Cricket is a game that flows in the blood, veins, mind, soul, urine and tears of Indians. We are the same people who will say that we should give equal importance to other sports; but during the IPL season, we ditch all the other sports for our game. Dog's tail cannot be straightened. 

Usually boys love the game of cricket a lot more than girls. But in the recent past, the girls have also shown a lot of interest in the game of cricket. The reason for boys liking the game more than girls (generalisation) is explained in this post.

It all goes back to our school days. Every Indian school boy automatically becomes a cricket expert during their school time. I was introduced to book cricket when I was in class 3. When I was in class 6 , I had become a book cricket expert. The rules of the game was simple. We had to close the book and open it . The number that appears is the run scored by the person who opens the book. We are supposed to just look at the even number pages. 2,4,6 equated to the runs scored by the player. If 8 appears, it is taken as 1 run. Zero is the dreaded number and when ever a person opens a page that had zero, it means that the batsman is out. 

My science book was the most sought after book in the whole class. It was fine tuned so that only 4s and 6s get opened when I play with it. When I play, I will usually have an audience around me. Everytime a batsman scored a century, they would applaud and I would raise my book in the air. I made it sure that Sachin always scored a century. To add tension to the people around me, I would score just ones once Sachin reaches the ninety mark. Then when he reaches 99, I will hit a huge six and everyone would erupt in joy. One day my science teacher "DCM" saw me playing book cricket and he confiscated the book and asked me to buy another science book. I lost form and completely lost touch with the new book. 

After a few months, DCM gave that book to me. I had no great interest in science. But that book made me love science more than anything. Even during the examinations, I was able to remember the answers for the questions based on the page numbers. In page 186, the answer for ions was found in the bottom left paragraph. I still remember that page 66 was all about germination of seeds. Page 126 had details about biotic and abiotic organisms. In fact cricket helped  me a lot in educating me about science. I preserved that book for a long time. When I moved to college in 1999, my folks cleaned my bookshelf and with that my favourite science book also disappeared.

RIP - Class VI science book. ( 1992-1999)