When Mumma bowled me over!!!

Having nothing more stimulating to do, there I was surfing the channels a few minutes back. Star Cricket was telecasting the highlights of the 3^rd day of the 3^rd test of the nPower Test Series from Trent Bridge. Being an aficionado of quality test cricket – actually any shitty cricket including the Australian domestic codswallop; a 22 yard of cricket turf is all that’s required to seize my attention – I let the remote control heave a sigh of relief. It was Jamie Anderson’s day. He was delivering gold. The out swingers were simply unplayable. He had already scalped one-to-six of the kiwi batting order and had left them seething at 123-7 (he finished with outstanding figures of 7-43). The score line bordering the lower edge of the television read “NZ need 42 more to avoid follow-on”.

There was a usual doubt in Mumma’s mind. “What’s a follow on?” she enquired. Well, this was regular stuff. Mumma has been whetting her knowhow of the gentlemen’s sport since the time I’ve been religiously following it. She started with the trivial things like “Why doesn’t the eleventh wicket fall???!!!!” or “Why didn’t the batsman get out when the fielder caught it after it had bobbed once?” or “Why doesn’t he run for extra runs before the ball could run across the boundary?” And I used to elucidate it all to her gleefully. Actually it helped me to avoid getting her irritated and change the channel.

She has come a long way. She can now calculate the required run rate in the death. She now knows what a maiden over is. And she is no more amazed at the sight of Warnie spinning the ball by miles.

I tried to avoid any technical jargon and explained to her what a follow on is. She understood it as always : she’s a fast learner. But then came Stuart Broad who dismissed Kylie Mills on the third delivery and outsmarted Ian O’Brien on the fifth delivery of the same over. One slow-mo replay followed another. Here I was nonplussed by the rank unplayability of the reverse swinger that took the off-stump off the ground when mumma dropped a bomb, flushing down the gutter all the cricketing gyaan. “Umpire galat hai dekh…Ball to balle se lagi hi nahi…”