The exorcism

For the past 9 years, I have been carrying a burden.

I always fancied myself a cricketer. I always told myself that if only I had the drive and the bloody mindedness for it, I could have been a proper cricketer.

In late 2007, some friends and I made our way to the batting cages at Chelsea Piers. I sauntered in fully confident that I would swat those pesky baseball machines out of the park. In our group, were four guys. One guy was completely unathletic. One guy hated and still hates cricket. He never played as a kid. The third guy was a proper cricketer. He had played cricket at the school and uni levels. And then there was me. Long on dreams and memories of galli cricket, not so much on actual recent experience putting bat on ball.

Anyway, we rented a cage, paid for an hour of pitches and lined up for our hits. The unathletic guy went first. He swung a few times, got bored, and wandered back outside the nets.

The proper cricketer was up next. He set the pitching machine to 70 mph. The machine had a cutout of a pitcher with his arm raised with a hole where his hand would be. The balls were fired from that hole.

The first red light start blinking. I imagined a pitcher slowly winding up before unleashing his fastball. The second blinked more urgently and finally the third red light also started blinked. The toe of the bat made circles high over my friend's shoulder.

I could see my friend's eyes narrow. It was our moment of truth. Was it really that hard for people raised on cricket to play baseball?

The ball rocketed out of the hole. Swiiiish. He swung so hard that he got turned with the momentum. His bat screamed through the air and makes contact with ..more air. He shook his head, muttered under his breath and took his stance again.

The second pitch, the same. The third the same. After a few more, he walked off the plate a beaten man. If you know anything about cricket, next to getting out, being beaten is the worst thing that can happen to a batsman.

The cricket hater is up next. I have to say that though he hates cricket, he is generally good at sports. He plays squash, rollerblades, swims, all sorts of physical activities. He is no mug with the bat. Well, with zero effort apparent, he starts connecting with 70 mile per hour pitches, smacking them to far corners of the netting. This goes on for a bit before he starts getting tired.

By now, I am thinking to myself that if this guy can connect so easily, surely I can do better. I'm feeling cocky.

Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish. Not even a foul ball. Nothing. I'm killing air each swipe and each swipe is making me more and more angry. I can hear my friends talking among themselves about how a diet of cricket played with a vertical bat is not conducive to baseball played with a horizontal bat, how the bowler's windup gives clues to the batter of what to expect, excuses, excuses, excuses.

I have never felt as much cognitive dissonance as I did that day. My entire identity until that point was built on the premise that I knew bat and ball sports. After that incident, I stopped watching cricket online. I stopped playing squash with these friends. I lost all confidence at my sporting abilities.

A funny thing happens when you aren't feeling confident about being able to do something. You start treating that activity as a joke. Since you don't trust yourself to deliver, you underplay your ability at that activity. You start selling yourself short. And that's exactly what happened to me.

I just didn't trust I could lay bat on ball so I haven't played proper cricket since then.

I don't know what made me do it but earlier this week, I asked my friend G if he wanted to go to the cages with me. He was a good sport about it. So, earlier today, we went.

Maybe it was the low pressure environment, maybe it was just that the pitching machines are configured differently here but I'm happy to say I did much better this time than last time. I connected at 50mph, I connected at 60mph, and finally, when I upped it to 70mph, I connected once again. It felt good to crush those balls.

During real play, I probably would have been out caught or off base each time but I don't care. It felt good to be back. It felt good to be back.