Norman Days

Of all the places in the world, I decided to come to Oklahoma to do my Masters. Let’s just leave it at that as this post is not about that. For a change, I am going to pour out some of the nice (Cricket) memories. When I was desperately searching for something to do, other than the courses I was enrolled in, suddenly there was talk about a tennis ball cricket tournament! There were three apartment/residential complexes with major Desi presence. I lived in an off-campus place called Essex Square, nicknamed the unofficial Indian Consulate by the International Student Office. There was an on-campus place called Kraettli and finally another off-campus place called Bishops Landing, where the people who usually don’t get an apartment at either of the first two places go.

It was decided that there would be three teams, each representing the respective apartment complexes. Somehow I managed to get into the team that was full of Telugu guys with my nice guy attitude, or so I would like to think. I can vaguely remember that they were one guy short and hastily added me as the last member, since I lived next door to the captain.

On a fine Saturday morning, we all set off on a mission, wearing full hand shirts and jeans with bright white sneakers! As we arrived at the ground, I realized that the ground was indeed a huge parking lot! My knees started aching just thinking about playing on that hard surface, especially since I hadn’t done anything that could be termed as physical activity in the past 6 months or so. Soon we found out that the Bishops Landing team is not going to show up. So, it was decided to have a best of three tournament between Essex and Kraettli. I don't remember much about any of my contributions in the first game, but we lost it. The next game was in the afternoon on the same day. I remember contributing towards an important wicket by taking a blinder of a catch, which turned the match in our favor. We did win that match. As expected, we did lose the final match the next day. One thing I understood was that the people from the Kraettli team were always trying to bully us, whether it was a run out decision or a wide ball. 

During the subsequent semesters I became a little known to the extent of captaining the Essex team. Though there were other teams in the mix with all the new arrivals fresh off the boat, it was always our arch rivals Kraettli, who were stomping us everytime we were in the finals. On one such instance, I was bowling the last over with Kraettli needing 12 runs in 3 balls to win, with the last pair in the middle. The last batsman actually limped to the striker's end. He was a small skinny guy. Obviously, I wasn't taking him seriously. I can bowl at a good pace and if I am not bowling wides, it would turn out to be a good ball. I decided that I should bowl slow balls in order to prevent wides. The batsman was standing there like a baseball batter, with the bat up in the air. I smirked as I was running in and bowled a slow but full length ball. The next second it disappeared over the long on boundary. It was a six. I was astonished at what just happened. There were still 2 balls left and I still had some confidence left that we could win this. Next ball I bowled a little faster and it ended up full again. One more baseball-like swing and one more six over long on. Everyone in my team just stood there for what seemed like an eternity while the batsman was carried away by his teammates! They couldn't believe that I single-handedly lost that game. Even today, my friends make sure that I don't forget that over. 

The next semester we came back with a vengeance (it was about time) and the matches were played in a proper cricket ground that OU had provided for the Sooner Cricket Club. By now I had become a kattaan and it gave me great sense of satisfaction that people would justt stay at the boundary line when I bat. Since we used to play almost everyday with the same people from Kraettli, they knew we had better players than their own. They brought in new players who used to play for the Sooner club - the ones that played league games with the actual cricket ball. I had Ajai, the best batsman I could have, Shiva, who could bowl great leg spin, Roux, who can hit boundaries at will, and Ravi, the other kaattan of the team, just to mention a few of my good players! At the beginning of the game, it was unanimously decided that the captain would not bowl ;), so I donned the role of the wicketkeeper. Even before Kraettli could start scoring, they were all out for some 60 odd runs in 13 overs. One of the highlights of the game was a diving catch I took off of a leg glance. Shiva did well with his deceiving leg spinners. I was literally praying to Sachin that Shiva shouldn't start bowling wides as I very well knew we might as well walk away, if that happened. Ajai and Ravi picked up most of the wickets with their wibbly wobbly medium pacers.

I opened the batting with Ajai. We didn't show any urgency as we took our own time, scoring in singles. By the time we crossed 10 overs, Ajai was gone and Roux was in and he started hitting sixes. Soon, I joined in and finished off the match with a boundary. It was a great win, for which I had to wait for almost 3 years. We even took pictures after to savor the moment and to rub it in on Kraetli's players' sad faces. They had talked a lot before the game, like we should have LBWs, as they claimed that most of the Essex players use cross-bat shots. Well, we showed them what those shots could do!