July 18: Want a taste of tough cricket played in the most inhospitable of conditions? Watch the Kanga League, Mumbai's monsoon cricket carnival which began last Sunday. The maidans are so wet you might think they would deter walking, the wickets so wicked that batting becomes an act of courage and fielding a feat in outfields full of thick, ragged grass dotted with muddy puddles.This sets the stage for a tournament of one-dayers which puts a player to the ultimate Test. ``The surface is pock-marked with ditches, even what look like small ravines, but it's these hazards that lend the Kanga League its own cadences and increase our appetite for the game,'' says Praveen Deshpande, a `C' division Kanga League player.The tournament, named after Dr H D Kanga, a national selector, was started in 1948 to fulfil this very aim. ``Conditions in Mumbai during monsoon are similar to those in England all year round. Kanga League was introduced to acquaint city cricketers, many of whom represented India, with this kindof weather so that they wouldn't face too many difficulties playing in windy and overcast conditions out of India,'' says V S Patil, who, with over 500 wickets in his bag, holds the record for highest scalps in the tournament. He admits the tournament is bowler-friendly. ``Usually, on damp wickets, the ball comes slowly on to the bat, making good drivers of the ball mistime their shots and get out cheap,'' he says, adding, ``of course, even well-timed drives can prove useless when the ball gets stuck in the slush.'' At times, the ball keeps low; at others, it rises awkwardly, never for a moment giving the batsman room for comfort. If it has rained heavily the previous day or before start of the game, things are more difficult. That's why the amount of runs a batsman scores in a Kanga League match have to be doubled to know their real worth: a fifty is akin to scoring a hundred, and a hundred no less than a double century in the other, friendlier format of the game.But good batsmen love such fiercecompetitive battle. ``Once, after he finished a game in England on a Thursday, Sunil Gavaskar called Suru Nayak in Mumbai asking him to note down his name for Sunday's game. Sunil said he might fly into the city early Sunday morning but would surely be on the ground for the Kanga League fixture. Such is the attractiveness even for batsmen,'' Patil says. Padmakar Shivalkar, who has taken the highest number of wickets in a season (94) also praises ``Mumbai batsmen's abilities in tackling the tough conditions.''Yet bowlers have their own difficulties which both Patil and Shivalkar emphasise are often overlooked. If you can't be squeamish about running into the ditches to field a ball, you also can't be when you're running in to bowl. Oftentimes the place where the bowler can `indulge' in a run-up is very narrow or at an oddly uncomfortable slant, like the pencilled afterthought of a maidan's designer.Yet, all the difficulties notwithstanding, the desire to play Kanga League grips many clubs in the cityapart from the 98 which are broken every year into seven divisions (A to G), says Mumbai Cricket Association's former member Ravindra Mandrekar. For such aspiring clubs, qualifying rounds are played in May every year, and the four top teams make it to the League level. To accommodate these four, two top teams from each division (having 14 teams) move a rung higher every year, and the last two slip into a lesser division. Each team plays 13 games in all.``Earlier, all the top cricketers used to play in the Kanga League, but now, with most Test players preferring to play club cricket in England, Kanga League doesn't have too many big names among its participants,'' rues Mandrekar. This year, though, the scene is different. According to the rules, a player cannot go to England to play league cricket unless he's played at least five Ranji trophy games during the season. Mumbai having lost early in the Ranji trophy, most of its top players would be available for the League this year. Which means there will bemore crowds in Mumbai's maidans this monsoon to watch the stars of today and yesteryear battle. An excited Kanga League spectator Sudip Das says: ``What I like to see is the reinterpretation of the game in the League. It's fun to see square-leg divided from mid-wicket by a filthy canal and both fielders running into it to get at the ball.'' Kanga League can be hard, brutish, and messy, he says, but to the cricketer and the cricket-lover, the connoisseur and the casual supporter, it has an appeal uniquely its own.
