The Eternal Twelfth Man-II

Adolescence is a wonderfully commoving phase of life. Each person believes he has it in him to change the world. And each wants to do it in his or her way-the right way. There is allegiance in a chosen passion. And a chosen person.

Had Amit not left the club just before the 10th class results came out, he probably wouldn't have been home that day to see them.
Perfunctory incidents of lecturing and emotional outpourings accounted for, he prepared for the admissions process. Commerce was cut off at a manageable level in Ravindra, so he avoided transfer to safer pastures. Also, bunking classes with Rashmi would have been impossible in that case.

The next two years were spent in coachings and school-not neccesarily in that order though. Intermittent displays of religious affinity enabled Amit to assert his faith in the sect. An encounter against the St. Paul's Boys was a monthly affair. A little rarer was the Invitation Tournament at the stadium that he had so fondly romanticized of playing in when he was the juniormost member of Elegant. Then, he was too young. Now, he was club-less. Desires subsided like drops of rain on a dusty outfield-forced by the advent of ground below one's feet. The beginning of the end.

Amit had always prided his statistical supremacy-not with Correlation or Regression-with detailed analysis like the number of boundaries in Sachin's 235th one day inning or the Umpire that stood for the New Zealand-Sri Lanka match in Kandy in March 2002. All youngsters at his age spent major part of their days watching all overs bowled in a one dayer. Even test matches were watched with an open textbook to substantiate passive viewing.Tom Sawyer had his reasons for hating school but he was lucky never to have missed watching the first half of a match. This agonizing pain had taken its toll on Amit a hundred times.
Now, he had been experiencing a slow but scaringly steady entry into a land of cricketing amnesia-where records become difficult to recollect and worse-matches become more and more similar, inclination to watch the next reduces at an increasing rate. This phase of involuntary abstinance from the histrionics of fanhood is amusingly scary. This is the cricket lover's PMS. Triggered by the austere realization that life makes you mature at handling, a sudden disenchantment from the game is experienced.

College life can be a high point in the career or a nonchalant 3 years-depending, among other things, on the city one stays in. The logical continuation is either a professional course or an attempt at getting practical experience.

Amit decided to join the promising banking sector after graduating in commerce. At times, when he even wished to look for the bat he had stashed away in the unreachable corners of his past, he would return lost and empty-handed. The only matches he remembers now are the ones that he imagined playing.