From Ramsundar Govindarajan, India

All possible, even on a piece of cloth © AFP

Almost every person who’s played cricket in his childhood will recollect a host of cricket-inspired games played during school is likely to have saved him/her from the ennui of never-ending lectures, drills, assignments and exams. Before they are forgotten, I’d like to contribute my penny in documenting some of the best ones.

Book Cricket : This, probably, was the most popular game, the best possible escape from a moral-instruction class and the only alternative when bad weather made outdoor games impossible during a physical training (PT) lesson. A textbook had to be flipped open for every ball bowled and the last digit of the even number on the landing page was the score made (number ending on 0 meant out). An ‘8’ ending number could either mean no run or 8 runs according to the format of the game. Teams were made, tournaments were conducted, scorecards were painstakingly charted and World Cups were won and lost every week. Flipping and landing on the same number more than once meant the next 15 minutes were lost in a match-fixing controversy and almost every match ended in a counting debate. Every reaction of the game was emoted - be it a swashbuckling four from Azhar , the celebration of an in-swinging yorker from Akram or the intended slow flips when Tendulkar was in his jittery nineties. There was always drama, commentary and celebration.

Indoor cricket : This game was almost reserved for vacations. A green cloth (ground) was spread on the floor, which had markings for distance cleared versus runs awarded. Plastic fielders stood on V-shaped stands and were placed all over the ground. An inclined plane was supported on one end of the pitch from where a "ball bearing" was slid towards the stumps at the other end. A toothpick-sized bat was used to hit the ball. Runs were made according to the distance cleared and if the ball ran up the slide and hit the boundary, it was a six. If the ball landed in the V between fielders, the batsman was out. If the cloth shook and fielders fell, it meant a warning. Two warnings led to a dismissal. Every shot was possible –cover drives, square cuts and even make-believe pulls. Bowlers used the slide to bowl their cutters, and added backspin to turn the ball. That it took a long time to complete the match was more of a merit than a disadvantage.

There were a couple more games which I would love to go into more detail but for the space crunch. Big Fun (also a popular bubble gum in India at the time) was the single-biggest reason for oral cramps among us card-collecting youth. You were the most respected student of the school if you knew how to spell Vangipurappu Venkatasai Laxman or Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas. And if someone brought "flipper cards" revealing a textbook cover drive from Sunil Gavaskar, he was the school hero of the day. I only hope the lectures continue to be as boring as they were, for these little things augur well for the recreational interests of school-goers and the popularity of the game itself.

From Gerard Jayaranjan, India

Don't change the channel when Yusuf Pathan's at the crease © AFP

These days statistics and numbers are thrown at us like a half-tracker from Mitchell Johnson. Well, at least for me, they don’t matter. It maybe sacrilegious to many a cricket enthusiast, but I don’t care how many runs Sachin has made, how many wickets Murali has taken or for that matter how many times Ponting has waggled his finger at the umpire.

What matters to me is the inexplicable feeling that these guys, like many others, evoke inside me when they come on to bat or bowl or take a running start at the covers. That feeling when your heart brims over with hope, when your stomach plays host to butterflies is what makes that player special. That sinking feeling when a Kallis walks out to bat or watching Ponting get on the front foot. That feeling when you know in your gut that today may not be your day.

It’s much like love. You don’t need statistics and past history to point you towards a relationship that will work out. It seldom does. It’s your gut and the slow melancholic dance of the butterflies in your stomach that points you to a direction. Yes, a lot like love, actually.

It is the same feeling that proves to me that Ganguly is best not playing the IPL. Hold on to your effigies. I don’t care how many runs he made in the last IPL or whether he was the most successful captain. What I care about is that the God of the off-side no longer evokes the same emotion in me. That emotion of knowing that while Dada is at the crease, no off-side field is perfect, no bowler is dangerous and there is nothing called an off-side field.

I don’t know what Yusuf Pathan’s career average is. Or his highest score. All I know is that when he takes guard, I don’t change the channels, no matter how bad the batting side is playing. To me, that matters. More than numbers.

From Akash Kaware, Canada

South Africa's return to international cricket - an ideal candidate for a movie © PA Photos

Like any sane Indian, when it comes to favourite pastimes, cricket and movies are at the top of my list. The IPL has seen to it that Bollywood makes its presence felt around cricket matches. But apart from sporadic - and generally embarrassing - appearances from cricketers in movies, the vice versa is not true. Now this is not to say that cricketers should invade Bollywood (or Hollywood for that matter), but for a sport that has such a rich and long history, plenty of stories of bravery & courage, many scandals, and characters galore - all of which would lend themselves beautifully to the silver screen - cricket is grossly under-represented in the world of movies.

There are plenty of constraints that prevent movies being made about cricket. But it’s not the purpose of this article to dwell on them. I am only going to mention a few incidents/people that would make wonderful subject matter for a movie, and which I would personally love to watch on the big screen. Let us assume Hollywood knows that a sport called cricket exists and that all the best actors and directors are queuing up to make movies about it! Let us begin!

1) Bodyline: One of cricket’s biggest scandals. The devious, or brilliant - depending on your viewpoint - plan devised by Douglas Jardine, and executed to perfection by Harold Larwood to rein in the brilliance of Don Bradman. Imagine Jardine, played by the sinister-looking Ralph Fiennes, yelling, “I’ve got it! He’s yellow!” after noticing Bradman’s discomfort against short-pitched bowling in the Oval Test of 1930, the realization that eventually led to the birth of Bodyline. Imagine Bill Woodfull, played by Russell Crowe, rebuking Pelham Warner, the manager of the English side in that fateful series, “I don’t want to see you, Mr. Warner. There are two teams out there, one is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so”. Throw in little anecdotes like Bradman’s golden duck in Melbourne, the Australian crowd’s reactions as they saw their batsmen getting hit, the resulting diplomatic tensions between the two nations and you certainly have an action-packed and tense script. I wonder who would play Bradman and Larwood though.

2) Kerry Packer and World Series Cricket: A headstrong businessman is denied the broadcast rights for the Australian cricket season and decides to take on the old heads at the Australian Cricket Board. His brainchild, World Series Cricket, with considerable help from Tony Greig, splits the cricket world into two, turns players against their countries, and changes the look and feel of one-day cricket forever. From fighting a fierce legal battle with the cricket authorities, Kerry Packer went on to become an icon who was mourned with a minute’s silence at the MCG when he died. Michael Douglas pulled off “Greed is good” with elan in Wall Street, he would be able to pull off Packer’s immortal line to the members of the ACB, “What is your price, gentlemen?” too, wouldn’t he? He would need to learn the Australian accent though!

3) Basil D’Oliveira and South Africa’s isolation: It was poetic justice that South Africa’s sporting isolation was expedited because of one of their own. Basil D’Oliveira was born and raised in Cape Town, but made a name for himself in English cricket. He was named in an England squad due to tour South Africa in 1968-69. South Africa’s apartheid regime meant that he was not welcome in his own country, however. South African cricket authorities were well aware that their government’s stance would lead to the series being cancelled and South Africa isolated, which resulted in plenty of behind-the-scenes machinations to ensure that D’Oliveira didn’t tour, but to no avail. England insisted on picking him, South Africa insisted he wouldn’t be allowed. The tour was cancelled and finally, in 1970, South Africa was indefinitely banned from international cricket. They did not make it back until…

4) ...South Africa’s readmission in 1991: The story of South Africa’s readmission to the world of cricket is every bit as movie-worthy as the story of their isolation 22 years ago. Ali Bacher was the South African captain in their last series before their isolation, and he was again instrumental in getting them back into the fold. Convincing the ICC and its member countries that South Africa had turned a new leaf with the end of apartheid was no mean task, but Bacher, with some help from Jagmohan Dalmiya, accomplished the feat. South Africa returned to international cricket against India on November 10, 1991. If scenes of the South African cricketers’ welcome in Calcutta, their meeting with Mother Teresa and Clive Rice’s moving statement, “I know how Neil Armstrong felt when he stood on the moon”, are not movie-material, I don’t know what is!

5) Allan Border: Sports movies are fairytales most of the time. A determined coach or captain takes over a ravaged, disintegrated team and transforms it into a bunch of world beaters. Allan Border did it too, but with one difference - his team didn’t actually become world beaters under him. With his dogged batting and captaincy, sheer force of example, he literally dragged a down-in-the-dumps Australian side to the threshold of world champion status. The fairytale would have had a perfect ending too, but Australia fell agonizingly short of wresting back the Frank Worrell Trophy from the West Indies in 1993, the last time Border crossed swords with his old tormentors. Australia did it a year later, but it was Mark Taylor who lifted the trophy, Border never got to hold it. It just wasn’t meant to be.

6) The Rise and Fall of Modi: Like him or loathe him, there’s no denying the fact that the swift rise, and swifter fall of Lalit Modi would make for an engaging movie. Call him a visionary who realised the true potential of Twenty20 cricket better than its creators, or a money-minded businessman for whom cricket was a vehicle to money and power. The merciless crushing of the Indian Cricket League, the dream start of the IPL, the crass, in- your-face commercialization of every aspect of it, his autocratic way of running things, a tendency to rub people the wrong way, and the somewhat inevitable scandals that engulfed the IPL within three years are all a scriptwriters dream. And Modi is still young enough to play himself!

There are plenty of other stories in the game that would make for wonderful movies. The story of Bradman, the Boy from Bowral. The story of Frank Worrell, who was so much more than just a cricketer and captain. The lives of characters like Shane Warne. The continuous soap opera that is Pakistan cricket. The deeper you dig, the more nuggets cricket would throw up. But to start with, the six stories above are not a bad collection, are they?