The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari Page B

Parwaaze said. “We’re getting confused.”
    â€œI mean that the other fielders do not play a role until the act of batting and bowling is over. The act then starts over again, and again. Cricket is theater, it’s dance, it’s an opera. It’s dramatic. It’s about individual conflict that takes place on a huge stage. But the two warriors also represent the ten other players; it’s a relationship between the one and the many. The individual and the social, the leader and the follower, the individual and the universal.”
    There was a long, puzzled silence.
    â€œRukhsana, you do realize that we’ve heard about cricket but never seen it,” Parwaaze said finally. “We need to learn, win that match, and get out. Do we really need to know about the warriors and the theater and the universe to learn how to play?”
    I took a deep breath. Maybe he was right. This was not essential to getting on the field, but once you’ve played, it is impossible not to know these things deep down, like you know the feel of the ball in your glove or the bat in your hand.
    How to distill a complex game into simple actions they would understand? They had only watched football matches. I picked up a twig and sketched on the ragged lawn. “Cricket is played on a large field and in the center is a flat strip sixty-six feet long and ten feet wide called the pitch. At each end of the pitch are three sticks, called the wickets. There are eleven players on each team. One team, call it Team A, is the batting team, Team B has to field. Team A has to score as many runs as it can by hitting the balls thrown, we call it bowled, by Team B.”
    â€œHow do you score these runs?” Parwaaze asked.
    â€œYou get runs by hitting the ball and running up and back between the wickets. If the ball reaches the stands then you’ve scored four runs automatically. Team B has to get Team A’s batsmen out before they score too many runs.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by out? How do they do that?” Qubad asked this time.
    â€œWhen you hit a ball and it’s caught, that’s out. If the bowler’s ball hits your wicket, that’s also out. And when you’re running to the other wicket and don’t reach it before a fielder hits it, you’re out. The captain of the fielding team strategically moves his players around, like chess pieces, to stop you from getting runs or tries to get you out with a catch.” I smiled at them. “There, that’s easier to understand, isn’t it?”
    They looked down at the scribbled sketch then back up.
    â€œWhen did you l-learn?” Qubad asked.
    â€œShaheen taught me. Remember, then I tried to get you to play with me?”
    â€œWe’d never heard of the game then,” Parwaaze said.
    Shaheen had introduced me to cricket. He’d learned to play visiting friends in Lahore during school holidays. He wasn’t an athlete—he wouldn’t play hockey, football, or wrestle with us since these games could soil his clothes—but cricket had a genteel air that pleased him, and not too much physical contact. He returned from Lahore with a bat, balls, pads, and gloves, and conscripted me into his new game.
    â€œThis is our secret,” he told me as he showed me the mysterious objects. “We’ll play in my garden so no one will see us. If you tell anyone, I will never let you in my garden again.” His family was on the same street but six houses away from us. I was just eight then and did most of the bowling. He delighted in smashing the balls to the far corners of the compound for me to fetch.
    With all that bowling to Shaheen, I had become a good off-spinner and could bowl pretty fast, though my speed was never as great as his. I practiced batting a ball that I hung from a branch. I decided I would devote my young life to mastering this game.
    Although Shaheen had introduced me to cricket, he did not