In cricket or life you never want to get beaten. But the game can bite you, and you can get BITTEN. BITTEN by the game OR SMITTEN by its characters, whatever one may choose to call happened to me in my teens. As a kid in a Bengali household I was often the victim of mum’s pathological hatred for the game. ‘Baba porte Bosho’ (get on with your books), she would say, when a generation was being charmed by a man called Sachin Tendulkar, the guile of Shane Warne, Anil Kumble’s grit or Laxman/Dravid’s magnificence... it often felt cruel.... Despite Mum’s million warnings, Cricket did BITE me,...