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Everywhere else in Madras there were countless such private grounds, which the cricketers simply entered one day and occupied, so to speak, until the Rip Van Winkle who owned the plot woke up suddenly to build his dream house, in the process, shattering the dreams of many prospective Prasannas and Venkataraghavans, Pataudis and Bordes. Only for the dreams to be resumed in technicolour as soon as the intrepid young cricket warriors conquered their next new territory.
The ‘cemetery’ ground at Mandaveli was a favoured venue for informal or ‘sign’ matches almost throughout the year. A ‘sign’ match was one at the end of which the losing captain affixed his signature to a written statement on the outcome of the match, attested by the two umpires and the rival captain. There were quite a few small grounds in Santhome besides the regular St. Bede’s ground, there was one at the Nageswara Rao Pantulu Park at Luz, one at Gopalapuram, another on Pantheon Road, yet another on Perambur Barracks Road, in fact in every neighbourhood. Those who did not have easy access to open grounds, made do with quiet streets and alcoves or residential compounds, even the corridors and halls of their homes much to the chagrin of elders, especially when it was blazing hot outside and parents did not allow the kids to go out and play.
In my extended family, we invented our own brand of home cricket, an ingenious adaptation of the bagatelle board (see illustration) in which we gave cricket values to the various points on the board. 150 was six runs, 125 was four, LTP was bowled, 75 was two runs, 90 three, and we had different positions for different kinds of dismissals, caught, lbw, stumped, run out, even hit wicket. A skilful player experienced in steering the little steel ball bearings we used for marbles, could make his team score 300-400 runs, if he held his nerve, and score those runs pretty rapidly. It gave you perverse pleasure to make Laker and Lock or Desai and Surendranath score centuries after the top order had failed. A Test match in which maybe four participants took turns to play the two innings of the match could easily take all day, and during summer vacations, nothing, not even Monopoly could be a better way of spending your days. This is the kind of cricket madness most of us growing up in the Madras of the fifties and sixties, carried with us when we stepped into adulthood via adolescence to play or devotedly watch league cricket. Madras league cricket was always played in a competitive spirit, with most of the combatants amateurs determined to enjoy their weekend affair with the game, but not so much as to forget the main purpose of the contest, i.e., winning the game. There was an easy informality about the most fiercely fought first division league encounters, a sense of camaraderie that sometimes crossed team barriers. A delightful anecdote my friend Guru of Uco Bank remembers from his Bunts CC days back in the seventies involved the never-say-die K S S Mani,
My own earliest memories of watching league or club cricket are of matches played at Mylapore’s Vivekananda College, a ground that was no more than a long walk away from home. “Teacher” Narayanaswami was the first batsman I watched score a hundred, and he was playing his first first division league match, for Bhimannapet Recreation Club against Bunts. This was perhaps in 1957 or so, and Bunts had the formidable leg spinner V V Kumar teasing and tormenting rival batsmen. Narayanaswami collared him that day, playing awesome shots all round the wicket. To me, all of ten years old, he seemed like the complete batsman, someone in the Tom Graveney mould. “Teach” never really fulfilled that early promise, and if I know Kumar, he must have harassed the poor chap in match after match or even in the nets, for years afterwards, such was his competitive spirit. The next match I watched at Vivekananda was a friendly between a touring Bangalore team and the college eleven. I remember Vivek Hazare, brother of the former India captain Vijay, sitting on a bench in the ramshackle pavilion and singing what seemed to me to be a Hindustani tune. He made a few runs in quite impeccable style, but it was a young fast bowler called A V Venkatanarayana who made the biggest impression on the young spectators assembled there, with his rhythmic action and the pace he generated.
Now it’s yet another week till we get back with the rest of this interesting chapter. Till then… Published by Kalamkriya Ltd and distributed by Eastwest Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd, the book is available at all leading bookstores and is priced at Rs 295. Kalamkriya, 9, Cathedral Road,
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Continuing from where we left off, here is another section from the early chapters of the book ‘Mosquitos and Other Jolly Rovers’. Happy reading!
Cricket did not stop even in the classroom, where boys played ‘book cricket’, by opening pages at random and affixing runs or dismissals to the two imaginary batsmen - they could be Mankad and Roy in one generation and Gavaskar and Viswanath the next. If for example you opened page 54, the second digit was the reference point for the scorekeeping, and the batsman got four runs (or two, under a different set of rules), if the page number ended in a zero, the batsman was declared out and so on.
who was flicked for six in the very first over of the match. His reaction was to run up to the batsman Vijayaraghavan, and pat his back in congratulation.
Yet another match I watched that season, was also a warm-up match--between the college team and MRC A, for whom my uncle P N Sundaresan, touching forty and quite rusty with lack of practice, opened the innings. The college fast bowler, P R Viswanathan, a nephew of the batsman, was careful not to bowl at his fastest for fear of injuring his uncle, but after he had stuck around for a while, he slipped one in short, perhaps unintentionally. Lo and behold! The veteran hooked the ball imperiously to the square leg boundary.
