The game of cricket is unique in many ways
Anand Vasu02-Apr-2020The game of cricket is unique in many ways. While most sports tend tobe content having countries, counties, states and clubs play eachother, cricket seems to want more. On Sunday, 29 April 2001 a team ofleft-handers will take on a team of right-handers at the WankhedeStadium in Mumbai for the Timex Challenge. At exactly nine o’ clock inthe morning, with the Mumbai sun blazing down, Sachin Tendulkar andSourav Ganguly will walk out to toss, leading the right and lefthanders respectively. At precisely half past nine, a truly unique gameof cricket will be under way.In the past, there have been several games of this nature, the mostfamous probably the game between the “Non-smokers” and the “Smokers”in East Melbourne in 1886-87.In the early twentieth century the Pentangular tournament was playedin India. The teams taking part in that case were the Muslims, theHindus, the Parsis and so on. The teams were divided on the basis ofreligion in that case.In 1849, there was an encounter between a Single XI and a Married XIat the Mecca of cricket, Lord’s. Part of the English domestic seasonback then, the game resulted in the team of bachelors winning!In 1850 a game between the “Young” and the “Old” took place at Lord’sin England. Anyone over 36 years of age was considered old! As is onlyto be expected, the Young XI won the game, be a margin of 11 runs.In 1866, Canterbury was the setting for a game between “South ofThames” and “North of Thames.” The men from the north took the game bytwo wickets.But back to the present. With India not playing any cricket at themoment, the cricket crazy public in Mumbai will no doubt throng to theWankhede to get a glimpse of their favourite son in full cry. With allthe Indian stars in action, there will be no shortage of enthusiasm.The classification of left handers however is a bit of a tricky one.The team includes, Sourav Ganguly, Sadagoppan Ramesh, HrishikeshKanitkar, Sairaj Bahutule, Vinod Kambli and Robin Singh, all of whombat left handed but bowl right handed. Zaheer Khan bowls left handedand bats right handed. The only true left handers, people who bowl andbat left handed are Sunil Joshi, Yuvraj Singh, Hemang Badani andDinesh Mongia.For the right handers, Sachin Tendulkar leads the charge. For companyhe has Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Javagal Srinath, Ajit Agarkar, ParasMhambrey, Amol Muzumdar, Pravin Amre, Sameer Dighe, Harbhajan Singhand Venkatesh Prasad.
