The White Mischief

I feel like I need to apologize in my very first sentence. I’m sure maybe some of you thought that maybe “The White Mischief” was a nickname I had acquired here, and that there would be some cool story about how I got the name.

Nope. Sorry to disappoint. But I couldn’t help but to adorn this post with the title. I’ll tie it in somewhere in this post, I promise.

This post won’t be about cow tipping (which is probably punishable by death), or stealing a tuk tuk and taking it for a lap around the block, or something similar that could earn me such a nickname. Rather, it will be about my first experience with India’s national pastime, cricket.



Enjoying my first cricket match in my newly purchased cricket jersey!



It’s hard to describe the actual game of cricket itself. I suppose its closest relative that I’m aware of would be baseball. Basically there is a bowler (very similar to a pitcher) who bowls (pitches) the ball towards the batsman (batter) and tries to either get it past him and hit the wicket behind him, or get him to hit the ball in the air so that one of the fielders can catch it. Until that happens, the batsman just keeps hitting. That’s not a very thorough description of the game, but it’s as good as I can do without making this another 4000 word post. The batsmen protects the wicket by hitting the ball, and he gets a certain amount of points when he does hit it. 6 points if it goes out of the playing field in the air (similar to a home run), and 4 points if it rolls off the playing field. If the ball is kept in play by the fielders, the batsman runs from wicket to wicket (scoring 1 point for each length) until he doesn’t think he can make it another length before the fielders get the ball back in and hits the wicket before the batsman touches the line.



As opposed to the non-strategic timeouts?

Confused? Thought so. Me too. It took me an afternoon of watching cricket on TV (which isn’t hard to find, as there are 4 channels devoted to it) while reading the rules on Wikipedia to even begin to understand it. For a better short description of the sport than I just gave, read THIS DESCRIPTION. Much more helpful.

Nothing capped off the experience like watching the match in blue lawn chairs.



Cricket fans are crazy. I went to the game with Jayme’s team from work. I work with many of the people daily, some of whom are very quiet. Well, get them to a cricket match and that changes quickly. They go absolutely ballistic. And unlike baseball or football, proportionately there is a lot to cheer about in cricket. Every time someone hits a 6, the crowd goes absolutely berserk. All sorts of noise makers going off and flags being waved in your face.



Jayme isn't nearly excited enough. Could he be mesmerized by the White Mischief?

The game we were at was particularly entertaining. After 4 hours of playing, it came down to the last at-bat. Note: There are several different lengths of cricket matches. “Test Matches” which this was, last about 4 hours. Those are the shortest games. Real cricket matches can last an entire day…..     The Bangalore Royal Challengers (named after a whiskey, of course) were batting last, and had stormed back from a pretty healthy defecit, but our star batter Chris Gayle had hit several 6’s to pull us back into striking distance. After he was retired, it seemed like we didn’t have much hope. But our next couple of batters hit well enough to give us a chance at the end. With one last pitch left, we needed a 6 to win. And sure enough, the batter sent the ball sailing out of the playing field into the stands. Absolute chaos ensued. One of my co-workers who I had heard speak about 2 times in my life gave me a huge bear hug in celebration. I even got caught up in the celebration! It was the equivalent to hitting a walk off grand slam in baseball.

Now to explain the title of my post. The White Mischief is the name of the cheerleading squad for the RC’s. The cheerleaders are mostly Caucasian, and dressed more scandalously that you would ever see anyone else in India dressed. I’m not sure if this is racist or not….I’m assuming probably so….but whatever. Not sure that you could get away with anything like this anywhere other than India. It’s interesting that in such a conservative culture that they can get away with something like this without any sort of major backlash. But I guess it’s pretty much a side show. They are treated somewhat like zoo animals, as all the Indian men crowd around the fence that separates the cheerleaders from the stands trying to catch a close glimpse and get a picture on their cameras.

Mischevious indeed....



Commonplace in the US, not so much in India.



Interestingly enough, the visiting Pune Warriors team had Indian cheerleaders dressed in traditional sarees…..

This would be considered normal and acceptable in India.

Doing some more research, White Mischief is also the name of a vodka made by the UB Group, who owns the team (and UB City where I live, and Kingfisher airlines, and Kingfisher beer, just to name a few). But still. Can you imagine if a team in the US had all Indian cheerleaders and called them the Brown Mischief, or the Curry Crusaders, or the Stray Dogs? Just another paradox that is the country of India I guess.

It was cool to see the sport that is so important to the country up close and personal. I don’t think I could ever own season tickets…as the matches are too damn long, but I would highly recommend going to one if you are ever in India during cricket season. It also made me miss American sports, and going to Target Field on a summer night to watch the Royals beat the Twins (or anyone else beat the Twins for that matter, not a rare occurrence). As much as I miss baseball, I also miss ballpark food. I definitely would have rather had a nice bratwurst and a cold beer over the very questionable looking curry and rice buffet.

All in all, it was a great experience, and was another activity I got to cross off of my India bucket list.