Cricket in the Village

While Varanasi has an unending plethora of bazaars, temples, historic buildings and interesting stores , the one thing it lacks is greenery. In fact, aside from periodic trees, trips to the dusty fields at BHU and glimpses on the Ganga, nature is mostly absent from our lives in Varanasi. This lack of green space is made worse by the fact that the city does possess way to many auto rickshaws, cars and people, which fill the city with all sorts of dust, garbage, and pollution. Thus, when Genevieve suggested that we take a weekend trip to my family’s village we all readily agreed.
On Saturday morning the five of us, Christina, Dolly, four members of my homestay family, and a couple others (too many people to fit in two cars) piled into two cars and headed out of the city. After crossing the bridge over the Ganga, we turned off the main highway and drove into the countryside.
Almost immediately the signs of city life began to disappear. The buildings began to shrink, the number of large trucks on the roads decreased, the number of old, dilapidated, pick-up truck-style rickshaws increased exponentially and most importantly, the landscape began to turn green. After driving through this new verdant and beautiful countryside for a little over an hour, we turned onto a narrow dirt road and drove into the middle of a small cluster of mud and cement houses.
After arriving in the village, we promptly dropped our stuff and got back in the cars to go to visit a nearby waterfall. We did not return until sunset and thus, we saw very little of the village on our first day. As darkness fell, we retired to the roof at took and relaxed under the stars, taking advantage of the total peace and quiet that the village provided. At around 10 o’clock we went back downstairs and into the garden behind the house to enjoy a dinner of chicken curry that, as were proudly told by my relatives, was made with “village chicken” a tougher and more flavorful meat.
The next morning we woke, climbed out of our sleeping bags soaked with dew, and came downstairs to eat a breakfast of fried rice and peas. With full stomachs we followed my homestay father and Saurabh through the twisting maze of gulleys between the mud houses of the village, and then out into the bright green and yellow plants in the fields.
In the fields we viewed what many people we have met in Varanasi called “the real India,” or simple agriculture based life. We wandered across the small raised dirt paths that meandered through the fields of mustard, cauliflower, and wheat, until eventually we reached my family’s fields. Near the center of the fields, which stretched for a couple acres in both directions was a small diary, which housed a herd of at least nine buffalo. By the dairy we talked with the workers who farm my family’s land and munched on fresh sugarcane (a very difficult, somewhat painful, but still delicious task).
Still chewing on our sugarcane we walked out of the greenery of the fields slowly ascended a rocky hill rising above the fields. From the top of the hill we could see the entire village and all the fields stretching out into the midday haze well beyond the limits of our vision. After sitting and staring for a while, we lay back on the warm rocks and took a brief nap, before we were forced to descend the hill and head back to the village for lunch. At the bottom of the hill, however, we saw some of the village children playing cricket and decided to conveniently forget that we were late for lunch and start the game.
For me the trip to the village was most memorable because it presented me with the opportunity to play my first serious game of cricket, India’s national pastime. While I encounter cricket on a regular basis in Banaras, the games are usually confined to small areas and thus played with modified rules. The village, however, had a large, almost perfectly oval-shaped cricket field surrounded by rocks forming the boundary.

After introducing ourselves to the village children and dividing up the teams, I quickly discovered that some of my most finely honed baseball skills, namely my swing and my ability to pitch (which I will admit I am not good at) were irrelevant on the cricket pitch. Knowing how to pitch and knowing how to bowl, pitching’s cricket equivalent, are very different skills. After trying and failing a couple of times to bowl properly, I was relegated to the outfield, a position that is thankfully the same as baseball, minus the glove.

Hitting was equally difficult, as an aggressive baseball swing is not well adapted to cricket, in which the batsmen is more defensive and works to protect the wickets, as well as score runs. As I saw more pitches, however, I realized that cricket, like many things in India, is not as different as we imagine, and that protecting the wickets, while still looking to hit far, is really not very different from a “two strike approach” or hitting behind the runner on second in baseball. Thus, I made the adjustment in my swing and hit a series of singles and doubles – that is, until the other team decided to replace the twelve year old bowler with someone my own age, who promptly struck me out.

Following the game, we walked back to the village, savoring our final views of the fields along the way. After finishing our lunch we went outside and the others talked to the village children, while I entertained them with soccer tricks. The soccer tricks eventually turned into a bizarre game of volleyball with my uncle, which ended only after the ball had ended up on the roof for second time. With the game finished, we got back in the cars and began the return the Banaras, well rested and content with our mini-vacation.