Making and Unmaking

‘I am not a good batsman’, the 11.y.o put his willow wood bat aside and began to whine.

I had bowled him several overs by now. He had tried hitting all of them in his customary style, a sweep across his body, cross-bat.

‘You are always playing the same style. That won’t get you far’, I said. Having said this I thought ‘I shouldn’t have said that. He has already given up. What is the point in making him weaker’.

The balls I have been sending him were pretty fast and often it missed his bat. That was the reason for his unhappiness.

‘I am not a good batsman’, he repeated and sat down.

Over the years, we have been playing sporadically. Some days as soon as he comes back from school, he would want me to go with him to the ground and play. And I have seen him do that same style. A sweep across the body with the bat finally rising up. If the balls are bowled straight, it will connect mostly and I can see the happiness in his face. Any other way, he will miss them. If I bowl too fast also.

When we began he was too young. I was excited to see a little kid hold a small bat and play. In my mind I became the coach of Virat Kohli. I was vigorously talking to him about how he should be moving quickly to the ball. I showed him how to go on the front foot and take the ball as it pitches.

‘Movement is the key. If you keep standing where you are, you won’t be able to reach to the balls’, I said.

Every time I thought he made a mistake, I did not hesitate to correct him. Sometimes I remember chiding him. Inside me there was this feeling that a Kohli shouldn’t be missed because of my lethargy. He never got annoyed. He attempted his best to translate what I am saying with words and showing with the bat. But it barely met my standards.

‘You know Dhoni hit the last ball of the last over of the last match of the world cup off Malinga, the deadliest bowler to Six? That was nothing short of a wonder’, I used to give him some exciting tit bits of Cricket.

‘How was your Cricket in School?’, he will check on me sometimes.

‘Oh, I was in the School team. Our Principal was Cricket crazy. He got some money to buy all the stuff. He used to send the School bus for the team to play the league and district level matches. You know what, once I got a hat-trick in a district level championship and he was so proud of me and talked about it in the assembly while we were still touring. Next day when I went to school, I was the hero’.

Father’s stories are always exhilarating for a child. They give them something to look up to.

Over time he felt he cannot be any one other than Kohli.

In my middle school years, I was extremely Cricket crazy. Every waking hour was about Cricket. The madness took me like Corona Virus. Whenever I walk into the house, my hands will be swinging. My father couldn’t understand it. He never liked Cricket those days. But it was the 80’s and we were living in a small town that barring a few no one knew Cricket.

I could see he was becoming as crazy as I was. He was in the ground on all weekends playing with his friends. Most of them were the blind hitters inspired by the T20 generation.

He used to come back crest fallen and say, ‘I could not even score a single run. No one is bothered about ground shots. All my friends can hit the ball in the air. But I try all the techniques you taught and I get out soon’.

I thought this is probably getting nowhere. I never became a Cricketer. In college, I had stopped completely. I was into studies. Do I have the guts to push him down a path which is alien to me? What if he is falsely pepped up by my talks?

Myself and my wife had to do the unwinding of the coil. It took some time. But he realized that he can play Cricket for the fun of it like a billion others do and need not be Virat Kohli. We told it is very very hard to be someone like him or even the other players who would have to sacrifice a million things of life to appear as the star of millions. He can continue to play and in case he still finds the madness in him, he can go after it.

Inside me I still wonder how these players play such fast balls. Whenever I bowled a very fast one, he will say ‘I cannot see the ball. It disappeared so fast’.

Even when I bat I am seeing that I play by intuition. I miss a lot of balls, sometimes even the easy ones.

‘You see people like Dhoni or Kohli have played more balls than any one. It is the practice that makes them perfect. You keep playing and one day you may find you are able to hit any ball’ I would tell him.

We took to bat after a long gap. The lock down made us try all sort of stuff in the place in front of our house. Yesterday when he was bowling, I could mentally replay the ball coming to me and see how I play in slow motion. My mind replay showed that I either am too early or a bit late, too close or a bit away on the missing balls.

‘You see, just look for these two parameters. Speed and Trajectory’ I said to him and showed how he should move to align to the ball coming towards him. His face lighted up as now he has grown up to understand the physics better.

We had begun again to make the Kohli inside us.