A few moments that just passed by......

Cricket has been my favourite sport ever since childhood when i used to see Mark GreatBatch and Allan Border (a few of my childhood heroes) smash the red cherry round the park. Well the basics of cricket was instilled in me by god i guess..Cos seriously i don’t remember who taught how to hold a bat....During my nursery days the best cricket i used to play u was with my brother inside the house using those fancy plastic cricket bats...Ever since I joined Loyola school cricket just became such a big passion for me. I dun remember if I ever played cricket during my 1'st 2'nd and third classes...But yes i do remember when i was in the fourth standard me Manu Shankar and Arnab Mukhergee playing the now-famous tree cricket during our games period .and yes there was quite a funny incident when i walked to Elaine job madam to complaint about Manu Pattar not sharing the cricket bat....Also we used to have the card board cricket which was quite prominent during exam days when a bunch of used to gather and play cricket using the card boards we use to bring for the exams and paper balls. During those times Jojo Job a.k.a Vasu was quite a hero amongst us cos he could hit sixes when playing with paper ball when the boundary was some 10 metres away from the batting spot...Well fifth standard saw qutie a high rise in the number of cricket enthusiast...with the addition of names like Thasseem,anoop roy,Hari G,Ravisankar.. and quite a few more people joining us....Also we used to get the middle wicket (the middle portion of the football ground) to play during our games periods...And i believe it was in sixth when we were allowed to play cricket even during the After noon breaks.....Well the cricket during the afternoon breaks was quite an expensive affair as most of us would lose our lunch boxes,as they were used to be kept as wickets at the runner's end. Time passed by...And the occasional A vs. B matches were played with much vigour..Then came the split of our group into the ICSE batch and SSLC batch..Ya while we were in seventh we had this new boy SOju who was also quite a cricket enthusiast...Even after the split we used to play togethre during the afternoon breaks...Between the Icse batch and SSLc batch .But that was quite short lived as spate of poor umpriing decisions forcing me to lead a walkout wiht our team...Hehe...Well all this things sounds quite funny now...There was one traitor in our team who was MANU.R.C who stuck with playing with ICSE batch till end(All those guys were our good mates and are even now).While all these was going on there was a group of cricket enthusiast playing under the able leadership of Subin and GOPI at a different venue. To be fair initially we had the option of playing with them but we thought it would be more competetitive to play against our B batch mates....The SUBIN's cricket as it was famously known was quite a tense rivalry between two teams lead my GOPI and SUBIN George. We used to hear of Neil Stephen being a prolific batsman and Kiran Prince the leading Wicket takers but we just couldn’t cut down our ego to play with them..Well if u are wondering about the WE. The self proclaimed senior team of A division lead by the able leadership of your's truly .Well if u are wondering why i wa smade the Captain of the team. Very frankly even i am not sure. But still maybe it was due to the fact that whenever i used to write the team sheet i made it a point to include the heavy weights (both literally and physically)like KIRAN MENON,SABARi,RAHUL ALBERT,SANJU in the team...and also my best mates like rakesh,jatti, ravi,jojo ,Ajay.s(a good wicky and had a great reverse sweep shot which he nevre succefuly played )and a couple more...The division of the class was such that during one time there a 8 A "B" team led by neil .The strangest thing was that the strength of our class was just nice to have three cricket teams.....Well if i am not wrong it was in the ninth when the self proclaimed egoistic players returned to play SUBIN's county cricket. To be fair to them they didn’t even show a bit of reluctance to accept us...And to be fair we did enjoy a bit of high profile status there cos we were always like the first names on the team sheets. But the status didn’t really transform into performances as most of us were big flops while playing there.....The biggest scandal which i have ben involved took place that year. The INTER CLASS INTER HOUSE TOURNEY..Well it involved cricket matches between the houses involving teams conisting of players from both the divisions .It did have a grand launch by the organising comitte that had me also..But the biggest fraud was the treasurer who collected money from players of both the teams citing the reason of buying trophies fir the winning team...Well he did manage to collect a good sum but the trophies...Maybe the presentation ceremony will come in a few years.....that tournament had it its fair share of controversies but eventually AP house led by Sharath(obviously i was also there as the Vice) won the tourney. Well AP house did have it's share of good player like the author. the captian..vinod ,Gopi(he was the top scorer in a few matches),soju to name a few...Well for the three years since the 8 A and 8B teams had been formed we the A team idd enjoy a stranglehold over the B team which continues even till now...The culmination of all the cricket i played in Loyol aSchool was the inter house cricket final played in front of the whole school when i manged to pick up five crucial wickets to help our House life the trophy.....And in the end picking up the Best Bowler of the tournament recognition. Well I have heard great people relish great stages......Well shifting to BVB the only possible chance to play cricket was the INTER HOUSE matched played in the very little place that was available ther.The reputation of the "BEST BOWLER" was there but to be true i failed big time to live upto it. Even though i did manage to end up on the winning side once and reach the Final the other time a high amount of wides in the first final i played did harm my reputation and confidence big time....Even though i made it to the school team i had to sit out of the solitary match the school cricket team played in the whole 2 years i spend there......Coming to Singapore i had a fear that i would have to forget my cricketing dreams..But to my surprise i found out that our poly had a cricket team also that there were a few cricket clubs here playing league cricket...well getting into the team wasn't a tough ask as there just one left armer around....So getting and playing for the team wasn't a tough ask. So even now i continue to play my cricket for one club playin in the Division three league here......Cricket has been quite a big part of my life and still remain to me as the my number one sport...Hope it remains so.....