| Author: Ruskin Bond Review By: Atharv Gupta Class: 5 |
Ranji and His Wonderful Bat is heart-warming and a must read compilation of short stories for cricket lovers. This story is about an 11-year-old boy named Ranji who wants to become a test cricketer when he grows up.
In the starting Ranji was shown losing a school cricket match, after which Ranji was devastated. Later that evening when he visited Mr. Kapoor’s sports shop, he told him how he lost the match. Mr. Kapoor took Ranji to the back side storage room and gifted him his bat from which he had hit a century. Mr Kapoor was also a test cricketer. He told him that it’s an old bat, but it has not lost its luck, and is very lucky. Ranji took the bat and played several matches with it but one day the bat was lost, when he was taking his friend to the hospital in the evening and had forgot it in the bus. He then again visits the sports shop and tells Mr. Kapoor that he had lost his bat. He then told Ranji, comforting him, that the bat he gave him was a normal bat. Yes, he had hit a century with it. But he told Ranji that it was just you who was handling it perfectly. If you have your bat and do not know how to handle it, it would really become useless. It was the bat which had your confidence rising. In further stories he plays a lot better than before with another bat borrowed from his friend, remembering Mr. Kapoor’s motivational words.
I would rate this story compilation a 5 stars, as I am also fond of cricket and also go to an academy to practice it. This story told me that nothing is lucky if you are not skillful to handle it. You have to work hard to summon your “good luck”.
