Played On

Lillee, Akram, Marshall—none of these iconic pacemen could do what Jugs can: Bowl six balls an over, every over, with spot-on accuracy, identical speed, line and length, through the day. No drinks breaks, no picking at the seam with bottle caps, no swearing at the umpire.

Jugs is a simple enough device. On a platform about the height of a raised arm, cricket tennis balls (or season balls if you’re deemed fit) are fed into a tube and through a pair of contra-rotating wheels which expel them forward. Ball-socket mounting lets you adjust angle and point of delivery, while left/right wheel rotation speed is controlled by dials: 80-80, for instance, generates an 80mph scorcher straight at midstump; 40-80, and a curving outswinger airkisses the offstump.

Short-pitched, full-length, yorker, beamer… Jugs is ready, willing and able. Manning the device is a serious video game kick: It’s like those WWII anti-aircraft guns; all it needs is crosshair sights. At the receiving end, though, it’s like dodging tracers.

Right now, it’s just Jugs and me. I square up in front of the metal stumps, sprung to pop back in place, while 22 yards away, operator Nitin hoists a bucket of yellow balls.

‘‘Forty-five,’’ he calls the speed, holding up a ball before feeding it in. Pop, out comes a slow-medium delivery. I pat it to the offside nets. Pop, pop, pop. My unstylish strokes fend the ball about; on the field I’d maybe snatch a single or two. ‘‘Right, up the pace,’’ I tell him after a couple of overs, now feeling like the Little Master.

Fifty five mph, and the ball arrows in briskly. Compared to a human bowler, it’s more difficult to judge when exactly the ball is going to be released. Still, I connect a few times, though twice snicking sitters to a non-existent slip.

‘‘65, no, 70,’’ I call, making a few practice strokes in the air. Through the helmet I think I spy a here-it-comes grin on Nitin’s face. Pow! The ball is on me before I know it and zipping past. It occurs to me that I’m beyond my depth as I ineffectually chop at the yellow dart. The one time I manage to get the blade of the bat in the ball’s path, I punt it straight back to where Jugs would have been if he’d had a follow-through.

Eighty mph, and I know I won’t even make 12th man. The lemony flash beats me all ends up and crashes into the stumps. Blam, blam, unerringly through my flailing, knock-kneed defence. Hat-trick to Jugs, redness to my cheeks.

I wipe some sweat off my brow. ‘‘Okay, a hundred,’’ I tell Nitin, feeling like Custer.

‘‘100,’’ he confirms, and drops the ball in. It’s Sachin vs Shoaib, the stands are hushed.

Ka-boom! A fluorescent streak whips by and thuds against the wall behind me. I cannot believe how fast that was—one second, a spot of colour at Jug’s mouth, and pretty much the same second, gone. There’s no time to react, let alone react right. How does Akhtar bowl this fast? How does Tendulkar hit fours off him?

Twice more I twitch as the ball cannons past, then hold out a palm in surrender. Sachin ‘Master of Little’ Rao’s ego has retired hurt.