Highest score: 27 not out, sometime in the summer of 1988
Scored on what we called the "batting pitch" hidden among the thorny bushes behind the railway tracks. the small-thick thorns cut our forearms and calf muscles every time we chased the ball through them but we didn't care. neither did the pigs living inside the bushes. they would silently observe us from the shadows and would scatter away only when the ball actually hit them. the evening 545 pm train going from rameswaram to madras would cross the field from behind square leg to beyond long off before vanishing away, and blare the horn as a reminder for us to speed up the game and wrap it up by the time the temple loudspeaker started playing devotional songs at 6pm.
the solid clay on this abandoned land outside the village limits gave us a smooth, even and hard wicket to play on. the ball bounced and kicked up nicely allowing us to get most of the runs through cuts and pulls, more than drives - which we relied on while playing on dustier, spin friendly wickets on the dry river cutting across our village.
I was known to be a stroke-less batsman, and would usually nudge my way to a 8 or 10 before getting bowled to a straight delivery, adding precious little to our average team score of 80-100 in 20 over a side games. on this day, I had no control over my shaky defence. I just didn't know why. instead of presenting the full face of the bat trying get a touch of the ball each time it passed me, I was instinctively.swinging at all the deliveries. in my mind, I was mistiming the shots - but in reality I was probably timing them correctly for the first and only time in my life. I hit three boundaries; one through backward square leg and two over mid on. got a couple of 3s through cover and one straight drive got me 2 runs. the harder I hit the faster the bowlers tried; because they knew I was terrible batsman, and the faster they bowled the quicker the ball raced to the boundary.
I was invited to raise my bat for the quarter century when I hit my third boundary, just sailing over the mid on fielder who later became a traffic cop and was reprimanded for taking a bribe. knowing I may never get to any score above 10 again - and I haven't since then in the ensuing 33 years - I did acknowledge the generous applause from my team mates. it was the last over the innings. so, one more wild swing and a couple of runs on the leg side and our innings ended with me on 27 not out.
