Journalist Dinesh Kamath and cricket

When I was in third standard I was taught the basics of cricket. After that I fell in love with that sport. Cricket became my passion, my dream, my everything. Even beautiful girls would not appeal to me as much as cricket would do. Those days there was no Television. Hence I would listen to cricket commentaries on radio. I would never miss a single test match. Among the commentators I would adore Anant Setalwad, Suresh Saraiya and Raju Bharatan. Initially I would play with the tennis ball or rubber ball. But when I reached standard five I began to play with the season or hard ball. When I newly became the fan of the game called cricket, my heroes were G R Vishwanath, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Farokh Engineer, Eknath Solkar, E A S Prasanna, B S Chandrashekhar, Bishen Singh Bedi, Abid Ali and so on. Later on, when I grew up, I became the fan of Sunil Gavaskar, Dennis Lillee, Thomson, Vivian Richards, Kalicharan, Imran Khan and so on. I had developed an ambition of becoming a test cricketer. By the time I reached standard eight, I had become an extremely speedy bowler, a fantastic fielder and a hard-hitting batsman. I was fit for test cricket but my school didn't give me the encouragement I needed. Also my excessive love for cricket led to my scoring a low percentage in SSC exam. I was not only brilliant in sports but also clever when it came to academics. I had scored distinction in every standard, right from first standard to tenth standard. But in SSC (those days it was eleventh standard) I fared badly. I held cricket resposible for my poor performance in SSC. Gradually I began to lose interest in cricket. Then there came a time when I lost total touch with the game Today I just don't know the who's who of cricket. Once upon a time I used to know those things about cricket which no other person would know. But today I'm an ingnoramus as far as cricket is concerned. Today my passion is film, politics and journalism. I wish to show interest in cricket once again. But the thing is time doesn't permit me. Bye!