Watching Sachin Tendulkar score a hundred in front of forty thousand adoring fans takes away some of the pain of loosing. There is time enough in the future to dwell on missed opportunities and Monty’s lackluster bowling effort – it was just a pleasure to watch a brilliant game.
The Chennai crowd was as much a part of the experience as anything that happened on the field. When India are batting, the most conservative old man is transformed into a fifteen-year-old. He shouts and cheers and dances for every run they score. When Tendulkar walks into bat the crowds flock. Even when he’s fielding, when he touches the ball a roar erupts like a wicket has fallen.
The highlight came last evening while Sehwag was hitting fours and sixes at will. After every boundary the two women sat behind me, both clad head to toe in black chadors and hijabs, starting jumping up and down on their seats and blowing horns in my ear. It was fantastic. The atmosphere at a cricket match in India is unique to anything I have ever experienced. Even as England are getting thrashed you can’t help looking around you and grinning like a mad-man.
Strauss’s twin hundreds, Swann’s double wicket opening over, Flintoff’s confrontation with Yuvraj, Sehwag’s blitz and a Tendulkar century to win the game! Its such a cliché, but cricket really is the winner. Onwards to Mohali, and we will see if England can pick up the pieces.
Monday 15 December 2008
Saturday 13 December 2008
In the corner of a foreign field
In the corner of a foreign field, some five thousand miles from home, a cluster of bleary eyed rotund Englishmen sang William Blake’s Jerusalem as Alistair Cook and Andrew Strauss walked out to bat on the first morning of this First Test.
Amid all the uncertainty surrounding England’s tour since the Mumbai terror attacks, there is something comforting in the thought that wherever England walk out onto a cricket field a group of devoted fans will be there in toe. On the first morning, the over-riding feeling amongst these supporters was relief that finally they had some cricket to watch.
The atmosphere outside the ground was both friendly and good humored. As an Englishmen everyone is eager to shake your hand and welcome you to their city. This amicable spirit was also mirrored on the field of play, as the Indian players generously congratulated Andrew Strauss once he had completed his hundred.
Security – such a pervasive issue in the build up to this match - was tight, but not oppressive. The guards range from diminutive teenagers in smart shirts to large mustachioed policemen, who often glare at you from a distance before breaking out into a broad grin and greeting you with “velcome to Chennai”. This said, those charged with vetting what supporters could take into the ground could do with smiling a little more. For some of them sun-cream was deemed threatening, along with bottles of water and opaque carrier bags. Many people had their mobile phones confiscated for the day – although a big screen at the ground asking spectators to text in messages for the players had a constant turnover. The guards frisking can not have been that successful.
If the figures quoted by the press are correct – the five thousand security personnel at the ground comfortably outnumbered the spectators on both the first two days play. However, apart from the presence of a few sporadically placed cops in the crowd, and a group of armed commandos who circled the playing area once a session, their presence was unobtrusive.
As these armed guards looked on, the game progressed serenely enough. The Barmy Army cheered as they always do when an opposition wicket falls, and the Indian crowd gave Sachin Tendulkar his usual electrifying welcome when he walked out to bat. All seemed well with the world now the cricket was back on. Indeed, despite some reservations about it being a lot of fuss over a cricket-match – given the context in which this game is being played – everything seems to be running smoothly.
Amid all the uncertainty surrounding England’s tour since the Mumbai terror attacks, there is something comforting in the thought that wherever England walk out onto a cricket field a group of devoted fans will be there in toe. On the first morning, the over-riding feeling amongst these supporters was relief that finally they had some cricket to watch.
The atmosphere outside the ground was both friendly and good humored. As an Englishmen everyone is eager to shake your hand and welcome you to their city. This amicable spirit was also mirrored on the field of play, as the Indian players generously congratulated Andrew Strauss once he had completed his hundred.
Security – such a pervasive issue in the build up to this match - was tight, but not oppressive. The guards range from diminutive teenagers in smart shirts to large mustachioed policemen, who often glare at you from a distance before breaking out into a broad grin and greeting you with “velcome to Chennai”. This said, those charged with vetting what supporters could take into the ground could do with smiling a little more. For some of them sun-cream was deemed threatening, along with bottles of water and opaque carrier bags. Many people had their mobile phones confiscated for the day – although a big screen at the ground asking spectators to text in messages for the players had a constant turnover. The guards frisking can not have been that successful.
If the figures quoted by the press are correct – the five thousand security personnel at the ground comfortably outnumbered the spectators on both the first two days play. However, apart from the presence of a few sporadically placed cops in the crowd, and a group of armed commandos who circled the playing area once a session, their presence was unobtrusive.
As these armed guards looked on, the game progressed serenely enough. The Barmy Army cheered as they always do when an opposition wicket falls, and the Indian crowd gave Sachin Tendulkar his usual electrifying welcome when he walked out to bat. All seemed well with the world now the cricket was back on. Indeed, despite some reservations about it being a lot of fuss over a cricket-match – given the context in which this game is being played – everything seems to be running smoothly.
Thursday 11 December 2008
Bristling moustaches abound, but cricket wins
Above anything which took place during today’s play, it is just a relief that cricket is back on again. The significance of this first Test for Indian cricket, with IPLs and Champions Leagues coming up, goes without saying. This might be the most important two-Test series ever played.
Security was tight but not oppressive. Lots of cops with bristling moustaches and ample girths glared at fans outside the stadium before play began. This moustache-to-belly ratio seemed to be an indicator of officer seniority but, despite their intimidating persona, almost everyone was welcoming.
Inside the stadium cameras, mobile phones and sun-cream were banned but many people managed to sneak them in anyway. A big screen which asks spectators to text messages onto it had a constant turnover, so the guards frisking can not have been that effective.
On the subject of ‘effective’ – England’s total was indebted to Andrew Strauss, who compiled his 13th Test hundred with minimum fuss. He and Alastair Cook seemed to be going some way to proving that a warm-up was not needed after all. If only the rest of England’s batting could have lived up to their start.
Paul Collingwood’s performance stood out in particular. Seemingly playing with a ping-pong bat, it would surprise nobody in the ground today if replays were used by the U.S Army to interrogate inmates in Guantanamo Bay. Given Owais Shah was England’s only consistent batsman during the one-day series, and Collingwood hardly scored a run, the England XI is confusing at best.
However, wherever England’s ended up at the end of the day’s play, the real story is that this Test is being played at all.
Security was tight but not oppressive. Lots of cops with bristling moustaches and ample girths glared at fans outside the stadium before play began. This moustache-to-belly ratio seemed to be an indicator of officer seniority but, despite their intimidating persona, almost everyone was welcoming.
Inside the stadium cameras, mobile phones and sun-cream were banned but many people managed to sneak them in anyway. A big screen which asks spectators to text messages onto it had a constant turnover, so the guards frisking can not have been that effective.
On the subject of ‘effective’ – England’s total was indebted to Andrew Strauss, who compiled his 13th Test hundred with minimum fuss. He and Alastair Cook seemed to be going some way to proving that a warm-up was not needed after all. If only the rest of England’s batting could have lived up to their start.
Paul Collingwood’s performance stood out in particular. Seemingly playing with a ping-pong bat, it would surprise nobody in the ground today if replays were used by the U.S Army to interrogate inmates in Guantanamo Bay. Given Owais Shah was England’s only consistent batsman during the one-day series, and Collingwood hardly scored a run, the England XI is confusing at best.
However, wherever England’s ended up at the end of the day’s play, the real story is that this Test is being played at all.
Tuesday 25 November 2008
Sick as a pig; fêted like a king
Leaning, puking out of the iron barred window of an Indian train is not unusual. Being greeted like a celebrity outside a cricket stadium is.
Recovering from a 20-hour train journey from Chennai to Cuttack (spent suffering the effects of food poisoning) I set out to buy my ticket for the 5th ODI. The reception afforded me by the hundreds of people waiting to buy tickets at the Barabati stadium was surreal, therapeutic and extremely fun.
While the match in Bangalore was beginning- with Virender Sehwag taking the attack to England’s bowlers as he has done so often this series- hundreds of fans waited patiently in searing heat to buy tickets. Their boredom was lifted by the sight of my girlfriend and I: jeers and cheers rang out from whoever we passed. But this was nothing to what followed.
Our arrival outside the stadium brought a hoard of television cameras with presenters thrusting microphones at us and requesting interviews. Either they thought I was someone important, or as I suspect, English cricket fans in rural east India are a rarity at best. Searching questions were asked: what did I think of England’s performance so far? (Crap) and who was my favourite England player? (Michael Vaughan: even though he wasn’t playing).
Travelling with a woman in India is well advised; my girlfriend used the ladies’ queue and bought us two tickets within 20 minutes, rather than the hours I would have had to wait otherwise. We then posed with our tickets, whilst more cameras and crew surrounded us as well as a crowd of 50 or so onlookers taking pictures on their mobile phones.
These further interviews was more searching than previous ones:
Interviewer: “How are you exactly feeling at this moment?”
Me: “Very good- I am very pleased to be here in Cuttack, and I am looking forward to the match on Wednesday.”
Interviewer: “And who is your favourite Indian player?”
Me: “Sachin”
Enormous cheers rang out behind me.
This is the upside of the BCCI’s stadium rotation policy. This will probably be the only opportunity fans in Cuttack will have to watch their hero’s in the flesh all year. If the reception given to me is anything to go by, they are determined to make the most of it.
Recovering from a 20-hour train journey from Chennai to Cuttack (spent suffering the effects of food poisoning) I set out to buy my ticket for the 5th ODI. The reception afforded me by the hundreds of people waiting to buy tickets at the Barabati stadium was surreal, therapeutic and extremely fun.
While the match in Bangalore was beginning- with Virender Sehwag taking the attack to England’s bowlers as he has done so often this series- hundreds of fans waited patiently in searing heat to buy tickets. Their boredom was lifted by the sight of my girlfriend and I: jeers and cheers rang out from whoever we passed. But this was nothing to what followed.
Our arrival outside the stadium brought a hoard of television cameras with presenters thrusting microphones at us and requesting interviews. Either they thought I was someone important, or as I suspect, English cricket fans in rural east India are a rarity at best. Searching questions were asked: what did I think of England’s performance so far? (Crap) and who was my favourite England player? (Michael Vaughan: even though he wasn’t playing).
Travelling with a woman in India is well advised; my girlfriend used the ladies’ queue and bought us two tickets within 20 minutes, rather than the hours I would have had to wait otherwise. We then posed with our tickets, whilst more cameras and crew surrounded us as well as a crowd of 50 or so onlookers taking pictures on their mobile phones.
These further interviews was more searching than previous ones:
Interviewer: “How are you exactly feeling at this moment?”
Me: “Very good- I am very pleased to be here in Cuttack, and I am looking forward to the match on Wednesday.”
Interviewer: “And who is your favourite Indian player?”
Me: “Sachin”
Enormous cheers rang out behind me.
This is the upside of the BCCI’s stadium rotation policy. This will probably be the only opportunity fans in Cuttack will have to watch their hero’s in the flesh all year. If the reception given to me is anything to go by, they are determined to make the most of it.
Thursday 20 November 2008
Something rotten at the core
India’s cricket team is heir apparent to Australia’s world champion crown and its board is the richest and most powerful in the world. Over the past week Yuvraj Singh has scored two memorable hundreds, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India has attempted to shift the dates of the first Test match to accommodate a newly created money-spinning Twenty20 competition – the Champions League. The two sides of Indian cricket are captured in these events: sublime stroke-play, and a behemoth greedy for more cash.
The ECB rejected calls for changes to the Test dates, but even before this tour got under way England’s itinerary has been suspect. Most of the ODI’s are being played in provincial industrial cities like Rajkot or Indore – and not in the premier cricket grounds of Calcutta or Chennai.
Beside the fact that I would rather see England play in some of the world’s great stadiums – the rotation policy has left the tour itinerary in a constant state of limbo. The game originally planned for Jamshedpur was moved to Bangalore because the stands were unsafe and Guwahati in Assam is a potential war-zone. Just a couple of weeks ago 18 bombs planted by separatists in the city killed 64 people and injured over 300. Around ten thousand people have died in the regions political struggles over the past three decades.
The BCCI’s ticketing policy also leaves much to be desired. Despite its gleaming new website it does not sell tickets online, only locally around the respective stadiums. I am relying on friends in Cuttack and Delhi to get me into the ground, while the Barmy Army will not officially comment on the problems it has had in gaining a quota of tickets for the Test series lest it anger the BCCI in public – putting their quota in jeopardy.
The ECB rejected calls for changes to the Test dates, but even before this tour got under way England’s itinerary has been suspect. Most of the ODI’s are being played in provincial industrial cities like Rajkot or Indore – and not in the premier cricket grounds of Calcutta or Chennai.
Beside the fact that I would rather see England play in some of the world’s great stadiums – the rotation policy has left the tour itinerary in a constant state of limbo. The game originally planned for Jamshedpur was moved to Bangalore because the stands were unsafe and Guwahati in Assam is a potential war-zone. Just a couple of weeks ago 18 bombs planted by separatists in the city killed 64 people and injured over 300. Around ten thousand people have died in the regions political struggles over the past three decades.
The BCCI’s ticketing policy also leaves much to be desired. Despite its gleaming new website it does not sell tickets online, only locally around the respective stadiums. I am relying on friends in Cuttack and Delhi to get me into the ground, while the Barmy Army will not officially comment on the problems it has had in gaining a quota of tickets for the Test series lest it anger the BCCI in public – putting their quota in jeopardy.
Thursday 13 November 2008
MS Dhoni on your crisps
One of the first things you notice as a foreigner in India is how readily complete strangers are willing to strike up probing conversations with you. When I explain I’m following England’s cricket tour they often laugh before explaining that their country is “cricket crazy” - as if they are somehow detached from it all. This impartiality usually passes within minutes and they fall to musing about the skiddy medium pace they bowled as a teenager, or the intricacies of Bhagwat Chandrasekhar’s action. Unwittingly they prove their own point.
On television there are several channels devoted to cricket: ICL, IPL repeats, highlights of old Indian ODI’s - on one I found a repeat of the Sussex-Lancashire C&G trophy final from a couple of years ago. Advert breaks bring you Sachin Tendulkar promoting the Royal Bank of Scotland and Yuvraj Singh advertising Pepsi. If you fancy a snack, Mahendra Singh Dhoni appears on the front of your packet of crisps.
The money flowing through the Indian game makes much more sense when you are here. The advertisements and the endorsements are the physical representations of the billion dollar television deals which are made by companies desperate to show live International matches. For a cricket follower it is a strange experience – I’m both ecstatic at the amount of cricket I can consume, and uneasy at how entwined with money and markets it has become.
As for England and their practice matches – few people have been talking about them. Pietersen and his colleagues have been footnotes in the English-language papers as Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Ponting have dominated the front, back and opinion pages. India’s victory over Australia was felt viscerally by many I’ve spoken to: “We hate the Aussies”, a man from Mumbai told me, “we even danced in the streets when England won the Ashes”.
This focus away from the upcoming one-day matches might give England an advantage, especially with Tendulkar rested and Ishant Sharma injured for the beginning of the series. This being said, modern cricketers should be accustomed to the seamless transition between different tours and contrasting forms of the game. England will have to start well against a country riding on the crest of a wave.
On television there are several channels devoted to cricket: ICL, IPL repeats, highlights of old Indian ODI’s - on one I found a repeat of the Sussex-Lancashire C&G trophy final from a couple of years ago. Advert breaks bring you Sachin Tendulkar promoting the Royal Bank of Scotland and Yuvraj Singh advertising Pepsi. If you fancy a snack, Mahendra Singh Dhoni appears on the front of your packet of crisps.
The money flowing through the Indian game makes much more sense when you are here. The advertisements and the endorsements are the physical representations of the billion dollar television deals which are made by companies desperate to show live International matches. For a cricket follower it is a strange experience – I’m both ecstatic at the amount of cricket I can consume, and uneasy at how entwined with money and markets it has become.
As for England and their practice matches – few people have been talking about them. Pietersen and his colleagues have been footnotes in the English-language papers as Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Ponting have dominated the front, back and opinion pages. India’s victory over Australia was felt viscerally by many I’ve spoken to: “We hate the Aussies”, a man from Mumbai told me, “we even danced in the streets when England won the Ashes”.
This focus away from the upcoming one-day matches might give England an advantage, especially with Tendulkar rested and Ishant Sharma injured for the beginning of the series. This being said, modern cricketers should be accustomed to the seamless transition between different tours and contrasting forms of the game. England will have to start well against a country riding on the crest of a wave.
Sunday 2 November 2008
Cricket the sideshow
The democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent millions of dollars this week in airing a half-hour campaign advert on several prime-time US television networks. An orator in the finest classical traditional, he offers a compelling vision for his country. His pitch was moving, uplifting and polished in presentation.
This coming Saturday another commercial will air: this time for the billionaire financer Sir Allen Stanford. The comparison between the two is marked. While Stanford employs a camera to trail him throughout his set-piece cricket-match, Obama highlights the lives of the ordinary Americans whose lives he hopes to change. These two words “hope” and “change” are ubiquitous throughout the speeches Obama makes. The word most often seen at Stanford’s event is Stanford itself: the Stanford Stadium, the Stanford Super Series, the Stanford Superstars. He likes alliteration as much as the sound of his own name.
And this is the crucial point. This is not about the cricketing spectacle (if it was the pitch would be better) – this is about image and ego, compared to substance and character. Stanford is now the most well-known 205th richest man in America. Nobody has heard of John Catsimatidis, the next on the list. Money is his raison d’etre, and in buying the England cricket team he has bought the biggest advert the City of London has ever seen.
Here is one final thought: before the stadium was developed, with its pristine outfield and vernacular West Indian pavilion, the site was used as an old rubbish dump. Some metaphors come just too easily.
This coming Saturday another commercial will air: this time for the billionaire financer Sir Allen Stanford. The comparison between the two is marked. While Stanford employs a camera to trail him throughout his set-piece cricket-match, Obama highlights the lives of the ordinary Americans whose lives he hopes to change. These two words “hope” and “change” are ubiquitous throughout the speeches Obama makes. The word most often seen at Stanford’s event is Stanford itself: the Stanford Stadium, the Stanford Super Series, the Stanford Superstars. He likes alliteration as much as the sound of his own name.
And this is the crucial point. This is not about the cricketing spectacle (if it was the pitch would be better) – this is about image and ego, compared to substance and character. Stanford is now the most well-known 205th richest man in America. Nobody has heard of John Catsimatidis, the next on the list. Money is his raison d’etre, and in buying the England cricket team he has bought the biggest advert the City of London has ever seen.
Here is one final thought: before the stadium was developed, with its pristine outfield and vernacular West Indian pavilion, the site was used as an old rubbish dump. Some metaphors come just too easily.
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