My Family and Other Globalizers | Watching cricket has its advantages too

Knowing your googly from google can confer some unexpected advantages. (Photo by Sandeep Singh via Pexels)

Note to readers: My Family and Other Globalizers is a weekly parenting column on bringing up global citizens.

My boys, 15 and 12, are good at math and science. They play piano and their sport of choice is chess. This may be a Tamilian family’s dream, but in Spain, where we live, it is less dreamy and more geeky. Sport, of the variety that requires physical exertion, is something akin to religion here. Attending football matches is the average Spaniard’s pooja. And just as we have Shaivites and Vaishnavites, they have Real Madridites and Barcelonaites.

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At different points over the last couple of years, my boys have attempted to kick a ball around a football field, but they’ve always felt intimidated, given that the competition appears almost genetically programmed to run about shooting at goals. On the other hand, mine have watch-it-on-TV DNA.

The unexpected solution to this conundrum has arrived in the form of cricket. In India, all eyes might be focused on the ODI World Cup, but for the last few weeks, the Spanish city of Malaga has been hosting the European Cricket Championship. The Spanish team has been on a winning streak and made it to the final stages, with a real chance at lifting the trophy.

But I digress. Returning to my children: they were approached about two weeks ago by their PE teacher, Mr Tweedle (yes, that is his real name, not an Enid Blyton-inspired nom de guerre). The boys do not usually interpret coming to his notice as a positive development. Even as they shower in almost-daily “merit points”, from their science teachers, PE has oft been the birthplace of the dreaded “area of concern” in the report card. The offspring are prone to chatting with friends on the sidelines, when they should be sweating it out on the Astro turf.

This time, however, Mr Tweedle was merely the bearer of good, if unexpected, sporting news: the boys had been chosen to join the school’s brand-new cricket team. OK, so the average twitterati would be screaming racism by this point. The children were on the team wholly based on their 50 percent Indian genetics. There had been no selection process.

But in this case, thank God for cultural essentialism. My boys have watched more than a cricket game or two. I even took them to an India vs Australia face off in Melbourne, a few years ago (India lost). The older one, Ishaan, can explain an LBW. That fact alone, automatically makes him the best player on his school team. Like his namesake on India’s World Cup squad, my Ishaan has proven to be a versatile player, taking on any role - mostly because, well, he is aware of what those roles are.

Nico, the younger one, has transformed into a Yoda-like figure, dispensing advice to all the puzzled Spanish newbies. It’s a mixed gender team and I suspect he has mixed motives in having taken a particular girl under his wing. Over dinner last night, he was animated when telling me about his cricketing words of wisdom, “I told her, Mama, it’s not just about getting runs. Always protect your wicket.” My Gavaskar-in-the-making went to bed happily last night. Just before drifting off, he sighed, "I think I have a good brain for cricket.”

Given my dreadful failures in nurturing a strong Indian identity in my children – please do not repeat this, but once, when they were toddlers, I was reduced to trying to get them to eat saag by telling them it was “Indian guacamole”- the unexpected insertion of cricket into our Spanish lives feels serendipitous. I am pinning my hopes on cricket – both the new team at school and its propitious coincidental timing with the World Cup – in making pukka Indians out of my boys. The types that know their googly from their google. Dear reader, watch this space.