A month back, one of my friend some how got hold of a brand new cricket bat and that was it. The bat was good but the balllllll.!!! Tried bowling with a base ball (does not bounce), searched for a cricket ball ( didnot find), the best we could come close was a tennis ball (very very light, hit with all ur might and the ball ballons up and u end up being caught by the wicket keeper, the farthest u can go is upto the bowler). With a few english guys, turning and watching our game, we could not hit the ball out of the ground for 2 weeks, all we could do was unsettle the dust in the beautiful ground of central park.

With a sour shoulder, i decided would not play cricket unless we are more than 10 people to field. ( coz everyone likes batting no one wants to bowl and field, thats the irony of indian cricketers).

On a lazy saturday afternoon, by friend started teasing me by rolling the cricket bat in his hands (reminded me of the bhuvan of Laagan). Already tired from the morning tennis session I tried to resist my cunning friend. But alas, being a cricket crazy indian, could not hold the curb for long. And with 5 friends we moved to one of the concrete base ball grounds and started "trying" to hit the ball.

Watching us play, a guy approached me how long are u guys going to play cricket and would u like to play with us. I thought the us meant he and a small kid with him, I said ok u can join u are 5th and the kid will be 6th to bat and now go on and start fielding. ( our 5th player was by that time already retired , she could not bear the cold). And in secs, we were 12 guys, 7 of them and 5 of us with 3 cricket bats.

Wow! that was quick and owesome. I failed to realise from the quickness and familiar actions that, the ground was their home ground and they wanted to play a match against us. With curoisty taking the better of me, i was aquantited to all their players who were club level players of Queens. Two big Dust bins were separated by 22 yards and they formed the stumps. They had better cricket balls then we had.And one of their main bowlers took a 20 yard run up and bowled the first ball, the ball skidded on the bounce and boom (made a cracking noise) hit the dustbin (oops Stump). That shook me for a while, I wanted to hold the ball in my hand and see what the mystery ball was.

When we were small, the rubber ball was expensive for us ( in bombay we used to play with rubber balls), and used to tape some cardboard with tapes and round it up and used to play with it. ( called something like chikar patti in marathi). The ball also looked same, and when they started making more balls like that I realised what the mystery ball was made up off ( tennis balls were made heavier by sticking the tapes on them. ..).

The ball and stumps were in place, the fours and six were decided by respective captians, on winning the toss. We decided to bat.! I always believed if ur opponent is unknown why not score first, gets some runs on the board and let see what happens. 6 over game, 7 fielder on each side, ( we were only 5, an indian uncle was pitching baseball for his son, we got him kind of interested and our 7 was ready). To us the game was as tensed as 'India' v/s 'Pakistan' cricket game. ( did I hear a chuckle!!!).

And indeed it was, All the seven guys were american pakistani and they played cricket for Queens borough of NY regularly and we were physically fit as saurav and srinath. [To give a sense of the miss match. If I compare them to cricketers, they were azar , afridi, razak, izzaz,haq, waqar and wasim and we were das, deep, prasad, kanitkar, robin, rathore,( almost forgot the seventh guy).]

And we started to bat, as usual I was keeping a check on the scores. The first ball bowled must be very fast, cause, a) the runup was from almost the boundary, b) the ball had already passed to the keeper even before my captain could get the bat down. c) the keeper could not even touch the ball and it got stuck into the fence. That was like a twister warning hitting us and making us aware of what was to come next. !! The score read 7/1 after a over. At the fall of our wicket, the noise mite have almost gathered more than 20 spectators,all kins and sibblings of our opponents, except for one female who was africian, and I noticed her as she started cheering me after a fantastic cover driver "Choka mara.. Choka"...

Things were not that bad as i expected, their fastest bowler was straying and bowling on the leg, after flicking him for a 4 i grew in confidence and we were 45 in 4 overs with loss of 2. And then clamity struck like a lightening, After tacking a quick single from a mid on, I signalled my partner for a couple and he responded. As he was running at the danger end, I looked back to check if he was safe, suddenly i heard a thud, and to my amazement the fielder had thrown from the boundary and it had hit the dustbin straight. I was strolling in the park with my bat in the air.!!!!!! "Expect the unexpected.", and was reminded of azhar. 62 was the target we set and it was boiling down like a reactor, tensions high, their openers were jolting us all over the park ( and the mysterious disappearance of our 7th player did not help the matter.). With 20 needed of the 11 balls, I saw the game going away from our hands and we started breaking under the pressure.

The game was very very much like a India pakistan team game. With 62 scored of 6 overs our batting was good, only 3 out. Bowling was very bad and fielding was worse (like the indian team). Our fastest bowl was slower even compared with their slowest ball. And they were a true pakistani team, had good fighting spirit, lot of confidence, will to succeed, talented and yet sloppy at times. Even with the unfavourable results, the entire experience was very good.

Its been the best weekend for me in US ( in almost 18 months). 22 runs in 11 balls ( 3 fours, no dot balls) eh! how much more do u expect from IT geeks on H1 visa. Looking for some more testing moments in the Kessina Park on the coming recreational saturdays.