Playing by the Book

A school kid has had many a trick to rid himself of the ennui that filled up the space between two consecutive rings of the bell that signified the time period that comprised of a boring class. Of course, not all classes in school were dull and dreary, as the kid found out later on in engineering college, when the classes there raised the bar for boredom inducement beyond compare.

There's stories of how Tom Sawyer played with an ant during a class that he didn't want to pay attention to, and there's also tales of many a truant student who got into trouble for having made a conscious choice to make the most of a class where it wasn't possible to pay attention. The student was however compelled to sit in the class anyway, and escape from this world into an alternate one where time flew by instead of being in reverse gear seemed to be the best way to conform to what had to be done, while not losing one's mind in the process.

There are many pastimes that one would engage in to hasten the progress of time in such situations. One would end up letting loose one's imagination in a Calvin-esque flight of fancy, or play with walking on one's desk, or end up scratching out messages on desks to be read by others that were to share a similar fate eventually, in the next academic year, were those engravings made to withstand the test of time.

As adults in a professional environment, the same people with poor attention spans would think about blogging or LJ-ing, or end up thinking of making tally marks out of catch-phrases uttered by those less verbally equipped, who would spout the 'like's, the 'means's, the 'actually's, the 'basically's and so on and so forth.

As the number of meetings attended grew, it also brought in an increase in one's catch phrase vocabulary, and this tally mark system evolved into the grid format where one would make a list of catch phrases in one column and the names of the participants in the other, making tally marks against each person for each catch phrase uttered, and then coming up with a final score that would be the total sum of the products of the number of times a catch-phrase was uttered by the weight assigned to that particular phrase, which in turn was directly proportional to its frequency of use.

Simply put, final score F = w1.n1 + w2.n2 + w3.n3..... + wm.nm (wi = weight of particular catch phrase and ni= number of times said catch-phrase was uttered)

The one with the highest score would then be awarded a mental atomic wedgie. Sadly, it being a figment of one's imagionation, such a thing hardly made a difference to the 'real world scenario', but made for some priceless amusement all the same.

Now, a long time ago, some genius who wanted to kill time came up with the game of 'book-cricket', which proved to be quite entertaining and engrossing, insofar as making father time rush by in supersonic mode. The best part about this game was that one could play it in class with a text-book and, with enough discretion would seem like a pedant, which would then come in handy while currying for favours with the teacher concerned.

The rules for book cricket, for those that aren't acquainted with this beautiful game are as follows:

1. Take a book, any book will do. It can be 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy, or it can be 'I Have Read That Somewhere' by Aswath Venkataraman. So long as it has page numbers on it, preferably arabic numerals, or numerals of any other kind that you would be comfortable reading.

2. Make a list of 22 players, 11 on each side. During the time book cricket was a craze in school when I was going to school to get beaten up by my teachers and sent out of class thereafter, we used to make lists of national teams. Students in schools and colleges nowadays can use any combination of players. Heck, throw in football and hockey players too, just to spice things up. You could even have mythical fairy tale characters playing cricket, or have politicians make up the teams - UPA XI v/s NDA XI. I wish I had thought of this when I was playing this in school! Hindsight 20/20.

3. Start playing the game by opening the book. Look at the right-most digit on that side of the book that contains even numbers. Runs are awarded, or player is out based on the following conditions -

0 - player out
2 - two runs
4 - four runs
6 - six runs
8 - dot ball

4. Continue this process until all the 11 players on one side are out, and repeat the same for the other 11 of the opposing side.

5. Make a tally of all the 'runs' scored by both teams and the one that has more runs is the winner.

6. It would make sense to make a total count of all balls faced by each player (balls faced = number of times the book was opened to add either 2, 4, 6 runs or a dot ball until a player gets out) in order to resolve a tie between two teams, should one be really keen on making a proper match out of it. I know of one person who did that meticulously, and he's applying to the Indian Statistical Institute for a fellowship this year. (OK, I made that part up, but you must admit it sounds convincing to some extent!)

The reason I thought I should mention book cricket is because I have been following the IPL T-20 games regularly, more out of compulsion than choice, because every place I go to has the T-20 on screen, or has someone following it or has the remote control button stuck such that no other channel could be displayed (though I think my relatives were yanking my chain on that one, doubting them would have caused a family rift and hence Dear Prudence told me to shut up).

Some games have been good fun to watch, and some games, including the debut of the IPL of the Royal Challengers against the Knight Riders would have probably made supporters wish they'd never brought tickets at all to watch the game live.

The past few matches have been so exciting, especially the ones where the Royal Challengers and Knight Riders triumphed against the Deccan Chargers and the Kings XI Punjab, and the flurry of runs courtesy of the unleashed batting by B Akhil and Saurav Ganguly in those matches transported me back to those times when every ball bowled in imaginary cricket utopia was either a wicket, or would fetch high denomenation runs.

Maybe the IPL is quite like book cricket - it will keep us engaged when we have nothing else to do on a boring evening, but when life takes over and demands that we attend to things that are more important, this whole venture would be tossed aside until the next time ennui comes beckoning.

Then, in a manner similar to how children turn into adults and graduate into more 'sophisticated' pastimes for ensuring the passage of time, there will be things that will captivate our collective imaginations much more than the IPL has managed to do so at the present time.

Until then, lets milk it to the max and have fun while it lasts!