Cricket represents the social pressure that the story’s male characters feel to appear tough and masculine, as well as Britain’s colonial influence on Indian culture. The narrator and his Daddy once bonded over playing cricket (a British bat-and-ball sport) together every Sunday morning. At that time, Daddy used his experience playing cricket in school and his enthusiasm for the game to galvanize all the boys in the Firozsha Baag apartment complex to join them and form teams that competed against one another. Cricket was the narrator’s primary opportunity to impress his Daddy by proving that he was tough. He recalls how proud his father was when the narrator once blocked a cricket shot with his bare shine (which saved his team in the game) and, although the blow caused him immense physical pain, acted like it didn’t hurt. This incident suggests that cricket is an important determiner of masculinity for the narrator and Daddy: during the game, they are able to display how tough they are, in line with their culture’s stereotypically masculine expectations of men. Daddy and the narrator both see cricket as an important part of their youth and their manliness. But since Daddy is getting older and struggles to keep up with the younger boys, slowing down in the game not only shows him that he’s aging, but makes him feel weak as a man. And, as a result, he stops the games altogether.
Moreover, since cricket is a traditionally British game, the narrator and his father’s love of cricket is also associated with Britain’s long colonial rule over India (which ended 17 years before the story takes place). Although the narrator and his Daddy genuinely enjoy cricket, it only became popular in India because British colonizers introduced it to the country. The importance of cricket in the narrator and his Daddy’s lives shows how centuries of colonization that only recently ended leave a major cultural impact on (formerly) colonized people, sometimes even splitting their identities between their traditional and colonial cultures.
Cricket Quotes in Of White Hairs and Cricket
His aaah surprised me. He had taught me to be tough, always. One morning when we had come home after cricket, he told Mummy and Mamaiji, ‘Today my son did a brave thing, as I would have done. A powerful shot was going to the boundary, like a cannonball, and he blocked it with his bare shin.’ Those were his exact words. The ball’s shiny red fury, and the audible crack—at least, I think it was audible—had sent pain racing through me that nearly made my eyes overflow. Daddy had clapped and said, ‘Well-fielded, sir, well-fielded.’ So I waited to rub the agonised bone until attention was no longer upon me.
My guilty conscience, squirming uncontrollably, could not witness the quarrels. For though I was an eager partner in the conspiracy with Mamaiji, and acquiesced to the necessity for secrecy, very often I spilled the beans—quite literally—with diarrhoea and vomiting, which Mamaiji upheld as undeniable proof that lack of proper regular nourishment had enfeebled my bowels. In the throes of these bouts of effluence, I promised Mummy and Daddy never again to eat what Mamaiji offered, and confessed all my past sins. In Mamaiji’s eyes I was a traitor, but sometimes it was also fun to listen to her scatological reproaches: ‘Mua ugheeparoo! Eating my food, then shitting and tattling all over the place. Next time I’ll cork you up with a big bootch before feeding you.’
Cricket on Sunday mornings became a regular event for the boys in Firozsha Baag. Between us we almost had a complete kit; all that was missing was a pair of bails, and wicket-keeping gloves. Daddy took anyone who wanted to play to the Marine Drive maidaan, and organised us into teams, captaining one team himself. We went early, before the sun got too hot and the maidaan overcrowded. But then one Sunday, halfway through the game, Daddy said he was going to rest for a while. Sitting on the grass a little distance away, he seemed so much older than he did when he was batting, or bowling leg breaks. He watched us with a faraway expression on his face. Sadly, as if he had just realised something and wished he hadn’t.
There was no cricket at the maidaan after that day.
I felt like crying, and buried my face in the pillow. I wanted to cry for the way I had treated Viraf, and for his sick father with the long, cold needle in his arm and his rasping breath; for Mamaiji and her tired, darkened eyes spinning thread for our kustis, and for Mummy growing old in the dingy kitchen smelling of kerosene, where the Primus roared and her dreams were extinguished; I wanted to weep for myself, for not being able to hug Daddy when I wanted to, and for not ever saying thank you for cricket in the morning, and pigeons and bicycles and dreams; and for all the white hairs that I was powerless to stop.