Deep Backward Point

Welcome to my blog about cricket.

Who am I?

As a kid growing up in Chicago, my first experience with cricket was when my father and his friends would get together to play on Sundays. There would be elaborate suiting-up and a little play, and then we’d all go out for Indian food.

That was before Gavaskar came to town. The first cricket match I ever saw was an exhibition match between the visiting Indian team and a local team outside Chicago in the early ’80s. My father instilled in me a sense of awe about Gavaskar. We got to meet him. Within 24 hours I had gone from never hearing his name to having discovered a new hero.

Me "playing" cricket

And then we moved to India. And cricket became my first love. This was the era of Gavaskar’s wide-brimmed hat, Vengsarkar at Lords, mustache-chewing Kris, and India coming off a World Cup winning high.

And then? Then came Tendulkar, after which it was a short 20-year hop, skip and a jump to becoming the best Indian team in history.

In the mean time, I moved back to the United States. I now live in Boston, getting my cricket fix through Willow.tv or living vicariously through Cricinfo.

Yes, but that doesn’t tell me if I’ll like your blog

Ok. Here are my cricket quirks:

• Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. That’s all.
• Test cricket is better than Twenty20.
• Twenty20 is better than One Day cricket.
• Cricket was my first mathematics teacher: keeping a running count of the required run-rate was enough to get me through about 8th grade.
• Which brings me to statistics. I love cricket statistics.
• I read old scorecards and player statistics as if they were great works of fiction. I love how a scorecard tells a story, how I can picture what happened. There’s no footage of Kapil at Turnbridge Wells, but anyone who has seen that scorecard can see that innings in their mind’s eye.
• I watched every match played at Vadodara (Moti bagh and IPCL stadiums) in the time I lived there. India won every time. Except when New Zealand played The Netherlands.

What will I blog about?

My hope is to give context on players, teams and quirks of history through statistics and historical perspective. I’m not an expert player or analyst. What I am is tenacious.

I will be posting long-form on this blog about once a week. During the week, I will add pointers to interesting things I find around the web.

If you read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes along the way.

OK, why is it called Deep Backward Point?
Because when I have a point, it’s fairly deep and mostly backwards.

Enjoy!