{"id":263,"date":"2008-02-21T04:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T04:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/indiatravelblogarun.wordpress.com\/2008\/02\/21\/the-cricket-hour\/"},"modified":"2010-03-06T16:01:16","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T10:31:16","slug":"cricket-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/cricket-hour.html","title":{"rendered":"The Cricket Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hampi >> Badmi >> Aihole >> Pattadakal
\n+Previous: Mahakoota<\/a>
\n+Next: Aihole<\/a>
\n+Go to the beginning of the series<\/a> or index page<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I was walking along the only road in Aihole and exploring the endless number of temples dotting the village. There were temples everywhere – to my left, right and ahead, and there were temples that I had left behind. At some point I came to a fork and was wondering where next. As I looked around, I heard voices of children near the bend. One of them ran into me and asked me, with a beaming face –<\/p>\n

“What is your name?”<\/p>\n

I answered. A few more kids shouted the same question to me from behind a fence. They were playing cricket. The typical Indi-street cricket – with a rubber ball, a stick for the bat and a few bricks for wicket. I think they found me friendly enough, I was invited to join them for a game. I could have done with some break from all the temple trotting and readily jumped in. Nice guys they were, they let me bat.<\/p>\n

Cricket is not my favourite game and it has been a few years since I have played. I fumbled and stumbled but picked up a bit after a few minutes. And let me admit, the kids were good and some of the deliveries zipped off taking me by surprise. But I had my time with the bat too. After sometime, I started feeling guilty about monopolizing the bat, and opted out and fielded a bit. I also had turn with the ball and shared a few overs with another kid.<\/p>\n

I must have played for a good half hour before I decided it is time to leave. I patted some of them for their brilliance and walked out of the tiny ground. As I moved into the road, a man walking nearby greeted me, and started with the usual question of ‘where am I coming from?’ I started answering him and heard the kids shout from behind – “Watch out for him, he will ask you for money”. In that last thirty minutes, we were friends already.<\/p>\n

Next: Aihole<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hampi >> Badmi >> Aihole >> Pattadakal +Previous: Mahakoota +Next: Aihole +Go to the beginning of the series or index page I was walking along the only road in Aihole and exploring the endless number of temples dotting the village. There were temples everywhere – to my left, right and ahead, and there were temples […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[220],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aihole"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-4f","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3731,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/3731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}