Suburban Cricket Hives

On a late afternoon I found myself shuffling towards nowhere. The roads rolled beneath, step by step, and from the crumbs of hazy siesta-dreams I found myself walking into RCF's apologetic side-gate in Chembur, past the police chowki and the vada-pav fellow. Men sat in groups, talking seriously beneath long-haired drooping trees. Aziz Baug's smelly dark pond was behind them, dull in the day by unlit streetlights, bearing its dose of floating weed and plastic, awaiting the night's long sequined glitter. The 'playground' is here, walled on three sides, an aimless blessed stretch that I hope nobody builds on; and my hand gropes in the bag for my camera furtively towards f5.6, 1/125th of a second and a 50 mm lens.

Cricket! Limbs flaying like levers in a sprawling factory, driven by cries as batsmen run hither and thither. No less than seven matches being played here, with balding tennis balls abuzz and darting, connecting hand and bat and thrown-up dust. What concentration you need as a fielder, to know which ball is yours to catch or stop...22 yards seems an unfair distance for tennis ball cricket- every bowler will get whacked, only some less than others. I'd suggest 16 yards with an lbw rule.

I looked on from rocks behind the ground, shying away from unsheathing my camera. But life is short so out it came, and Mumbai's 'public' is anyway heedless of the individual.

I got some clumsy dismissals, including an attempt to sweep which was nicked to the 'keeper. But the shot of the day was this perfect hook shown here. It was just short of good length, on leg stump, and he swivelled perfectly on bare feet, transferring the weight on to his backfoot. He didn't roll his wrists on it but this being a tennis ball it's probably okay, it stops on you, you're still in reasonable control of the shot. It pierced deep square leg and fine leg, unless fine leg was fielding for other match being played at right angles to this one.

It was dusking. A thousand crows nesting in the green of nearby colonies dipped in the slowing air like soot-flakes. Soon it was too dark to play, but shirts still glowed and feet still dashed, for there were matches to be lost or won. Women walked into the church behind; the crows stopped in the unease of twilight; and even in Mumbai where you can play longer, the sun has to set, some time. The lights were on in the street, the vada-pav fellow's hands moved nimbly between things sorted and warm on an English newspaper. The foetid pond too was decking for the night, awaiting some cold secret, some tired movement across the surface in its vanishing glimmers.