They
say that coming colours cast their shadows. Not everyone notices
shadows though and few still can extrapolate to the colours yet to
materialise. This is a story about shadows and colours, where it took
years and perhaps even decades for people to work back colour to shadow.
It’s a story about a school and old school ties. It’s a cricket story.
It’s
all old hat, water under the bridge and all that, one may think, but
the problem is that the hat survives and indeed thrives not just in the
particular school and not just in cricket.
Under 15 cricket is
for 13 and 14 year olds only since those younger would fall into the
Under 13 category. So there was a boy, 13 or 14 years old. A good
batsman. An opener. His place in the team was assured. At one point in
mid-season the coach had to go abroad. The team was coach-less for a
while. Well, not exactly.
Keep in mind that this was a time when
parents for the most part didn’t get involved in their kids’ activities
in school. Things were pretty laid back. The boys enjoyed their cricket
and didn’t worry about behind-the-scenes manipulation. Indeed, they
didn’t even know such things could and did happen.
Nothing
happened, except for an almost innocent intervention by one of the few
or perhaps the only parent who turned up at the grounds to watch the
boys practice. He took over the coaching. To this day no one knows if
this move was sanctioned by the school authorities. If so, there is the
issue of interest-conflict. But it was just one of those things. If
anyone noticed it was probably shrugged off as a generous move by
someone who wanted the team to do well.
The parent had at least
on one occasion spoken to our opener about his place in the batting
line-up: ‘Why do you want to open? You could come two-down or even
three-down.’
Now fast forward several years. Those 13-14 year
olds were now competing to be in the school’s First XI and the honour of
representing the school in the annual ‘Big Match.’
It was by
any standard a pretty mediocre year; just a single century and handful
of half-centuries over the course of the season. There were a couple of
good bowling performances by one spinner who played primarily as a
batsman. Our Under 15 Opener had a couple of half-centuries to his
credit and was second in the batting averages. The Good Samaritan
Parent’s son scored one fifty but was 10th in the batting averages. The
centurion was fourth. The third made it to the Sri Lanka Under 19 team
and when the big day came was in Australia on national duty.
Anyway,
a few days or perhaps a week or two before the Big Match, the team was
announced. The four boys heading the batting averages weren't in. The
Good Samaritan’s son replaced our boy. He would open batting. Colours to
come had indeed cast their shadows, but certainly not in the way one
would have thought ! There were two off-spinners in the team. The boy
who was 12th in the batting averages (just 14.15) was included. Although
there was a wicket-keeper who had made useful contributions with the
bat, the selectors picked someone else to keep. This boy’s batting
average wasn’t worth talking about. In fact in the big match souvenir,
his name was among those who were politely said to have ‘also batted.’
Another
pertinent fact. The Good Samaritan and his wife opened their hearts and
home to that year’s skipper and his girlfriend. A tryst-place, then.
Perhaps there were cheques to cash, perhaps not. The fact remains that
their son was picked for the Big Match.
Now, in cricket, unlike,
say, in chess, coaches/selectors can draw from a range of
justifications: ‘we need a back up for so-and-so, we need a leggie, we
need to have a few lefties, that one had a low score in the last match,
this one has to hold his end up.’ Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. We don’t
know what kind of reasoning was at play. We do know that
coaches/selectors aren’t answerable to players or parents. Not in those
days anyway. The captain probably had a say, but we don’t know for sure.
As for the beneficiaries, let's not forget that they were kids too and
anyway, at least some of them, may have been blissfully ignorant of
machinations they benefitted from.
So the Big Match arrived. The
other team was superior by quite a margin and even if team selection
was clean, they would have still been favoured to win. They didn’t,
thanks to two spinners, who fought and survived the last hour of play.
The opening replacement? A duck in each innings. Had he scored a century
or even a half century or protected his wicket tenaciously for a couple
of hours, as per the glorious uncertainties of cricket, the narrative
would have been quite different. That didn't happen though.
We
know that three young boys were axed. No explanations given. They fell
or were made to fall. Were they legends? For their friends, yes. Many
knew that mischief was afoot and that these three fell victim to designs
they probably only suspected. They did know they were treated unfairly.
Years later, the captain met our opener somewhere in a faraway country. At a party. Maybe drinks were downed, maybe not, but the captain simply embraced the man who was dropped. The captain wept. He slew his ghosts that night. One hopes that others may have too, each in his own way.
‘What happened, who did what and who suffered isn’t important. What’s important is that people should know that such things do happen and they should not,’ this was the gist of their take on that season, the shadows that cast coming colours and the colours that were awarded to the undeserving and denied the deserving.
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