Weekend Cricket game on today's agenda

Hey today is Sunday
Should catch up my friends here and go to the beach for the cricket game at the ground near the beach.

This fever started some 15 years back. We some of the folks here in neighbourhood grouped to play cricket and peddled our bicycles to the Devanampattinam Silver Beach area (one of the longest beaches in Asia).


This vast greenish ground situated opposite to Periyar Govt. Arts & Science College near the beach plays host to some seven teams play cricket simultaneously. In the olden days some 10 people join to play this game. Our team has a special rule - only rubber ball to be used.
Why?
Not much professional players in our team to take down injuries of this lazy game with those hard cricket ball.

Since all were finding it difficult the rules had got changed - Thanks to Ramprasath who was working in Infosys for simplifying the game rules like - "One pitch catch" - Implies that, even if a fielder catches the ball after it makes one bounce on the ground, the batsman is ousted. Another rule is that the ball should not fly off to the boundary, in which case the batsman is to bid adieu. We find it more enjoyable since the rules were modified. Ofcourse these bent up rules are making the play easy and on the other way preventing outsiders requesting to get into the game.

Many instances were there, during which outsiders with good playing talents get a "gaugee" and make the team members run far and wide to get control of the score. These bent up rules keep these outsiders at bay.

Olden days many school and college going friends of my neighbourhood team up for this weekly rendezvous. The journey for this starts with pedalling the bicycles for a 4 Km up wind. Of course the sweating due to upwind pedalling exercise is too good to get a little burnout to the otherwise lazy me. But the return trips is so cool for us without the much needed effort of pedalling. The westward cool winds in the late evening gives a little push for us to enjoy the pedalling back to home. But its now hard to see guys arriving at the play ground on bicycles only bikes na! The return trips usually see one of the folks sponsoring to quench the thirst of the hard played team members. The team's favourite Paneer Soda is the thirst buster. People claim it the non-polluted drink, yes we avoid the so called Urea contaminated drinks.

Nowadays many of the folks have got jobs, bought bikes, most of them married and some settled at places like Chidambaram, Chennai, Hosur, Banglore or some place in the US of America.

Oh! now very few people are getting into the weekend frolic, with myself too absenting most of the time and missing the fun. Of course the blogging hobby on the weekends is eating up the time which otherwise was spent visiting the cool climate of the playground during the pre broadband era. Is internet killing my weekend fun, ofcourse internet is doing a lot of good too.

Today I am free with wife and son away from town to her mummy's house to spend the summer vacation. So I should make it to the play ground, although my stamina should spruce up to do some little runs.

So let me see my luck for today a Sunday and this evening I should catch up my guys to have a nice time playing the cricket game with the laze of the cool winds of the Cuddalore beach.