Rainman talks Cricket

Indian cricket took a quantum leap with the advent of the Indian Premier League in 2008 which transformed almost every dimension of an Indian cricket fan’s relationship with the game. Among the many well-documented changes that resulted from its arrival on the scene, one of the most positive was the elevation of fringe cricketers to the mainstream. The likes of Swapnil Asnodkar, Rajat Bhatia, Manoj Tiwary who were toiling away in domestic cricket for years were as visible as a Zaheer Khan or Sourav Ganguly for those two months of the Indian Premier League, and in some cases, as well paid. Although domestic cricket continues to be played across the country in front of empty stands even now, lives of a lot of domestic cricketers did change courtesy the Lalit Modi brainchild.  Another fairly unimportant fallout of the league was to affect me personally. In this piece, I want to talk about that - the change in the relationship I shared with the stars of domestic cricket before the IPL ...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy One thing that most people seem to remember from Monty Panesar's brief but eventful career is his inimitable style of super exuberant celebrations. In his book 'Monty's Turn', Panesar takes us to the origins of those celebrations. Such a massive fan he was of Sachin Tendulkar while growing up that he had a poster of the Indian batsman on his bedroom wall. In fact, in 1996, when Indian team played a tour game against Northamptonshire, he to ok his bat to get it signed by the little master. He recounts how he and his friends jumped and danced in joy in the stands when Sachin raised his bat in their direction upon reaching his 50. 5 years later when he toured India with England U-19s, he went back home with a massive collection of Sachin posters to adorn his bedroom walls with. 10 years later, making his Test debut against the man he grew up admiring, he managed to conjure up a delivery that beat Sachin's bat ...

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Seems like a fairly harmless photograph, right? Well, some English fans did get 'harmed' as a result of this moment in the photograph. This is a photograph from the West Indies vs England Test at Lord's in 1966. It shows a cricketer who has just completed his ton in the second innings being lifted by an over enthusiastic fan who has found his way to the middle, as fans so often used to back in the day. The batsman was none other than the gr eat Sir Gary Sobers whose 274 run partnership with his cousin David Holford had rescued West Indies from a precarious 96-5 in the match. In England's second innings and the fourth innings of the match, several English fan inspired by the West Indies fan decided to fete their hero of the innings the same way. The only problem this time around was that the man who scored a century for England - Colin Milburn - weighed 112 kilograms. So, once he completed his ton, out came several ...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy There have been few cricketers as eccentric as Jack Russell. While that's a well-known fact, another fact is that there have been few men as multi-talented as the former English wicketkeeper. Both the facts are well captured here in this photograph from 1996. As England stumbled from one disappointment to another in the sub-continent in their World Cup campai gn, here was their wicketkeeper taking his mind off from those disappointments doing what he discovered a love for almost a decade back in the same country. While he had already begun wielding the paintbrush, it was in 1987 that he got into it when he travelled to Pakistan as a reserve wicket-keeper to Bruce French. With just two and a half days of cricket for him from two months of the tour, he had a lot of time to hone his skills by making the myriad views of Pakistan his muse. He went back and put his 40 pieces of art on exhibition. In two days, they had flown off the walls. And, wit...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy Is this a cricket photo? YES, IT IS! The man here is David Frith and what he is eating is not food but paper. To be precise, he is eating the paper that carried his own prediction for the World Cup of 1983. Or 'Eating his words' as a certain Man Singh wanted him to. Before the tournament began, David Frith wrote in the Wisden Cricket Monthly that India should be made to qualify for the World Cup with the associate nations if they fare poorly in England, of which he was sure of. He gave them no chance at all and asked them to leave the tournament. And then 25th June, 1983 happened and Kapil's Devils proved Frith wrong. Emboldened by the turn in India's fortunes, Man Singh from USA wrote in a letter to WCM saying, "I will give him a sporting chance to eat his words now that the team he wrote off has won the World Cup. I will allow him to lace it with chocolate and wash it down with ale or stout." He added, "Be a goo...

#RandomCricketPhotosThatMa keMeHappy You don't see much, do you? It's a thigh pad. A thigh pad that belonged to Mark Waugh. Now, look closer. The thigh pad has annotations indicating the FC centuries Waugh Jr. made in his career. For every century scored, Waugh would draw a little matchstick man on his thigh pad with the name of the opposition against whom the century was scored written below. Cute.

# RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy Dexter's 1993 Smog Prophecy In 1992-1993, when England visited India, they had no idea about the magnitude of disaster they were going to be a part of. They got some of it when, in the first Test in Kolkata, they floundered the trial by spin miserably after being put to sword by Azhar's classic 182. India coasted home with eight wickets in hand. The 'Brownwash' had begun for the English. Ted Dexter, the Italy born English Chairman of selectors, while dissecting his team's abysmal performance, put forward a reason for the loss that was dismissed by everyone with a chuckle. The seemingly 'sour grapes' kind of reason put forward by Dexter was that England's defeat was to be attributed to Kolkata smog. He even went on to announce that he had commissioned a report into the impact of air pollution in Indian cities. The subsequent inning defeats at Chennai and Mumbai discredited Dexter's cl...