The first precaution is to be mentally prepared for glorious uncertainly of cricket it is like the very game of life. Anything which can be accurately predicted is boring, because the interest is time bound. God's sense of humour must be appreciated through humble thanksgiving you do not know what will happen during the next five minutes, hours, days, or years. Plan and plan, re-plan, change and amend, revise and devise it is a never ending process, which keep Homo sapiens busy from morning till night. Had you known even a micro bit of the future, you would have lost your peace of mind and money cannot undo it. Ignorance on the future this communication gap-is a divine blessing.

If you have nothing else to do, watch cricket. If life is chasing you too hard, take hold of a bat and slug away. Get it out of the system, the tension, the pent up aggression , the nagging frustration. Try a late cut, cover drive, half volley, glide, pull or create a lofted rainbow of a glorious sixer, Sending a round ball to the boundary through a square cut is good for the health if you care to remember the definition of indigestion,' which is: trying to put a square meal into a round stomach.

We all start the morning in the routine manner; and by the afternoon the tension pile up. Good cricket is an emotional purgative, if not tonic. By the way, you can play platonic cricket at home, alone, either with the bat or with the ball, not both. Imagination was bestowed on the humans for temporary escape. Can the other living creatures indulge in such imagination?

Cricket is like predicting the weather: there are too many variable factors (occurring within milliseconds in four dimensions) to be taken into consideration. The computer can calculate, but how to, and who will feed the machine fast enough to compute the outcome? it is one person batting against eleven opponents; plus the possible misjudgment with the batting partner passive at the other end.

What is the difference between the philosophy of cricket and life? Not much. Sunshine, some good harvests, adversities, the highs and the lows, some nasty bouts of weather and storms, floods; some smooth rides, and the time to laze in the sun (while fielding, meditating reflectively but alert). Cricket (or life) is continuous monitoring of different types of feedback's all the time. Cannot relax till the last bowl (of life) is bowled.

The relationship between the bat and the ball is not hostile. It is effortlessness which wins--the sing of a master artist. The aim is to play better, regardless of the result. The Japanese martial arts are not based on hostility or enmity. The ball is coming to caress the bat! it is the mother-child relationship. Nothing could be simpler. The right stroke leaves the fielders standing. That is the beginning of art.