Copy cats or Imagineers?

Malcom Marshall with his side on leaned action was ready to bowl. His first shirt button was unbuttoned as usual and he ordered 3 fielders around with that sharp look.

Sreekanth, looked up at the sky and muttered something and took his crease with his drop down shoulder and unique stands ready to blast the ball out of the ground with his bat speed.

Marshall ran and bowled a perfect out-swinging delivery. Howzzzz that?, he appealed for LBW with his usual sitting pose.

The batsman responded, "Dei appave LBW kedayathu-unnu sonnana illaya?". (Didn't we agree to not have LBW for this match?)

Marshall act was forgotten, and the alter ego of 10 yr old took over angrily "Appo nee kalai stump-ikku munadi vaika kodathu" (Don't keep the legs in front of the stumps then)

This cricket ground was our terrace (40x10 ft).

The ball was plastic ball (out swingers and in-swingers are determined by the wind direction at the time of the day)

The 3 fielders don't have too many places to move around other than swapping their positions.

And last but not the least, Sreekanth was my brother and it was me who was doing the perfect(?) Malcom Marshall act.

------

Watching my 4 yr old doing a pretty neat Penguin imitation (Gloria, in the movie Happy feet) took me back in memory lane of imitations we did as kids.

------
There were unwritten rules of imitation. To start with, your social status, coolness factor, knowledge level (inversely proportional to coolness factor) are all at display by the personality you imitate.

- Geeks prefer to imitate players with good statistics & results. Ex: Gavaskar, who other than wearing that hat does not have too much to imitate.
- Cool kids ((don't argue imitation itself is for geeks!) on the other hand prefer character Ex: Viv Richards , chewing gum with an attitude

Imitation of cricket players not only served the imagination purpose. But emphasized our cricketing knowledge and elite status. And it does not stop only with cricketers. Here are some other characters I proudly enacted during my acting days...

- There was lot of competition over who will be "The Mc Enroe" during our tennis season. Side note: Do you know that a fully soaked badminton ball bounces knee high? And can be used as your "tennis ball". Because of its bounce, the chances of it landing in neighbors roof is less.

- Tong Fu, chinese gymnist (floor exercise specialist), was toast of the town during one of the Olympics (Los Angeles, I found out later). All available pillows were stacked in line for our dare devil floor exercise. We learnt to do somersault without using hands thanks to Tong Fu. In the hind sight, it is a minor miracle that we all have our spine intact in spite of mis-landing on the concrete floor.

- Seeds of my marathon running were sowed back then. We use to run around the 40x20 terrace 26.2 times. (conceived by none other than the author - what can I say, as my mother would like to say, he always gets 90+ in GK (general knowledge)) [Side Note: Imagine the plight of 6 different families which lived underneath that 40x20 terrace with a group of kids running round and round above their heads.]

- To make the running experience interesting and to simulate the hurdles of some sort, we choose to jump over the chimneys which were sticking out every 8 feet.

- The same chimneys were served as hide outs for Spark & Captain from star trek. Yes! even I cannot believe it that we were avid Star trek fans for the cool gadgets and the command hierarchy. It gave an opportunity for me to boss my friends around as the captain. - Giant Robots were controlled by our virtual/imagined watches too.

---------

What strike me as I think about it is that the lack of tools/toys never stopped us as kids from imagining anything. We circumvented the problem with what was available and there I think I/we have a lesson to learn as adults.