Beyond the realm of the apparent lies the world of happiness and solace. The moment I saw that little angel on the Karnail Singh Stadium during the Group A Ranji Trophy game between Vidarbha and Railways, I felt a certain sense of elation that any soul wanting and longing eternal joy would have.
The serene settings of the Karnail Singh Stadium amidst the ruins and newness of New Delhi are as oxymoronic as literary liberty would allow it to be, yet it has an old world charm which lends any game of cricket the vital coat of authenticity that it commands at times. The third session of the first day of the group game was on between the aforementioned sides. Railways pacer Manjeet Singh and off-spinner Madhur Khatri were operating in tandem and were trying their level best to dislodge a potentially formidable partnership between the Vidarbha duo of Akshay Wadkar and Mohit Kale. The two of them had stitched together a worthwhile contribution of around 90 runs after a minor collapse had struck their team in the earlier session where they had lost three wickets for 15 runs within a matter of 7.2 overs as Vidarbha slid from 89/1 to 104/4.
The cricket was mildly intense and the terrain quite old-worldly as discussed above in terms of charm - a handful of spectators thrown around with officials, groundstaff and players all going about their business with a lazy slumber which one would expect is easily induced on a winter afternoon in Delhi.
Untouched and unaffected by all these pretensions or seriousness of an inflated sense of self-importance that cricket could very easily induce, a little angel in the form of a boy of around 5-6 years of age emerged out of the Athletics enclosure of the stadium on to the outer cricketing turf of the stadium. There was a group of mynahs which were going about having fun on the grass and to my wondrous surprise, our little angel was playing the chidiyabaaz to the flock, shooing them away. Absolute joys of childhood! Lo and behold! And yet before you could say these words, our angel disappeared as soon as he had emerged leaving behind a joyous memory one could cherish for ages. The best things in life come for free afterall and yes cricket was freed from its trappings that day for me in a sense, reminding me of my own co-operative ground and its sparrows.
The serene settings of the Karnail Singh Stadium amidst the ruins and newness of New Delhi are as oxymoronic as literary liberty would allow it to be, yet it has an old world charm which lends any game of cricket the vital coat of authenticity that it commands at times. The third session of the first day of the group game was on between the aforementioned sides. Railways pacer Manjeet Singh and off-spinner Madhur Khatri were operating in tandem and were trying their level best to dislodge a potentially formidable partnership between the Vidarbha duo of Akshay Wadkar and Mohit Kale. The two of them had stitched together a worthwhile contribution of around 90 runs after a minor collapse had struck their team in the earlier session where they had lost three wickets for 15 runs within a matter of 7.2 overs as Vidarbha slid from 89/1 to 104/4.
The cricket was mildly intense and the terrain quite old-worldly as discussed above in terms of charm - a handful of spectators thrown around with officials, groundstaff and players all going about their business with a lazy slumber which one would expect is easily induced on a winter afternoon in Delhi.
Untouched and unaffected by all these pretensions or seriousness of an inflated sense of self-importance that cricket could very easily induce, a little angel in the form of a boy of around 5-6 years of age emerged out of the Athletics enclosure of the stadium on to the outer cricketing turf of the stadium. There was a group of mynahs which were going about having fun on the grass and to my wondrous surprise, our little angel was playing the chidiyabaaz to the flock, shooing them away. Absolute joys of childhood! Lo and behold! And yet before you could say these words, our angel disappeared as soon as he had emerged leaving behind a joyous memory one could cherish for ages. The best things in life come for free afterall and yes cricket was freed from its trappings that day for me in a sense, reminding me of my own co-operative ground and its sparrows.
