common between what both the coaches said; that is “I cant play tennis”. Then I my father wanted me to concentrate on cricket. I found the game enthralling as most Indian kids do and tried my hand at batting. But as always, nothing was easy. The coach at the academy tried to teach me the batting techniques, but none of them seemed to go in as I was swinging the bat wildly, delivery after delivery without connecting anything. Exhausted, the coach asked my father to pay double the money, thinking that he will take me away. But, I was very adamant and so was my father. I think he had dreams of me carrying the burden of the billions like Sachin. Fed up, the coach asked my team to get me in as a 12th man for one of the matches. Probably he wanted to see whether I was any good at carrying drinks at least. However, as fate would have it, one of our team’s members fell down from a rather innocuous bike and broke his arm the day before the match. The coach had no other go, but to play me. I was so happy and called my father and told him how my dream of representing my street in a cricket match (in a sport rather) was going to be fulfilled. The next day, I turned up at the venue before everyone else did and practiced bowling. (Oh, I didn’t tell you, distraught with my batting skills, my coach had asked me to refrain from touching anything with close resemblance to a bat). It was match time and after a few overs, the captain had to turn over to me. It was the first ball of the match by me, and usually a bowler will be able to bowl his fastest during the first over, since he will be fresh. I also did but the only exception being that the batsman turned around and hit me for a six. The next ball was no better either, but just that I was able to beat my delivery in reaching the batsman (I mean, I was able to reach the batsman on the follow through first before the ball reached him), I thought to myself, probably I can roll myself up and bowl to the batsman instead of bowling the ball. That’s how slow my deliveries were. So much so, that the batsman didn’t waste any time doing the rituals before the delivery (like tapping the ground , walking across to the umpire like how Srikanth used to do). He did it when I ran up and bowled the ball. After, I completed the over somehow, my coach came to me and said “you can probably go back and try your hand at Bowling, but in a bowling alley not in a cricket field”. Hi all Bowling coaches out there. Here I come.
