Sunday, Park, Water Tank End

We play at the park behind the water tank every Sunday, and we start at six because by eight the ground belongs to the walking group and they are not negotiable about it.

Nine of us were there at six. Vikram arrived at 6:20 saying the traffic was bad, which on a Sunday at six in the morning is a sentence with no meaning in it, and we let him have it because he brings the good ball.

The toss is done with the same ten-rupee coin every week. It lives in Sanjay's kit bag in a small plastic box, which is more care than any of us give our actual bats. We won it. We chose to bat, because we always choose to bat, because nobody has ever once wanted to field first at six in the morning.

Twelve overs a side. No lbw, by permanent agreement, because we do not have an umpire and we do not have the friendships to survive one.

I want to be careful not to exaggerate this, because it will be exaggerated by everyone else in the group by Wednesday, so let the record show what actually happened.

It was the eighth over. Deepak hit it high and behind square, the kind of shot that in our game is normally either six runs or a lost ball. Faisal was at deep midwicket, which is where we put Faisal because he is reliable and does not complain.

He turned and ran with his back to the ball, which none of us can do, looked up once, and took it over his left shoulder about fifteen metres from where he started. Then he stood there holding it, looking mildly surprised, and said nothing at all.

Nobody shouted. That is the part I keep thinking about. Ten men went completely silent for about two seconds and then all started talking at once. Faisal has worked in insurance for eleven years and has never mentioned playing anywhere before.

Sanjay keeps it. It is a school exercise book with a green cover and it goes back four years now, with a rubber band around it because the spine gave up somewhere in the second year.

Somebody suggested an app in 2024. We used it for three weeks. The problem was never the app; it was that scoring on a phone looks exactly like not paying attention, and the person doing it got no credit for doing a job.

In the book you can see the handwriting change when the scorer changes. That is worth more than the totals.

It is a concrete tank on four legs at the north end of the park and it has not held water in at least six years. There is a crack down one side you can see from the crease.

We bowl from the water tank end. Everybody says it. New players say it within about two weeks without ever being told, because it is what the fielding side shouts, and there is no competing name available.

The municipal notice on the leg says it is scheduled for removal. The notice is faded to the point where the date is gone, which means the notice has now itself been there long enough to become a landmark.

I mention it because a friend asked me last month why we do not just play at the other park, which is bigger and has an actual pitch. And the honest answer is that the other park does not have a water tank end. It has two ends and neither of them is called anything.