How It all started!

June 11, 2017

It was just another day at school. It was a maths class but every guy in the class was excited, not because it was a maths class but because the next period was “Games Period”. Ten minutes before any “Games Period”, you could sense the excitement in the air. And as soon as the bell rang, the entire class raced to the ground in a matter of few seconds but as the fate would have it, it just wasn’t just another day. The Cricket Bats and Balls were not available due to some reasons and we had to settle for the football. See, back in those days, I was a die-hard cricket fan(I’m yet to see a bigger fan of cricket than my past version). Like a billion other people, I was crazy about cricket. I used to think cricket, walk cricket, study cricket, talk cricket and I used to make everything cricket.

I will give here one example of my craziness towards cricket. Remember EA Cricket 07? After IPL started, We were waiting for EA Cricket 08 or EA Cricket 09 to just play IPL. But it wasn’t to be as EA stopped making cricket games due to the scale at which it was pirated. So, I took matters into my own hands, renamed all the teams of English County to Indian Cities, created as many absent players as possible, added Non-IPL teams(like Kanpur Crackers, Patna Pirates, Suratgarh Stars, etc) to compensate for the fact that English County contained 20 teams. Also, I hated football. I used to call it a game where 22 players run around like headless chickens. So, after settling for football and dividing the team, the game started. The best player in our class and probably the whole city was in my team and I probably was the worst player in our class. So I ended up becoming the goalkeeper. “The Best Player” stayed on defence and we started chatting. I asked him “Why do you like this game?” He said, “You will understand it only if you play it”? I jokingly said, “I’m playing and I don’t”. He then further added, “It will take some time”. I said, “I don’t think I can start another game now as I won’t be able to become sufficiently good at it”. He then gave me example of his brother (funnily enough whose name was also Vikas), he said that his brother started playing football in late 10th class, became good at it in 11th class, went to regionals in 12th class, became member of college team in 1st year, started playing club football in first year and finally became college captain in 2nd year. This story was not a game-changer at the time but a few years I would realise how important life lesson it was. And the lesson was that “It’s never too late to start anything new”. While we were having this conversation, the opponent scored a goal. The opponent team had all the good players and our team had all the moderate player, weak players and “The Best Player”. That’s how good he was!

The Bell rang and the game period was up but the game wasn’t. It was like injuries and stoppage time. Moments after the bell rang my friend received the ball in midfield, dribbled past 2 players and let fly from the half-circle and GOAL. The other team had several good players, so being confident they quickly restarted the game. (The game normally continued after the bell rang till the Physical Instructor came and asked us to stop the game and as of now he was nowhere to be seen). The opponent team started moving the ball towards our goal, a player started dribbling but he was stopped in his tracks by you guessed it “The Best Player”. After making the tackle, he again started dribbling the ball and as soon as he reached the midline, he let fly. This time goalkeeper saved it and parried it away to corner. We saw our Physical Instructor coming towards us. And my friend raced to take the corner. Our whole team except me was in the opponent’s D. And I was standing on the half-line. My friend bent the ball from the corner. The ball was in flight and everyone jumped to reach the ball, but the ball evaded everyone and got buried into the far corner. You read it right, He scored directly from the corner and as soon as the goal was scored, our Physical Instructor stopped the play. I was just awestruck by what I had just witnessed. I was completely mesmerised and filled with joy. After this incident, I didn’t become a football lover overnight and It would still take me a lot of time to fall in love with the game but this is where it all began.

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