Jingle balls for cricket fun

If you had passed by the cricket field of BharatiyaVidyaBhavan's Junior College, Sainikpuri, recently, you might have heard cricket being played -players cheering, appealing, high-fiving each other, shouting. You probably heard jingling, whenever the cricket ball was thrown. Confused? Well that's because the school hosted the fifth season of cricket tournament for visually-challenged cricketers, from January 9 to 11.
Organised by an NGO for differentlyabled individuals, the tournament saw men between the age group of 22-25 enthusiastically run behind the white plastic ball that was filled with ball bearings.Drenched in sweat, the batsmen swung at the ball when they heard the tell-tale jingle of the plastic ball. The bowlers throw the ball underarm. While the audience cheered wildly for them, it was Tollywood star Venkatesh's visit and scoring runs that doubled their enthusiasm.
Six teams were selected from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and on each day of the tournament, three matches were played. But Sunday was special, as it saw two semi-finals battle being fought on the field. The teams were from Kurnool, Vizag, Bobbili, Dilsukhnagar, Khammam and Hyderabad. And as the players took their positions on the field and chased the target of 125 runs, it hardly seemed any different from a normal match. The highest scorer 20-year-old Balakrishna, who is pursuing graduation from a city college, was upset that he missed a hat trick.
The players were selected from different coaching academies in Masab Tank and Railway Grounds and Gymkhana. Coach for The Indian Blind Cricket Team Chandra Sekhar explained how the teams are made. “There are three categories for the visually challenged players -B1, which is totally blind; B2, which is partially blind; and B3, which includes partially sighted.In a team, four B1 category players, three B2 category and four B3 players are selected. If someone from B1 hits a boundary it's counted as double boundary,” he said, even as he cheered for his trainees.