Balls to get balls to school

This dates back to the days when I was a prefect in school and represented the student’s council and along with me was my dear friend Umesh, entrusted with the same kind of duty of ensuring discipline in the school.

Cricket, as we all know is more than just passion for Indians, and the game was nothing less than a religion at our school as well. There were around 10 trees, all in a row near the boundary wall of the school and each one would be occupied by a cricket team at all times and these trees would double up as stumps. Who knows there could have been a few sachin tendulkars amongst them?

As per the rules and regulations of the school we were not supposed to get any kind of sports kits from home and had to use whatever kits were provided by the school authorities. But, as we know rules are made for only those who are interested in following them, there were students who always found ways to mock on the rule makers by floundering them. Soon the footrest of the school furniture transformed into bats and cosco balls started finding their way to school in school bags. The school chose to seek assistance of the prefects to keep a check at this and this gave us the license…

Umesh and I would venture into the playground during lunch breaks and catch hold of all those who got balls from home… We would confiscate them and threaten the boys of harsh repercussions if they repeated this. Poor kids…, they would run away to escape punishment. This way we would atleast get 2-3 balls a day, which were never submitted to the school authorities, but were used to improve our own skills in the game of cricket. Yes, we along with our classmates would play with them during breaks.

Don’t know how many tendulkars got lost in that crowd of enthusiasts because of our behaviour. Sorry guys…. But believe me, I cant stop smiling when I think of those days…