Mother on the pitch

I feel I am at silly point, fielding all the shots bowled by a rookie cricket fan. The development was as sudden as it was unexpected. Indee...

I feel I am at silly point, fielding all the shots bowled by a rookie cricket fan. The development was as sudden as it was unexpected. Indeed, it took the Indian team’s historic tour of Pakistan — coming as it did after 15 years — to turn a 69-year-old’s inborn distaste for the game into a passion. Meet my mother, the new cricket zealot in our family. She eats, drinks and thinks cricket, no matter whether it’s one-dayer or a Test match.

It all began with her concern for our boys in blue. Will they return safely, was what she wanted to know. That meant keeping an eye on them and mother insisted on watching all the cricket action live on television.

And so it began. First match, first show. Sachin, she knew about. Saurav, too. Virender Sehwag was in the news recently because of his engagement. So he passed muster, as well. The rest of the team needed a formal introduction. That done, she now coined nicknames for all of them. Pathan, for instance, became uneeswala — because he was a 19-year-old who couldn’t take his Plus Two exams because of the matches.

Then came the nuances of the game. When one is out, the umpire’s finger goes up. When his arms go up, that’s a six. The signal for four, she also learnt. She is quick on the uptake. She is really not interested in getting lost in the nitty-gritty of cricket, only its crucial aspects. Including, of course, the all-important question of all: Is India going to win?

Since power cuts are very frequent in J&K, mother sometimes get left out of the loop, but she always tries to make up by watching the replays. Once, I fell asleep during a match but she continued following the action. At every roar, she would wake me up to know what happened as the English commentary was Greek to her. But language does not scare her. She does not even miss ‘Straight Drive’ featuring yesteryear’s cricketing heroes.

During the fourth one-dayer, which was a do-or-die game for India, she did not leave her chair even for a moment. This meant that her arthritis got worse. She then moved things around and got to watch TV from bed!

If my father was alive he would have been astonished at this transformation in mother. She used to constantly upbraid him about not being strict about controlling the passion for the game in his children. “How will they study, if they go on like this?” she would rebuke him. I remember how my eldest brother was pulled up for watching too much cricket even after he had completed his post-graduation. He should have been spending that time looking for a job, mother had argued.

Story continues below this ad

Today my brothers — who have all settled down very well — laugh at this dramatic turnaround. How does one account for it? Maybe yeh pyaas hai cricket ki.