Hoowwwzzaaat!!

10 - 12 AM. The first session. The ball swings and seams. Even if it doesnt, you need to give the respect to the bowler that he deserves. Not shouldering to atleast a couple of balls in every over means irreverence to the game :-)

12 - 12:40 PM. The mid-on fielder would have hardly moved his feet when its lunch time. And what a lunch it is!! Marriage dinners are shorter than test match lunches!! :-)

12:40 - 2:40 PM. As per the protocol, even if Dodda Ganesh and Paul Adams are bowling in tandem, you better play safe atleast for half an hour - play yourself in after an eternity of a lunch break! :-)

2:40 - 3 PM. Break again. Tea this time to take stock of the action or the absence of it :-)

3 - 5 PM. For an hour, batsmen actually get bored watching the bowlers and the keeper throwing the ball at each other and realise in sublime moments what they are capable of. A few overs and a few boundaries later, everybody is playing for the day, a day which got bad to worse to ugly in three sessions of unbearably boring cricket!!

This schedule repeated for 4 more days and by tea time of the third day half of the fielders would be seen sleeping near boundary :-)

That was test match cricket in India in the early 1990s. Apart from the final 2 stages of French Open and Wimbledon,Test match cricket was the nearest to anything LIVE on Doordarshan. The action though was far from being LIVE, it was dead as a dodo with sleepy commentators talking about their childhood memories while the action on the field resembled a funeral of an old monarch! Test match cricket in those days was actually a Test of Patience and a Match of Inaction :D

Me really short of overs now....and true to the spirit of early 90 Test Cricket will inhibit my intention to slog and call it a day :-)

Do watch out this space for more of the Hoowzzaaat series..from a true Indian (Read a true maniacal fan of cricket :D)