Cricket Rewind

The ongoing one day series between England and India reach the final stage , with England on the verge of a revenge and Indian men set to embark on the Titanic. Tests in England are generally calm, owing to its gentle audience -who maintain pin-drop silence , applaud only through claps for either sides and produce standing ovations not only for players but also for themselves to flex their muscles after hours of inactivity. Whereas in the one day matches , the Indian diaspora which flock to the stadia makes noise much to the disgust of any teacher and the situation gets only worse in India. With Indian masses not bound to embrace the refined English citizens even in the near future, Indianness lies closer to the one day arena and , of late ,the boxer form of the game-Twenty20. Now ,what can the poor fans do other than to expect for the tidal turn over.

I would like to mull over another lengthy 7 match series between India and West Indies in 2002, not for any special rhyme or reason but for the last match which was held in our home city. You earn the credentials to talk about the passion for the game when it gets closer to you.
The craze grow to frenzy with both teams levelled 0n 3-3 and the game scheduled on a Sunday.
Prior to a week,the main road running through the city was embellished with decoration bulbs never like before. It was a festival handed over by BCCI , accepted by ICC, organised by our municipal corporation and celebrated by people. Nothing can describe the euphoria better than the ticket sales. With the pavilion tickets reserved for VIP s and corporates ,the bulk of the rest booked by the educational institutions , only 2000 were left for common man which had vanished in a blink of an eye. Faced with the ire of bulk bookings , the officials retraced 5000 tickets and put them on public sale. Men collected at the stadium in large numbers and seeing the desperation , the Commissioner of Police stationed himself to issue tokens to first 5k fortune bearers. Others ,on whose faces disappointment was writ large were sent back.

Some features of the match :

* Marlon Samuels blew the wind out of Indian players with his maiden century filled with 5 sixers and healthy contributions from Sarwan and Hinds meant India has to chase down a target of 300 plus.

*The cannon balls from Jermaine Lawson were hardly visible to audience on square boundaries as were to 4 Indian top order batsmen.

* That Sir Viv Richards became child Viv Richards ,jumping around in his chair and fist-pumping, upon Dravid's early dismissal which virtually ended India's hopes.

* Kaif and Yuvraj couldn't replicate the Natwest final heroics and Yuvraj who ran out of partners struck an entertaining innings in the end.

The day after , a friend named Chakradhar came to the class and started narrating the following story with a glow in his eyes :

" You know ,I spend the Saturday evening with players in the hotel. They are all very friendly and mixed freely with me. I took autographs from almost all the players and photographs of them by the side of me. Dravid went upstairs early with a ground map. I was said that the cells in his focus gets activated from the night before a match. Yuvraj and Kaif were jovial with me and Agarkar and others were quick to respond to my requests .An ex-Windies fast bowler came to the groin of mine. Sorry reverse. For my brains and the night time, all Windies players looked more or less similar. So , I couldn't exactly describe my intimacy with each of them. In the end I got more autographs from the Windies players. "

" Nice story ra ."

" And you were a member of playing XI ."

" You know, we even screamed Chakri ! Chakri ! from the stands when you opened innings with Sehwag . "

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The personnel surrounding short putted his hitherto bright filaments, unexcited by his appeared -to-be-fiction on a dull Monday morning. He ran back home that after noon and brought those pieces of evidences to silent his critics. The bottom story being that he is the son of a cop and some how sneaked through to party with players.