When bunking school is justified
In late October 1983, Dad handed me 2 tickets for India-West Indies at Feroz Shah Kotla. Back then, watching live Test cricket was the pinnacle of entertainment for most teenage boys.
"Take Nishit and go after school".
Original intentions were noble. A change of clothes went into the school bag (didn't want the uniformed schoolboy look at the match), with a dash to the Kotla planned after chutti time.
By 9:00am, the thought of watching Gavaskar, Vengsarkar and Kapil Dev on the one hand and Marshall, Holding and Richards on the other was driving us insane. Bold, decisive and illegal action was taken. Nish and I changed to avoid detection and took off through the barbed wire fence at the far end of the school ground.
Taking our seats in the pavilion just as the first ball was being bowled, we realised to our horror that we were two rows down from KC Shukla, brother of Delhi Ranji great Rakesh Shukla - and our biology teacher and cricket coach. Our initial guilt at being detected gave way to the realisation that Shuklaji was bunking too. We relaxed and smiled back at him.
The rest, as they say, was history. Gavaskar, my cricketing idol, was in bad form and under attack by his critics, coming off a duck and a 7 in India's innings defeat in first Test at Kanpur. Defying his detractors and his age, he played one of his finest innings, pulling, hooking, cutting and driving his way to his century in 94 balls, with an uncharacteristic hooked six off Marshall in the first over.
This of course was his 29th Test century, equalling Don Bradman's record. Possibly the most memorable innings I've watched live and utterly worth skipping school for, don't you think?