Old habits die hard

Last weekend, we had the annual amdocs cricket tournament. Until last year, we used to play on a dusty school ground, but this year we shifted to a dried-up lake bed. In winter/spring, this becomes a salt lake and we have thousands of flamingos stopping here on the way to Africa. When the lake dries up, it becomes an ideal boundary-less ground for all kinds of sports. If Ravi Shastri had been here, he would have loved to try his key-into-the-pitch report here, for the key would have gone all the way in. Such is the moisture in the surface. A smooth and soft surface leads to a very even bounce and thus a good game of cricket. To make it even better, the teams in which i and vidhya played won the cup in the respective categories (Yes, we had women's cricket too!).

Anyway, back to the subject of habits, if you notice all the photos below, there is one common aspect which you should notice. No, not that i am in all of them, they are meant to be my pictures. One common thing which you should notice in all the pictures (apart from the grotesqueness of my face in the last one) is the way i am biting my tongue in the pics. This is a habit which has stuck with me for a long long time. I always do this when i am concentrating at any sport. I don't realise this and since many people ask me, no i don't feel it nor does it pain! The first photo is from last year's event (at the school ground) and I am at it then too. If you compare the first and the second photo (taken this year), I am surprised that i am amazingly consistent in my bowling action, right up to the position of the individual fingers on my hand!

Back in High School, i used to participate in the Long Jump Event. My trainer at that time used to be very concerned about this habit of mine. I later learnt from him that his concern was not for the well-being of my tongue, but for my performance in the long jump. If , in the process of taking a long jump, i bit my tongue too hard and it fell off (!) behind me, the place where the piece fell would be counted as the distance i have jumped, since technically it is a part of my body. This was the reason he was always warning me about this habit, it seems :-)

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