That Dream..

It was not the first time I saw such a mixed-up dream, as I call it; dreams where there are people, living and dead, from different places at a single place at the same time; a single place in the dreams having characteristics of many places; different ideas, notions, feelings which had been gone through or thought of or talked about or discussed at different points of time having their presence at the same time in the dream. These dreams always leave me baffled after I wake up and as soon as I engage myself in worldly activities, I tend to forget such dreams very quickly. Even this amazes me a lot. Any thing in real life which astonishes/surprises/frights/delights you, you tend to remember it for long. This is not true for dreams, at least not true for my dreams. I have, many a times, woken up feeling extremely happy or sad but fail to remember what exactly I was going through in my dreams.

The dream I was having in the morning was an entirely mixed-up dream. I don’t know where from it started. This is true almost for all my dreams. I never remember exactly from where a dream started. As I feel it, dreams never start abruptly at any point of time. For example, it does not make much sense to me that you are sleeping till 2:30am peacefully without any dream and all of a sudden at 2:31am you start having a dream about your girlfriend kissing you. There must be some kind of grooming happening in the brain before a dream starts and we start feeling the dream. Whatever, got carried away. I am neither willing to nor am qualified enough to dive into the psychology of dreams. But, as I will be writing about different things in the dream, I will try to co-relate it to my life, my feelings…

It was morning time. I was in the IITK cricket ground. The ground was lush green, as it’s always is after the raining season. The team was to be decided for a match against some local team.

>> I have spent 4 years of my under-graduate life on this field. I have played many matches against local teams of Kanpur. But, after I left Campus, I have played almost no cricket (have played some phatta with tennis ball, but it can not be called cricket anyways). I miss playing cricket a lot. I desperately want to be in a big grassy cricket field practicing or playing matches. This part relates to my extreme desire to play professional cricket.

Well, the captain of my team was Gauri.. :)

>> To introduce Gauri, it would be sufficient to say that he is truely a cricket fanatic. He enjoys Cricket to the fullest. He was one of the most humble cricketers and a very good team player. In off training seasons, if there is no one around and you have a strong urge to play. Call Gauri, whatever he is into, he will leave everything to accompany you in the field. Well, recently, I was going through a post (about 15 days ago) on orkut cricket community and learned that he has captained a few matched for IITK cricket team. I never felt he was a good captain material. But, I think the kind of experience he has and the amount of respect he gains from the team members would have eased his job a lot. I remember I had spent a little time thinking about him after I had read that post.

The team probably did not have a specialist opener. I demanded vehemently to be sent as an opener. Gauri conceded and I was very happy.

>> I was never considered a good batman in my team. I got very little chance to bat in match situations where I could have made an impact. I always believed I could be a good middle order/opener batsman. It is also true that given some chances here and there, I had never proved my batting skills good enough to be promoted up the order. I always had a strong desire to open the innings for my team.

We were fielding first in the match. I asked Gauri where I should field. He replied, “Pick any region except for the Western Australia Desert.” :)

>> Hilarious!! Isn’t it. Last night, just before going to sleep, Pandey, an IITKGP guy and my roommate, had asked me to name the desert in Australia. I couldn’t. And, then we were looking into Australian Map and found out it was ‘Western Australian Desert’.

I chose the point region to field at. And, instead of being inside the 30 yard boundary, I was standing long beyond the inside boundary, trying to do a Jonty.

>> Point is my favorite place to field at. Jonty is my favorite fielder. I like the way Jonty started from the inside circle edge and as the bowler approached the crease to deliver, he used to charge almost 10 meters. I, in past, have tried imitating that but have found speed charging extremely difficult. It may help you in your side movements/dives a lot but guessing the speed of ball and turn/cut of ball at point region are difficult when you yourself are in motion.

Pandey was also in the Team. There was no one to open the bowling for our team. Announcing that he is going to bowl, Pandey took the ball and hurriedly rushed to the bowling mark. He took 5 odd steps and without intimating umpire about his bowling arm and bowling side, he came hopping (very much similar to Balaji :) ) to the bowling crease and bowled a short ball. The batman slashed it over point (over my head) for a one tip boundary. Umpires signaled a no-ball.

>> I have seen Pandey bowling spin couple of times. Last IPL, I was very much surprised by Balaji’s bowling. After, his return from the injury, He has cut down on pace a bit but has gained an appreciable control on his swing. To reduce stress on his knees, he has totally changed his run-up. He approaches his crease from a very short run-up and almost hopping on the ground before delivering. I don’t remember, after IPL, I ever thought about or discussed Balaji with anyone.

The next ball was a half volley on off side and batman mistimed his inside-out shot. The ball just missed the cover fielder's (I don't remember who was the fielder) hand and went for another boundary. Next ball was a similar ball and a similar shot was executed. But, this time it went directly into the hands of diving cover fielder. Next batsmen arrived and he had a short discussion with the dismissed batman about his shot. He told him,” Tumhare pichhle shot ko dekh kar ke lag gaya tha ki tum jyada der nahi khene wale ho. You should have waited a little more”.

>> Well, this is typical comment a batman, especially an opener, gets after playing a rash shot very early in his innings and getting out. This was very much customary event in my team. Every time, a batman opted to accelerate and got out in the process, he was given this shit. I have always believed that in short cricket games (20-25 overs game), one opener should always be on the rampage from the word go and the other one should look to rotate strike. But this has never been the team's feeling. For all four years, I saw captains and coaches instructing openers to hold their crease for first few overs. This often resulted in test-match situations where batmen were looking more to save their wickets, rather than attack and give a good start.

As I waited impatiently for my bowling turn, I saw Swarnim sitting in the pavilion and watching the game. I am not very sure she was enjoying the game, as she sat very quietly and did not even cared to throw back a smile when we saw each other.

>> Both, Cricket and Swarnim, are inseparable from me. In past, I have had good company of both but not at the same time. In my IITK life, I always had this secret desire that Swarnim should come to watch me playing. That was never to happen and it never happened. By the way, Swarnim does not like Cricket at all. In fact, she hates it so much that if she ends up watching a Cricket live telecast for 30 minutes, she would go on nourshing her headache for next 3 hrs. Her gloomy face in the dream is very much justified.

I saw Jain and HER sitting on the stairs too.

>> Last night, I had a chat with Jain regarding his feelings for HER. I was very moved by his story and his feelings for HER. I went to sleep thinking about them. I wanted them to be together once again.

Meanwhile Pandey continued his bowling and bowled the fifth ball of the over. I don’t remember what happened on that ball. I remember I was very excited and was gearing up for the second over. I wanted Pandey to quickly finish his over so that I could have my turn.

>> I always opened bowling for my team as the second strike bowler.

The wait was almost over when Pandey started his stride for the last ball of the first over. I, at the point, charged imitating Jonty. Suddenly, it was all over. Pandey woke me up saying it’s 8:30, get ready for the office. When I woke up, I was so terrible pissed off with him. At first, he kept me waiting to have that heavenly touch of leather after so long a time and when I was almost to have the ball in my hand and was to do what I am craving for more than a year, he woke me up and shattered all my hopes! I hate you, Pandey!!