Cricket in a Baseball field. !!

During the summers of 1997, one year after the '96 Cricket World cup, every kid of my generation started to talk, eat nd also play cricket.

India's dream of bagging another World Title came to bizarre end in ‘96. Vinod Kambli represented the whole nation and wept as if every1 else from the sub-continent has lent him their tears.

One man still stood out as he plundered 523 runs, making him the highest run scorer in the '96 World Cup and setting the then record for the highest runs by any player in a single Cricket World Cup - subsequently bettered by him in the '03 edition.

He started playing when I was a 3 year old-kid, busy with my own set of toys. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is the man (although he still looks like a boy)who carried hopes of ever increasing Indian-fans, As every second passes Sachin gets thousands of fans, thanks to ever rising Indian population. He must have told the Indian-Government, "Do something about family-planning"; my shoulders are too small to hold every Indian baby.

Coming back to the summer of '97, I bought a 6 feet poster of Sachin, and later a Cricket Bat having "MRF" as its sticker. Guess what, that bat made me an instant hero among my friends; no one else had a MRF bat to play with.

Within a day I formed a cricket team, announcing myself as the Captain, A boy with a MRF bat surely deserved to be the captain, don’t u think so!!

I always feel Nostalgic, recalling those unconditional days. The team led by me played in a Baseball look-alike ground for 7 years. And it’s been 7 years since I played there.

Since Sachin as a 16 year old kid, Milked Abdul Qadir to all parts of the grounds, the grounds across the country became smaller, defying all geometrical shapes, nd proving that cricket as a religion in India can be practiced on grounds of all shapes nd size.