From Sandstorm to Snowstorm
I was born in Saudi Arabia on Friday, during Friday Prayer's Sermon (for Muslims). I always heard from my dad how he and his elder two brothers played club cricket in Scotland, dad being wicketkeeper, his oldest brother being middle order batsman/spinner and other brother being an opener. There were few incidents early on in my life which were close to life threatening, once I was playing ''catch-catch'' with my brother and father, tennis ball went under the table and glass broke on my forehead, got some 35ish stitches and my right eye was literally saved (had glass been off tangent by one mm I would be playing with one eye today like Tiger Pataudi but I'm nowhere near his calibre, heck not even close to his shoe dust). So anyways, time went by and I grew, we used to live in apartments (a foreigner can't own a land in KSA) and outside our building there was a lengthy passage which had sand, however, my dad got it all cemented for us (me and my brother) so we could play cricket :D. So that was the place where I started playing tape ball cricket, would say my brother is the guy who helped me with proper bowling action and all that. For fun me and my brother would always copy actions of international stars and bowl like them, few stars of that era, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis, Abdul Razzaq, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram (right hander though lol). Later new neighbour moved in and they were Pakistan's and they had two boys so they joined us in cricket too! The wall where we had wicket was nearly 7 foot tall but often ball went over it and in that house, but since the ball went in that house so often the tenant would not give us ball back or open the door when we would knock/ring door bell. So he wanted to play hard ball with us, I was skinny guy and I would climb over the wall jump into his place and take the ball and climb the all back and jump in our playing area :D. Then around boundary region, it was neighbour's servant room so ball often went on that roof, so again I would climb and get the ball. So thats how I played tape ball cricket until December 2001. So from 2002 I was in a country which was completely opposite to my birth place, KSA in terms of everything. The country I had emigrated from was one extreme, while the country I immigrated to was another extreme. It was certainly not an easy transition in the beginning but now I'm used to it.
So I was in school, there were few Pakistani and Indian kids who became my friend (obviously they too were FOBs at that time as I was, but thankfully I knew my English and accent was perfectly fine). We would talk cricket but never got to play, so I spent a year with those guys and in grade 8 moved to a new school, new area and everything! Still thankful that I moved out of that area and left those peeps behind :) They were tooooooo cool for me to hang out with! Thank God!! There cricket was completely diminishing in my life, I was losing interest in the game as my interest and attention was towards basketball. Things went like that and then I went to highschool and there they had cricket team and I made in final list of junior team (it was indoor cricket, where six is out). Our coach was a Chinese chap who taught English and knew nothing about the game, would spend hours and hours reading ROPPSSA's cricket rule book, but senior guys in senior team coached etc etc. I was late order hard hitting glorified slogger, smacked six fours in last over and I would slog everything. The bat was amazing too! It was Gray Nicolls (orange one, can't recall the name) and I loved it (really because I love he brand Gray Nicolls - all credit goes to Mohammad Yousuf :D ). After that year we got a new coach, he was white and he knew cricket. He taught us all basics such as in fielding, batting, running, bowling etc etc. He is amazing guy really, had lovely time with him. My interest was slowly growing in cricket but I would just like to play, not watch etc as I preferred basketball then came university, again cricket was on verge of diminish but I stayed back in Canada for a summer as I didn't go to annual vacation as I took summer school so I googled "cricket in brampton'' and came up with few ''hard ball'' cricket links, I signed up for the team and got in. They said my first net would be tryout for me....
So here comes first net session, I go to bat wearing someone's pads, gloves and helmet. A guy asked me "Are you wearing a box?" I in reply said "What is that?" (facepalm) and then I found out and I in reply said "Mate I have never worn that in my life'' (LOL)! I continued batting, the ball would go past me and I would only realize it when I heard it making contact with mesh behind my back (facepalm). I was a tailender, would would get batting at number 11 and would field the whole day under sun, no bowling or anything despite they kept saying "I bowl well" so time went by and I was still a crappy player. So they said I got in the team, I don't know what sort of trails they had and more importantly how I got in because I was a crap player. But I guess they just wanted Queen on piece of paper :D
That club had oldies who would just drink beer after the game while I would be waiting for my dad to come and pick me up. Haha the most funniest sight here was that right after the game umpire would disappear and everyone would be looking for him so this guy would come out of his car with completely different attire and would jump in garbage bin and collect beer bottles. I first thought he is insane but later found out that when you return those empty beer bottles to beer store you get money back, I asked team mate how much? He was like 5 cents and I bursted into laughter! HAHA!
I was no where improving as a batsman (never cared about bowling nor I do now), I would improve one thing in like 10 batting sessions lol. I would feel bad and dejected but my love for the game kept pushing me and I kept on going every net session and trying to improve myself. The club which I joined in 2009 had this coach who played for Canada but he was such a pathetic coach that he never worked on any player, well I didn't see any! I looked around looking for local coaches but didn't really come across any so worked on my batting technique myself, would do drills at home and read lot of articles (and must say Buzz's posts in batting threads) and did as article/Buzz said.
Until I found new bunch of guys who helped me and I was then able to make some bat and ball contact, all of us friends made a club (T25 Morning in 2011) and I improved there, they were in my age group (few years older (like 3-6), but not as old as 2009/2010 club ones, they were like 50/55 lol). I enjoyed my cricket a lot here, these guys would practice more than once a week too so I went to nets with them and improved there. The process of making a team is simple, you need a roster of 15 and submit letter of intent along a cheque of $1440 (if I remember correctly) and then you have a team. The league guys have never rejected any application of team in past 8 years so everything gets approved as long you have the funds. So we had this new club, we got jerseys made from Pakistan and they are exactly like Pakistan current shirts but with our team name 'Stallions', I played few games as I went to summer vacations in Pakistan and didn't play in Holy Month of Ramadan (a month where Muslims fast for 30 days). i couldn't play playoff games as I played less than 50% of season games but went to games to support my team and do scoring while they would field. Matches would start at 7:30 AM in morning and I was always the first person to reach the ground, I would be at ground by 6:45 AM lol! Our captain would text guys to come on time and this dude would be last person to reach the ground hahaha! The game would end around noon, so some of the guys played for another club (50-overs) so would rush to that game after our T25 games. So these T25 guys would smoke cigarettes, thankfully I don't smoke nor I intend to! Actually only three guys from roster of 15 smoke, so its only those three chaps (captain, opener and middle order batsman) and this happened after the game. There is this one guy who would come to ground by 7:00 AM with a 'Sheesha' and this is how it looks;
(http://www.sheeshasupply.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/1.jpg)
It was rather funny to see him smoke that as no one does that early in the day (I could be wrong, I'm no expert in that field). Oh one important thing, we have a player in our team who played top level baseball in Canada for last decade or two and his batting plan is simple. Just slog everything out of park, thats it! He has MB Malik Bubber Sher and AS V3 and believe me when he gets going he is unstoppable! I have seen him hitting biggest sixes ever! Even best batsman in our team can't hit that long sixes as this guy!
The pitches we play on are mattings, they are not quick pitches like WACA and often are quite high in terms of moisture as reservoir underneaths are always moistened due to long winter and snow and then rain. However, the ball does not stay extremely low, they generate medium bounce but nothing like WACA as I said, they are also quite slow so the transition from indoor practices for months and then outdoor feels different in the beginning as you are not used to the pace.
Unfortunately no one brought a tea kettle to the ground so no match teas Sir Buzz :( As mentioned earlier 2009/2010 guys would drink beer while 2011 guys would smoke. The morning t25 club consist of all Muslim players so any sort of alcohol is forbidden in our Religion so they stick to smokes lol.
So in 2011 I just played four matches of T25 but this year I have joined one of the most premium club in Canada for 50-overs and signed up for their evening interclub Twenty20 and I will be playing morning T25 with Stallions :D So plenty of cricket before I go for my annual vacations. :D. Now I hear my team mates say I look like a proper batsman (one like Fattus perhaps ;) ) and they say I have improved leaps and bound so I take that as a compliment and I joined a better standard club for this year, hoping it will be my best year and score some runs with Screaming Cat and Gray Nicolls Legend (thanks for selling it Rob :) ) :D
Here is picture of ground, this was taken at our T25 match, played on 26-06-2011 I was 12th man that day;
(http://i889.photobucket.com/albums/ac91/minhasuz/CricketMatch.jpg)
Sorry for the picture quality and zoom, it was taken from my BlackBerry so thats the best I could snap. Our team is fielding.
Although I am not a very good player but I just love this game, it is such a lovely game! I'm most passionate cricket guy in our whole family and would often hear word or two from my mom but can't leave this game until I'm alive, its too good to stay away from :D. I wish I had a younger sibling (or a son in future) so I would enroll them in cricket at young age so they are a lot better cricket than me and get to play all games at respectable positions. More importantly would buy them top end equipments, in my whole family (cousins etc all included) me and one of my cousin in Ireland we two are only who play cricket, no one else plays it. His parents don't know love of the game so the kid won't get good stuff from parents, so I try to get him equipments shipped at his place in Ireland :D
Perhaps long and boring read for some guys but thats my cricket life till date! Apologizes if I bored you.
Any question(s) just fire them :)