`Cricket pitches' turn into parking lots

`Cricket pitches' turn into parking lots
The Hindu

In the age of shrinking space, street cricket has no place


BANGALORE: Automobiles and cricket. You bet, they have a connection, but in a destructive way.

Folklore has it that our Bangalore once had street cricketers by the hundreds. Heroism thrived because the neighbourhood boys showed off their mettle with the bats and balls.

Kapil Dev was a distant hero, worshipped before the advent of the idiot box.

But the youth sported the Kapil gait as they galloped to unsettle the local Tendulkar, looking hungry with his makeshift bat.

And then came the cars, plenty of them. They came in every hue and brand, shape and size. The streets got meaner, leaner, as the four-wheeled types guzzled up spaces. Outside every other house was a car, parked for status. The street cricketers, they had nowhere to go. The playgrounds were long gone.

It was the boom time, the automobile revolution. Chased out of status-conscious neighbourhoods, the wannabe Tendulkars and Kapils settled lazily before their television sets. Street cricket concept was perilously close to extinction.

Forever young, the street cricketers once forgot their roots, their class, their religious and linguistic differences. What mattered was a good four, a soaring six. There were no cars to break, only the occasional house window to crack. But that risk was always there. Today, the car owners would excuse nothing. A crack is a crack is a crack.

Well-to-do had their clubs, big, rich and hard to break into. For the street smart, pocket-poor street cricketers, the high walls of the clubs had never been scalable. They would just wonder at the immaculate whites, the polished cork balls, haughty club caps. Driven out of the streets, the youngsters just looked around in vain. The urban jungle had looked never so claustrophobic.

Rules of age mattered less for street cricketers. Fathers batted as the sons bowled.

Tiny-tots watched in awe as their third standard brothers hit sixes galore. Occasionally, the sisters joined in, their proud mothers in tandem. Family mattered, friendships thrived. The old Ambassador was parked at a distance. The drivers cared for street cricket, for thriving relationships, and for neighbourhood harmony. But windows 2006 were too sensitive to care. They cared too much for their brittle glasses.