Recall some batsman you have seen premeditating a cut to the vacant square third man. Your dare this time will be to blank out the opener who was the player of the series in a World Cup with a 7-year career batting average barely kissing 20 (at the time). The ‘vacant’ was needless there, as Jayasuriya generally prefers hitting them into the stands.

Imagine you are at the crease and a fast delivery rises from a good length and comes into your body, leaving you no option but to attempt the Lara stroke. Stop that name from popping up inside you out of nowhere while your front leg starts folding up to execute the shot.

Apparently this last one even has a bit of history attached to the nomenclature. The original and slightly different version was popularised by Kapil Dev as the ‘Nataraja’ pull named after the posture of Shiva (or ‘Nataraja’), the Hindu deity while performing his 'Tandava’ dance. Run an image search on Nataraja and you can see the lifted leg there to be a lot straighter than Lara’s mirror-image version. Only Jaques Kallis today can claim to be faithful to Kapil’s invention while the West Indian went on to patent his own version of the stroke.

Enough of games on resisting thoughts. Now we do it differently.

“While you have your coloured clothing on play the spinners in your ‘V’ and the faster bowlers everywhere else, all out of the park. And do not forget stepping out.” Identify the batsman who is getting the above ‘thought for the day’ permanently etched on the exhibition board of his cricket coaching camp. [Warning: Referring to him as a mere batsman may invite wrath from his selectors.]

You switched on the television and just saw a batsman in whites creaming a 95 mph good length delivery along the ground for an on-driven four. You have an easier identification job now. A telling crouch at the point of delivery promptly eliminates the upright new Indian skipper Rahul Dravid and leaves only his Australian counterpart to haunt you.

Ambling into the local cricket stadium the other Sunday you once left your seat after witnessing a short rising ball being sent lazily and elegantly into the stands in quite an unconventional fashion. C’mon wake up; it was not an English opener playing in Australia and a whole year separates you from a possible repeat trilogy of big Ashes hundreds featuring such strokes in plentiful.

My personal cric-tattoos help me bide time over a lengthy train journey. I have done it for some years now and the good (or bad) news is: these cricketing tattoos are not eternal. Time and loss of memory are often the best erasers. Alternatively it takes a Lara, an Ambrose, a Wasim, a Gilly, a Sanath, an Edgbaston Test, a tied world Cup semi-final or thereabouts. But then they leave their own tattoo on the same slot!

Yuvraj reminded me of this favourite lone-game of mine while sweeping Murali powerfully at Ahmedabad. Guess who patents that slot? Matthew Hayden, rather unsurprisingly.

Now let us play an advanced game and graduate to assigning cricketing tattoos against common phrases. Ask the only other cricket lover at your office about an instance that defines the essence of ‘what could have been’. I owe you a fortune if you get anything other than ‘Geraint drops Kaspa’ or ‘Klusener hits another boundary off Damien Fleming’. [I actually pinch myself at times to verify one more time that those didn’t happen.]

‘A bad day at office.’ For that one you just cannot beat a loss by 245 runs in an ODI tri-series final on the Sharjah batting beauty. Ask Sourav Ganguly; his team did not even concede 300 to the opposition!

I have got little option but to stop myself from reproducing bowling tattoos in this short space as they are numerous and lengthier in duration. If you ask me to pick one though, I will have a toss-up between Wasim Akram’s double strike in the 1992 World Cup Final and Curtly Ambrose’s unsurvivable beauties to Sachin. Blast me – three centuries of international cricket to pick from and I still had to go back to the same tournament twice!

Every soul with a memory has his set of mental tattoos, cricketing and otherwise. That roughly allows everyone to play this game. It is certain fun involving no props other than the images stamped on your mind by a great player or an unforgettable passage of play or a nail-biting match. Start playing at your next leisure and do not forget the exit sign of my coaching camp: Share your tattoos with the person who taught you the game.

Merry Christmas!

The Rawalpindi Express to The King of Spain. Multan test on the final day. Leg stump yorker, middle and leg fly out of the ground. Giles gives the best demonstration of how prevent fracturing one's foot from a 90 mph perfect yorker in only 0.9 seconds I have come across.

Lovely reading, Ang. Absolutely right, no other sport has the same 'tattoo' effect.

Some "tattoos":

Tony Greig towering over a tousle-haired Gavaskar, Delhi I think, England in Ind, 1976-77, Illustrated Weekly photo.
(6 and a bit yr old staring fixedly at pic)

Yardley square cutting Garner for 6 in the course of his 74(?)(Aus vs WI in WI - 1977-'78, Bridgetown I think, The Hindu report)

Gavaskar c Shivnarine b Clarke 0 (first ball duck, Calcutta?) WI in Ind 1978-'79
(On friend's radio, heard audio levels go up as I crossed the fence to his house:-)

Patil hooking Pascoe and Lillee endlessly, Adelaide, 1980-81

G Chappell bowled round his legs by Ghavri, second innings collapse, Ind in Aus, MCG, 1980-81

Richards b Lillee 2, WI 10-4 (during THAT spell, late in the day, Melbourne, WI in Aus, 1981, right after Kim Hughes 100* vs WI, brilliant radio commentary, McGilvray and co.

Gavaskar b Holding 0 (India in WI 1982-'83, first ball, leg stump, second innings, lovely sing-song comms, might have been Reds Perreira)

Bunch of Amarnath hooks, Ind in WI, 1982-83

Sandhu, banana inswinger to bowl Greendige, World Cup 1983 (World service)

Almost shutting off the radio, in the midst of Richards smashing Madan Lal all around Lord's. And, then, that catch.

OK, sorry, I got a bit carried away, think I'll stop :)

Let's see, I haven't given this any thought whatsoever, so just off the top off my head...
Jeff Thomson bowling to the English with only mid-off in front of the wicket.
Richard Hadlee's right arm brushing the Umpire's ear pre-delivery.
The angle of Kapil Dev's head pre-delivery.
Kapil Dev leg glancing Marshall to fine leg for a 6 at Chepauk 83.
Sunil Gavaskar coming in on a hat-trick and flicking the first ball off his left eyebrow from Marshall for 4, Chepauk 83.
Inzamam Ul-Haq walking off at Karachi after scoring 122 out of Pakistans's 345.
Yousuf Youhana's inside out drive off McGrath at Brisbane when he scored 95 and where Pakistan was soon to be cheated and robbed at Tasmania.
Geoff "Swampy" Marsh catching at gully.
Mike Atherton catching at Gully, MCG 94
Mark Waugh catching at second slip.
Murali called for chucking MCG.
Jason Gillespie bowling off a long run up at S. Africa 97
Mark Waugh batting at S. Africa 97
Waqar Younis' run up and delivery.
Saeed Anwar adjusting his wrists on point of impact whilst Square Driving in Eng 96.
Azhar Mahmood batting without a helmet and daring the bowlers to bounce.
Soory, have to go to work now.
I've forgotten so many catches and run outs, I hope other readers can mention some.

Keep them coming, Krishna. Hope more people to join you soon.

Run out: Jonty Rhodes in 1992 vs, Inzy. A permanent tattoo called "Tt's a bird? it's a plane? No it's JR!"
Catch: Rashid Latif catching Azhar's deliberate glide thru 1st slip in 1996 world Cup qtr-final at B'lore.

Three hardly remembered ones:

Waqar hitting the top of Graeme Hick's off-stump off a viciously reverse-swinging full-toss at Lords (Oval?).

Zaheer Khan castling Andy Flower (then possibly the numero uno batter in the world) off a yorker ... and wondering about what could have been.

and of course Azhar flicking a McDermott short ball, head-high outside the off stump, for four in that Adelaide test.

Nice game AH!

A few Waqar specials:

beating Sachin Tendulkar for sheer pace at Hyderabad (Sindh), 1997.
in the same season in Rawalpindi, clean bowling Brian Lara and causing him to fall over in the process to an outswinging yorker (inswinger for Lara).
Ricky Ponting, Hobart, 1999. (Feroz, I feel your pain.) leaves one outside off with an exaggerated stance, ball swings back in and pegs off stump.

Aqib Javed's slower ball to Greatbatch in the WC semi-final in 1992.

Some of Saeed Anwar's 6s, all flicks on the on-side:

off Andy Cummins, Sharjah, 1993
off Glenn McGrath, Gujranwala, 1994
off Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble, Bangalore, 1996. that game's a source of many tattoos.

Ajay Jadeja running in from long off and tumbling while catching Allan Border at the 92 WC.

Roshan Mahanama's one-handed diving catch near the boundary rope to dismiss Ian Healy, Colombo, 1997? made CNN's Play of the Day (look ma, no gloves)

A few miscellaneous ones:

Pattrick Patterson at the start of his run-up.
Salil Ankola licking the ball with his tongue.
Sanath Jayasuriya's pre-delivery getting-into-stance routine.

I'm sure I'll think of some more as soon as I hit 'Post'.

How about Bhupinder Singh's delivery action? I think he played a few one-days for India back in '94 (Sharjah). Funniest bowling stride I have ever seen.

Following up on Shahir's post
I'd like to add on THAT Hobart Test; checking the scores I see that Ponting made a pair and Mark waugh made 0 and 5, Gilchrist's 149 made him an instant hero, that takes attention away from the fact that Oz were 126-5 and Langer was caught behind and not given, Justin later said that the handle of the bat cracked as the ball passed, and Aussie "journalists" praised his answer as "typical Aussie wit" Yeah, that hilarity and superb Aussie Umpires led to the Neutral Umpires we have today in Test cricket, just as Graham Gooch's run out(not given) against Pakistan led to the use of TV replay for run outs. And Kudos to Pakistan for suggesting Neutral Umpires at both ends for ODI's, naturally the Status Quo, Australia and India, never considered it. I say the third Umpire should be Neutral, too, and there should be an expert( as in Law) to inform hapless Commentators and Tarot Card readers on the Rules of the Game ( Manjrekar?)
The thing is, I wrote a letter to a friend in 95 in which I said Langer was a better No. 3 than Ponting- they loved Ponting because he was exciting, I said Langer was better because he was compact and gritty, much like Graham Thorpe of England
Those words came back to haunt that week in Hobart, and every time a list is made of the highest (successful) run chases, there it is in black and white, but not one commentator ever mentions that Langer's Bat Handle cracked as the ball passed by, they could not care less.
Be careful what you wish for.