The best moment of my life

Picture Credits: https://www.artdecomumbai.com/research/shivaji-park-the-culture-and-how-it-shapes-its-residents/

I remember smelling the fresh red cricket ball in my hand. It was completely unused. There was this shiny sheen over it. The kind you do to make something stand out in a showcase, to draw everyone’s attention to it. I brought it up to my nose to inhale deeply — the fresh smell of leather. Running my index, middle finger and thumb over the golden lettering of the brand that manufactured this magnificent cricket ball.

As a 13-year-old, it was the closest I felt to being truly important. To be handed this fresh piece of leather. It was a nippy Mumbai morning. The kind of wintery morning that teases you between 7 am and 9.30 am before the sun truly bursts through to strongly dissuade any optimistic fool who dared to wear a sweater.

My cricket coaching center was playing against the Achrekar 11. Yes, the same Achrekar who was the Dronacharya to our Indian cricket’s Arjun. (Sachin Tendulkar, in case the penny hasn’t dropped yet) Dronacharya was not there on that day, his good name was enough to give all of us a heightened sense of occasion.

Anyways, I had marked my run-up and was staring at a skinny right-handed opening batsman, maybe my age, I couldn’t tell, with him wearing a helmet that shaded his face. I was a gentle medium pacer at best who tried his bloody best to chalk up more speed without any success. I had a pretty long run-up that did not achieve much except allowing the batsman to think about things not related to cricket as he patiently waited for me to deliver the damn ball. Well, if you are a smart bowler, you will use any trick in the book, won’t you?

Anyways, the first ball was a polite offswinger. It pitched in line with the 4th stump and kept swinging away beyond the 6th stump. It was safely left alone by my watchful opponent at the other end. Now don’t ask me how to bowl offswingers. I know the theory and I promise you, that day, it was the ball and the nippy air talking. I was only trying my level best to pitch it up.

The next 4 balls were also very obedient-looking outswingers that were either left or defended by a batsman who seemed to be a traditional person at heart, he did not attempt anything outrageous in that first over. My main contribution during this time (apart from a long run up and releasing the ball with as much effort as I could muster) was to aggressively make one side of the ball shiny by repeatedly scraping saliva from my tongue. Also, I curiously studied each tear of the leather and scuff marks after each delivery I bowled.

Picture Credit: https://lbb.in/mumbai/shivaji-park-gymkhana-389c55/

I don’t know what it was, maybe it was the gentle clapping from the fielders of my team or the fact that the batsman was not trying anything to unsettle my rhythm or it might just be the importance of having been given the first over of the match, I did put my heart, soul and all the blessings from my ancestors into that last ball of the over. I remember shortening the run-up to add more zip to the ball as I wisely realized that the long run was making the ball float out rather than hit the pitch hard.

To cut this long meandering story short, I ran in hard, my jump and release was perfect. I can still see what happened next in slow motion 23 years later. Instead of the ball leaving the batsman, it came back in menacingly, hurried him for pace, beat his hurried defense and hit the absolute left corner of the off stump. If all of that was in slow-motion, the bail getting dislodged and falling over was in ultra-slow motion.

That single ‘tackk’ sound of leather hitting a rounded piece of wood (wicket) was the only sound for miles around (at least in my head). I can still hear it clearly as I am typing this. I was in my follow-through and in motion but that was the moment — time eternally stood still. For that moment was the highlight of my average life. And it will forever remain so. Everything beyond that singular point of space-time has been a downward journey.

Imagine a moment where each of your senses is amplified 1000x, your memory has soaked in that moment until there is not even a leaf of grass that you cannot remember. Well, this was that and better, because I had perfectly set-up the person at the other end.

What happened after that moment was immaterial and frankly a bit of a blur. Everyone converged around me to exchange high fives and all of that. As any other 13-year-old playing at Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai, I was able to visualize doing this against the South African and Australian teams at the Wankhade stadium in a few years. That dream was short-lived though as I was taken to the cleaners in the next few overs and dropped a dolly of a catch because I was busy daydreaming about that perfect over that I bowled.

But that moment is never far away from my mind. Maybe writing about it is a subconscious attempt to allow that moment to float away so that something equally extraordinary can happen again (I will staunchly argue against anything being better). However, I highly doubt it because I am at the end of my ramblings and all that happened while I was writing this piece was that I was delivering each ball in my mind, holding that beautiful fresh shiny piece of hard leather in my hand and hitting the corner of the off-stump with the world’s best in-swinger. The perfect over. Thank you, the rest of my life is an act of bowing out with as much grace as I can muster.