Stumped! In and Out of the Gloves for Parthiv Patel

I clearly remember that English summer of 2002.

I am dating myself now, but I was a teenager back then, but apropos of age that’s when I saw a cherubic young lad with a Peter Pan boyish face, barely older to me by a few years taking center-stage at Trent Bridge. Think Nottingham, think Robin Hood, and why he looked as young as any of his Merrie Men. But like Robin Hood facing an onslaught from the Sheriff of Nottingham, Parthiv Patel, faced an onslaught of bouncers at 145 KMPH from the likes of gargantuan lads like Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison, all aimed at a diminutive lad, not legally adult in most parts of the world. He was only 17 years and 153 days. This was the first realization of age for me. I was 15, I was a schoolboy and saw myself as one, and cricketers in my teenage eyes were “adults” elder than in me in age and size. Sure, I was well versed of Sachin playing at the age of 16, but his debut was “before my time”. But that someone close to my age, who had the same innocent boyish looks and just as pocket-size as me, was standing tall to bowlers older and bigger than him, was unfathomable. This was my first epiphany, where a boy close to my age was considered too young to handle alcohol or a ballot, not old enough for a shaving blade but old enough for a wooden blade to face metaphoric ‘Shastriesque’ tracer bullets in international cricket…