More than just cricket

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, July 9, 2007
Be it in English, Bengali or Hindi, if you have tried every trick of the trade to make your child read fluently but failed, then your last hope might be playing “Reading Cricket” with your child.
This method invented by a retired Bengali teacher of Sarsuna High School, Tejesh Adhikary, guarantees reading fluency in any language under the sun. The trick is to divide the students into two groups — the “bowling/fielding side” that will listen to the reader and the “batting side” that will do the reading — while the teacher will play the role of the umpire. With every mistake committed by the reader-batsman, he/she will be declared “out”. Reading each line of text without any errors will fetch the batting side one run. The job of the bowling side will be to point out mistake committed by the batters, but if they fail to do so, they will be penalized with “no-balls” and “wides”. After the end of every paragraph, in true cricketing style there will also be a drinks break.
Explaining how he invented the unique method, Adhikary said, “Reading fluently, especially in English has remained a perennial problem for students. During my B Ed training, I was taught that teaching through games, is the easiest way to guarantee learning. Thus, I modified the game of cricket for use as a reading tool.”
The method works wonderfully for both the batting and fielding sides. “To detect mistakes, both teams have to listen to the reading carefully to point out as well as prevent mistakes. The punctuations too should be read with required stress. And the batsman will always want to accumulate more runs by avoiding mistakes and learn in the process,” said Adhikary.
Even parents can play it with their kids — a sort of “net practice” — before the big match in class. “The beauty of the game is that it requires only two to play though a team of eleven makes the game more exciting and works best,” said Adhikary.
Talking about the effectiveness of the game, Adhikary says, “Since “Reading Cricket” is not an on-your-face reading exercise, but a game, students can get very involved. Every time students play the game, they are guaranteed some improvement. We have come across instances where children who shunned reading picked up their books to play the game regularly and have become fluent in the language.” The same technique can be applied for reading poetry also.
To popularise the game, Adhikary along with 40 others including teachers and service professionals have formed the Reading Cricket Association and got it registered in 2004. The association has conducted the game in over 150 schools in the state free of cost. If the school is outside Kolkata, only transport expenses are solicited. Now, Adhikary and the association want to acquire the Intellectual Property Rights to the game and patent it.
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com