19/07/2008

In pursuit of Mother Cricket

SOUTH African coach Mickey Arthur said England captain Michael Vaughan had got what he deserved from "Mother Cricket". But then who is she, I wondered? Is she Shane Warne's mother or Yuvraj's mother?
No answers were forthcoming, so I set out in pursuit of mother cricket and this is a description of my journey in pursuit of the mother of cricket.

To begin with, I thought Mickey Arthur was making a religious reference.So my first stop was the neighborhood library.A quick check turned up no mother cricket. None, I say, none of the religious texts mentioned her.

It is then I remembered,Ravi Shastri talking of a 'fat lady who sings'. Well, according to him a cricket match was a sort of musical chairs, and the winner was decided as and when she stopped singing.So Mother cricket was neither a mythical or a religious persona, she was flesh and blood and undoubtedly, she could sing. Nevertheless, I could find no trace of this Lady. Ravi Shastri later admitted that he had never seen her and worse, had only a passing acquaintance with her songs. He suggested I quiz cricketers, who according to him, talked a lot of a Lady Luck.

Aha! I thought, the fat lady must have morphed into this sylph like Lady Luck. As you must have guessed this line of research was also fruitless. Though the cricketers attributed their success and failures to her, they swore to have never seen her.

Fortunately, that when I thought of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Surely, if cricket had a mother they would have surely noted how many times, when and where she had been sighted. Well to cut the long story short they indeed knew her intimately. According to them "the M.C.C., is the mother of cricket" and the last any one had seen her was during the year 1882.

(Pic. credit:salihan)

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hehe...good one...Cricket Maata...!!!

Viswanathan said...

UTP,

Arthur's comment drew the same response from me. :)

LVISS said...

Hearing for the first time. Something like carrom ball. How they manage to invent new terms in cricket?
Will it be grand father cricket for womens cricket.

Viswanathan said...

R,
Maybe they will use the politically correct grandperson? :)

Anonymous said...

maata ji... on a note I think te phrase that itsn't over till the fat lady sings has got to do with opera.

Viswanathan said...

Scorpi,

I vaguely recollect reading that phrase. However, I have heard Ravi Shastri use it at the most inappropriate moments.