"Who switched on the lights in the kitchen? Look at this....!It is interfering with the radio signal. How can one listen to the commentary with this kind of background noise?" my father, a Cricket nut to this day, would be thoroughly irritated.
"Can the entire household come to a standstill just because you need to listen to your Cricket? This is ridiculous!" my mother's voice would shoot back from the kitchen.
Those were different days- simpler days. A 600 square feet home in Mumbai- just basic black and white TV, no telephones, no mobiles, no desktops, no laptops! Our view of the world was through a cassette-cum-radio player perched precariously on a stool in the bedroom. On days such as these, father would huddle around his gadget with his ears glued to the set.
Some of us were still in the process of deciphering the game of Cricket. We would tiptoe into the room- pitch dark, taking care not to stumble against the stool and upset father in the process. As though a voodoo ritual was in progress, the room would be filled with a medley of strange voices and sounds, a symphony from another world.
Listening to Cricket commentary over a shortwave radio broadcast was a stiff challenge. It required an artist's dexterity to manipulate the tuning so that it remained focused at the station. The radio was fickle and had a mind of its own. If the Cricket was desultory, it would automatically drift away to the adjoining station! It was both comical and at times frustrating. "Runs away from us... to bowl to Gavaskar...." The lyrical beauty of the commentary would be brutally cut short and the sentence would end with a gruff, non musical voice... "yeh akashvani.. abhi aap sunenge..." or we would suddenly land in the middle of some mindless Bollywood song!
India always played nail-biting Cricket. By the time we managed to get back to the station, by spinning the tuner a zillion times, a different batsman's name would be heard much to our dismay. We knew that a couple of wickets had tumbled! Those were inopportune times to ask father, "Did anyone get out?" We were sure to get an earful!
If it was the month of July, the clatter of rain filled the late evenings in Mumbai. It formed the backdrop against which the voices of John Arlott, Trevor Bailey, Brian Johnston and Christopher Martin Jenkins rang loud and clear in spurts and muffled and incomprehensible very soon. It all depended on a variety of factors- signal strength, cloud cover, lights turned on at home, the angle of the antenna, the pressure that the fingers applied to hold onto the antenna and finally on the fancies of the instrument! If it was December, Richie Benaud and Alan McGilvray woke us up from Australia. We slept lulled by Tony Cozier's voice in the Caribbean.
Slowly, we learnt to associate a name with each voice. These gentlemen were masters of their trade. Live images from the Oval came floating through their words and we could feel the pulsating action underway just at that moment in England. In a sense, "watching" the action would have robbed us of our imagination. Gavaskar's epic 221 is part of folklore because we didn't "watch" it. Sunny stood out.. more alive through the words of John Arlott- as the lone knight in shining armour, who took on the might of the English bowling for two whole days.. to the threshold of victory, only to eventually falter....! What a heartbreak!
Summer vacation took us to Kumbakonam. Father's cousin stayed at Dabir Street. At dinner time, he would come nattily dressed and peering through his spectacles announce with a note of triumph- "97 for 2 at lunch"! It didn't in the least matter that he was talking about a match played between England and West Indies. Cricket nuts, even in nondescript places felt "connected" to the world through their short wave radios and followed Cricket just for the satisfaction of it!
My father says that he learnt his Cricket from "Jailor mama", "Gondu mama" (who had an upturned nose, we're told) and "Drill Master" at Tiruvidaimarudur.... a remote town in a remote corner of India. It boasts of a temple, a row of houses, a few street dogs and fields stretching till the horizon.
How we wish these simple folks could have reached out to John Arlott and confided that his voice - nasal, rhythmic and poetic all at once- soothed their evenings! Wouldn't he be pleased as punch!?
"Can the entire household come to a standstill just because you need to listen to your Cricket? This is ridiculous!" my mother's voice would shoot back from the kitchen.
Those were different days- simpler days. A 600 square feet home in Mumbai- just basic black and white TV, no telephones, no mobiles, no desktops, no laptops! Our view of the world was through a cassette-cum-radio player perched precariously on a stool in the bedroom. On days such as these, father would huddle around his gadget with his ears glued to the set.
Some of us were still in the process of deciphering the game of Cricket. We would tiptoe into the room- pitch dark, taking care not to stumble against the stool and upset father in the process. As though a voodoo ritual was in progress, the room would be filled with a medley of strange voices and sounds, a symphony from another world.
Listening to Cricket commentary over a shortwave radio broadcast was a stiff challenge. It required an artist's dexterity to manipulate the tuning so that it remained focused at the station. The radio was fickle and had a mind of its own. If the Cricket was desultory, it would automatically drift away to the adjoining station! It was both comical and at times frustrating. "Runs away from us... to bowl to Gavaskar...." The lyrical beauty of the commentary would be brutally cut short and the sentence would end with a gruff, non musical voice... "yeh akashvani.. abhi aap sunenge..." or we would suddenly land in the middle of some mindless Bollywood song!
India always played nail-biting Cricket. By the time we managed to get back to the station, by spinning the tuner a zillion times, a different batsman's name would be heard much to our dismay. We knew that a couple of wickets had tumbled! Those were inopportune times to ask father, "Did anyone get out?" We were sure to get an earful!
If it was the month of July, the clatter of rain filled the late evenings in Mumbai. It formed the backdrop against which the voices of John Arlott, Trevor Bailey, Brian Johnston and Christopher Martin Jenkins rang loud and clear in spurts and muffled and incomprehensible very soon. It all depended on a variety of factors- signal strength, cloud cover, lights turned on at home, the angle of the antenna, the pressure that the fingers applied to hold onto the antenna and finally on the fancies of the instrument! If it was December, Richie Benaud and Alan McGilvray woke us up from Australia. We slept lulled by Tony Cozier's voice in the Caribbean.
Slowly, we learnt to associate a name with each voice. These gentlemen were masters of their trade. Live images from the Oval came floating through their words and we could feel the pulsating action underway just at that moment in England. In a sense, "watching" the action would have robbed us of our imagination. Gavaskar's epic 221 is part of folklore because we didn't "watch" it. Sunny stood out.. more alive through the words of John Arlott- as the lone knight in shining armour, who took on the might of the English bowling for two whole days.. to the threshold of victory, only to eventually falter....! What a heartbreak!
Summer vacation took us to Kumbakonam. Father's cousin stayed at Dabir Street. At dinner time, he would come nattily dressed and peering through his spectacles announce with a note of triumph- "97 for 2 at lunch"! It didn't in the least matter that he was talking about a match played between England and West Indies. Cricket nuts, even in nondescript places felt "connected" to the world through their short wave radios and followed Cricket just for the satisfaction of it!
My father says that he learnt his Cricket from "Jailor mama", "Gondu mama" (who had an upturned nose, we're told) and "Drill Master" at Tiruvidaimarudur.... a remote town in a remote corner of India. It boasts of a temple, a row of houses, a few street dogs and fields stretching till the horizon.
How we wish these simple folks could have reached out to John Arlott and confided that his voice - nasal, rhythmic and poetic all at once- soothed their evenings! Wouldn't he be pleased as punch!?
Can I learn cricket someday from you? -
ReplyDeleteSaanku
Sure Saanku! Let's start now!
ReplyDelete-dad
Oh no...we have enough cricket nuts at home Saanku. Don't get into that pleeeaaaasssseeee. y-k-w:)
ReplyDeletesaanku,
ReplyDeletewhile learning cricket at home, you should be careful with mirrors and glass panels. No doubt, they are excellent fielders but in the process of fielding, they break down and make noise. Even before that noise subsides, explosions start from kitchen and immediately cricket is abandoned. Ask appa to explain this.
thatha