SUJI: A life that was MNR

Games & Sports

I was, and still am, no doubt, absolutely zero a sports. But the case was no good in the MNR scenario. For instance, localites used to occupy and play in the open green space more than monerecons. The favorite games however remained the same – cricket, ping pong, chess, carom. And, it will be unjust on my part if I do not mention the true passion for the game of those who really played it. Some just kept on playing throughout the night. Hats off to them. There used to be the inter year tournaments; These tournaments were more of a time pass than the actual sport. The inter year tournaments of football, hockey, lawn tennis, basketball, volleyball. But these were more of a come and go affair. The notice used to be put; interested people (winners and runners) people participated, prizes used to be won and that was the end of the story, I mean the game.

One game, that made every monerecon go crazy was cricket; not exactly cricket but kriket and MNR had its own version called TECHNO.  To define TECHNO, it was a soft ball kriket tournament that was played in the basketball court under lights in the chill cold winter nights. As the month of January approaches, you would start seeing monerecons with bats and balls playing kriket wherever they found some open space – basketball courts, lawn tennis courts, skating courts, hostels terrace and believe me, wing corridors. The talk of the college would change to TECHNO and you would find the atmosphere nothing less than a mini world cup. The spectators would go a step further in craziness with their hooting, the only thing missing was match fixing.

For the ping pong lovers, there was the Jagadish Lal Memorial Tournament, but that lacked the enthusiasm and the audience.