Our School Quad

I seem to have a bit of a raw nerve here about the school yard!

56er Ube led the charge in that he said that he did not see anything different about the yard. An unidentified blogger by the name of αδιβ, who has a nice site about Formula 1 racing, another great interest of mine, as in Finland we are crazy about Kimi Raikkonen, wanted to know what was wrong with the yard picture.



Mr. αδιβ is quite young, just 17. If he is a Cathedralite, he may hardly know what I was refering to.

But the query of Ube, one of our greatest sportsman and also a great great leader, of our decade?

The yard in our day was the centre of activity, from morning till evening. We had Lemondrop cricket matches, in some cases, even before school started in the morning. If, not, we had challenge matches. The matches went through lunch hour.

If it was not the cricket, we were all involved with quad football, and every class had two or three teams, so everyone got a chance. The only time I was injured in school was when I fractured my wrist when i fell saving a goal in a quad football match. But that was a part of growing up in our school.

Look at the this picture of the 59 Rackets team.



What about the Tin and Bottle Badminton Tournament, which was great fun, even if we were whipped by such great players as the Ruias, Ashok, Anil and even that little brother of Ashok, Bharat! Remember the very unassuming Ralph David, who was really a great badminton player.

To me the quad was the character of the school.

When I looked at the picture of this yard, as it is in 2003, some of the basic elements that tickle my memory nerves, were missing.

No crease and stumps for the Lemondrop cricket tournament, no goalposts for the Quad football tournament, and no court lines for the Tin and Bottle Tournament.

Have these sports vanished from our school agenda?

I see the basketball net.

During the 50's, basketball was not yet a sport in our school.

It was only in 1959 that the Harlem Globetrotters arrived for a demo tour to Bombay. Many of us from the school witnessed the marvel of the teams and the performance of their coach, a tiny little man. No doubt, that would have introduced the sport in our school after my time.

Great, but did we or did we have to lose our other quad games?

Maybe I am wrong. I would love to hear that our deeply loved traditions are still intact!