Mumbai’s School Cricket tournaments date back to the days of the Raj. We do not know who Messrs. Giles and Harris were, but the tournaments instituted in their name continue to this day. For every Cricket player in High School, the Giles Shield for Under-15 and the Harris Shield for Under-17 are coveted tournaments. Despite our urge to weed out pre-Independence names, Giles and Harris have surprisingly survived.
The competition was fierce and the top schools vied for the title. These tournaments served Mumbai’s cause well. From the days of Gavaskar to today’s Prithvi Shaw, Mumbai has produced run-making machines in every generation. Their skills were honed in these school matches, where kids as young as 10 years lugged heavy kits and played hard, competitive Cricket. Mumbai’s Azad Maidan and Cross Maidan- these sprawling grounds have nurtured many a school Cricketer, who went on to play for Mumbai and India. The erstwhile Bombay brand of batting was plain and simple. Play like a disgruntled miser, “khadoos khelneka”, never give your wicket away and bat till you wear the opposition down. It was in school cricket that these basics were instilled.
School Cricket was a bubble in itself. Information traveled quickly by word of mouth. Everyone kept a keen eye for the next big star to dazzle the Cricket horizon. Umpires officiated in these matches for a pittance, with even one elderly English umpire. His passion for the school games was so intense, that he had missed the vital point that it was now Independent India and continued to stay on! Journalists covered these matches prominently. If you scored 30 runs, you saw your name in the next day’s newspaper. If you scored a 50 or a 100, you earned the headlines- so and so “shines”. If you took 5 wickets, the headlines screamed so and so “deadly!” Needless to say, this was a school kid’s instant claim to fame. You felt on top of the world!
I was fortunate to be part of this Cricket circuit through the years in school. Regardless of my performance in Cricket or the lack of it, it has surely supplied ample text for conversation! And there is no Cricket narrative that is a bigger hit with young fans than this one. “You mean, you played Cricket with the Master himself?” It is a question bordering on disbelief that I am often faced after each narration. “Not with, against!” I would gently correct them. This is how the tale goes.
It was a Giles Shield match at Shivaji Park where our school faced Shardashram Vidyamandir. We were quite well placed in the match. After the fall of a wicket, a sixth grader with curly hair came in to bat. He played strokes that belied his age, especially the way he pulled the short ball to the boundary. There was something special about that boy- he was a pocket-sized dynamite. His innings made the difference and we lost the match.
A few years later, a certain curly haired boy made his debut for India. The similarity was too close to be casually brushed aside. I could not contain my curiosity any more. One evening, I went to school and requested the old scorebooks to be pulled out. I flipped through the pages and finally rested on the page I had in mind. My finger hurriedly scanned the list of batsmen from Shardashram’s scorecard and sure enough, he was there. You guessed it right. It was Sachin Tendulkar, the Master Blaster!
Many a night, I have suddenly woken up and rewound the mind's tape to that day. I can feel the sea breeze at Shivaji Park, the sun-swept ground and the Cricket pitch closest to the statue of Maharaj. I chuckle at the thought- who knows, maybe, it was our bowling that gave that sixth-grader the self-belief that he belonged to Cricket. And go on to be the phenomenon he was, for a quarter of a century! Back then, he was not a finished product yet. I was lucky. I could watch glimpses of greatness at such close quarters. “Yes, I saw the master...while he was still in the making!”
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