Remember 'Book Cricket'?
For those who stare at this word thinking that it may be related to some matchfixing or reserving your seat at the stadium before a cricket match or even a book related to cricket, 'Book Cricket' has nothing to do with these. May be those who were having their school years in the 90s can recollect this greatest game off all times which was held during class hours.
Before the advent of EA Sports Cricket or Brain Lara Cricket or even the Twenty20, 'Book Cricket' was the favourite pastime (sorry class time) entertainment. Well for those who lived before and after the 'Book Criket' era, I will give some explanation.
Book cricket is a game of cricket where you score or concede runs by flipping the pages of a book. The page number on the book is the number of runs you score. The page number on the left hand side is counted. If the page number has more than one digit, the last digit is counted. Since most books have even numbers in the left side of the book 2, 4, 6 etc were the runs scored. If you get a page numbered 8 you will score one run and getting a Zero ending page will get you out.
The 'Book Cricket' was very popular game among our school days because it had several advantages compared to other games. The raw material needed for the game was simply a book, most probably our text book, and it can be played inside the class without getting noticed by the teacher. Even if it gets caught, the students will look into the pages of the book eagerly clarifying their doubts on the subject. Thus the class room became the stadium, the book became the pitch, and the obedient students were the players scoring sixes and boundaries during the class.
Another attracting feature of this game was that it can be played with any number of players from one to 22 members. When playing with more members each one can bat with the book until he gets out. Single player of Bi-player was also popular because that was the safest method to play inside the class. The last pages of the notebooks were our score boards which will have our teams, statistics, points table etc.
Selecting a book (pitch) for the match was the most hard task, while playing with some books we felt there were more zero's in it. A good book was identified in which zeros occured less (it was our belief) and was a good batting 'pitch'. I recollect our History-Geography book which was a good 'pitch'. Since it was the time of One Day Internationals, we adjusted the Book cricket to suit that pattern of game. Two openings of the book constituted one over. The logic behind this was one can score a maximum of 12 runs with two openings, and 12 runs was regarded as a good score in one over in ODI at that time.
Book Cricket by two players was popular among us where each player selects a team while the other scrutinises the page numbers of the book with more responsibility than David Sheperd looks into a LBW decision. We used to have tournaments which lasted for a week and had active participation among all benches in the class. May be the advent of new games in computers and mobile phones and the reason that we have grown older has made us refrain from playing this good old game, it remains one of the exciting and entertaining moments in my school life.
This post is dedicated to Shyamnath, Harishankar, Laxman and my other friends who used to play this version of game with me during my high-school years.
I remember playing other class room games too, like desk snooker, (I modernised the name) and pen fight. I will write about it later.
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