Tour Diary
Galle's spirited groundstaff
When yet another shower lashed the Galle International Stadium at 2.15pm, even though the Indian bowlers would have been relieved, it was a cruel heartbreak for the groundsmen who had worked hard to get the ground ready - despite heavy showers at
Sidharth Monga
25-Feb-2013
When yet another shower lashed the Galle International Stadium at 2.15pm, even though the Indian bowlers would have been relieved, it was a cruel heartbreak for the groundsmen who had worked hard to get the ground ready - despite heavy showers at consistent intervals - for a 2.30pm inspection and a possible 3pm start. If ever a ground was going to have any action after torrential rains, both overnight and during the day, it is Galle.
What they lack in drainage facilities, the groundsmen here make up for with a massive human effort, acumen and anticipation. They work on the principle of not letting the ground get wet in the first place. On match days, around 150 people work under Jayananda Warnaweera, former offspinner and the chief groundsman. At times Warnaweera gets assistance from inmates from the nearby Boosa detention camp, who are watched over by special security guards as they go about their work. In Warnaweera they have a leader who puts his heart and soul into maintaining the ground, his ground.
It’s his home, he says. He is found here more often than at his house. When the tsunami swept the ground in 2004, it took away all the hard work he had put into maintaining it. The fish tank outside the ground, the model of a hand rickshaw, and other artefacts he had personally got here, were gone. He was at the forefront when the stadium was rebuilt after the devastation. During a Test match, he hardly goes home.
Full post'I am what I am'
A great thinker once said “I am what I am”
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
A great thinker once said “I am what I am”. It might have been Descartes. Or maybe Popeye the Sailor Man. It could just have easily been Shahid Afridi. One match into his Test comeback, he realised he didn’t have the temperament for five-day cricket and promptly quit.
You’ve got to hand it to Afridi, the man knows how to entertain, whether it’s sinking his teeth into a cricket ball, whacking Shaun Tait back over his head for six or hammering 14 from his first five balls in Test cricket in four years.
Even in his retirement announcement, Afridi didn’t tone things down. For most Australian players, farewelling Test cricket is an emotional experience that more often than not brings a tear to the player’s eye. Not Afridi.
Full postFootball on a cricket tour
I have seen three diverse games of football since arriving in Sri Lanka, and it has barely been five days
Sidharth Monga
25-Feb-2013
I have seen three diverse games of football since arriving in Sri Lanka, and it has barely been five days. The first one was obviously the final of the World Cup, the second and third were more enjoyable.
I appreciated the human drama on display during the biggest match of the year. I also appreciated that I was watching it in a foreign country amid people from various other countries. Don’t think anyone gathered around the big screen by the pool until close to 3 am was from either Spain or the Netherlands. But I don’t follow the game enough to appreciate the need for unattractive football in a final. Will take third-place playoffs any day.
The hero of the second game, which I saw while typing from the press box at the Colts Cricket Club Ground in Colombo, was Rahul Dravid. The Indian team erected two stumps to mark goals on either side, and went at it. One of them is nicknamed Pele too, not quite sure who. Ishant Sharma and Munaf Patel guarded one goal and Dravid the other, at the near end. Since the goal is small, the goalkeeper is not allowed to use hands in this game.
Full postModernity at the cost of intimacy?
The R Premadasa is a mess right now
Sidharth Monga
25-Feb-2013
The R Premadasa is a mess right now. It is being redone for the World Cup. I have never watched a cricket match here, but I don’t like what I see. Rather I don’t like what I foresee. It’s a massive construction site, all the stands have been brought down. There are giant machines, iron rods, bricks, cement, mud all over, and it’s an achievement to get to where the Indian nets are. Sooner than we realise it might even become a swank stadium. It might even have a spaceship press box, who knows?
It reminds me of the Wankhede Stadium. It perhaps looks similar to what Premadasa does now. Both the stadiums are being redone for the World Cup. Wankhede, too, will in all likelihood emerge an enviable cricket ground, but it will be far removed from my Wankhede. The Wankhede I knew gave me the best cricket-watching experience, during domestic matches that is.
Just outside the press box, I could sit, in the shade, take in the breeze from the Arabian Sea, right behind the bowler’s arm. That was not nearly the best part of it. Where I sat wasn’t too high: I could hear what the keeper shouts to the bowler, the jokes being cracked in the slips, the sledging, the captain fighting with his bowler, the umpire telling the batsman “right-arm medium, coming over the wicket to you”. In the commercial hub of the commercial hub of India, time would slow down during Ranji Trophy matches.
Full postSaqlain's magical fingers
“ Aisa lag rahan hain, ki hum jannat mein practise kar rahen hain (It feels like we are practicing in heaven),” Aaqib Javed said to Umar Gul, Mohammad Aamer and Danish Kaneria
Nagraj Gollapudi
25-Feb-2013
“Aisa lag rahan hain, ki hum jannat mein practise kar rahen hain (It feels like we are practicing in heaven),” Aaqib Javed said to Umar Gul, Mohammad Aamer and Danish Kaneria. A burst of laughter followed as the four looked at the four bearded men, dressed in jabbas (ankle-length tunics) standing at one end of the nets on the practice grounds in Leicester.
One of them, a familiar face, had just given a half-hour long practical lesson to Saeed Ajmal on the art of offspin. Saqlain Mushtaq may have been forgotten after Virender Sehwag’s Multan assault in 2004, but the pioneer of the doosra still can teach his apprentices a lesson or two.
Saqlain, who lives in Leicestershire, dropped in to visit the Pakistan team and offered Friday prayers with some of the players. Though he had grown a slight paunch (“I’m eating home-cooked food three times a day,” he chuckled) he still seemed in peak fitness. He's active in the local cricket league, where he makes inexperienced batsmen dance to his lethal doosra. Ajmal, who can bowl the other ‘un confidently, was keen on learning the secrets of the flight and accuracy that Saqlain was famous for in his peak.
Full postDerbyshire's country charm
After reading Mark Nicholas in the Wisden Cricketer argue that Derbyshire was a team that “exists for no obviously justifiable reason”, I was interested to see the county in action in Australia’s tour match
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
After reading Mark Nicholas in the Wisden Cricketer argue that Derbyshire was a team that “exists for no obviously justifiable reason”, I was interested to see the county in action in Australia’s tour match. The Australian team was staying in Nottingham, 15 minutes away, which didn’t fill me with confidence about Derby’s hospitality.
But over the past two days I’ve come to really like the Derby county ground. Having only experienced the bigger venues around England – Lord’s, Old Trafford, The Oval etc - here at last was one that felt like the county ovals I'd always imagined.
Back home in Australia, state cricket is nearly always played in the major Test venues and there are few more disheartening sights than an almost empty MCG on a Sheffield Shield day. I always envisaged county cricket being played at village-style venues where the locals could get close the action.
In that sense, Derby hasn’t disappointed. Metres from the boundary fence, there are stands selling everything from locally made Bakewell tart flavoured ice-cream, to hearty pasties, to pick’n’mix confectionery, to books - not just old cricket books but also secondhand thrillers by the likes of Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsyth.
Full postThe signs are good for Pakistan's home from home
It's sad that Pakistan won't be hosting any international teams at home for the foreseeable future
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Not quite the neutral game at Edgbaston
© Getty ImagesThe Edgbaston ground wasn't quite full - substantial rebuilding works played a part in that - but of the 12,000 or so fans it's fair to say 80-90% were supporting Pakistan. Birmingham has one of the biggest Pakistani populations in the UK - indeed the previous lord mayor of the city, Abdul Rashid, was originally from Pakistan - and they can expect similar support when they hit Leeds for the second Test.
Before the game, the noise of the air-horns all around the ground was deafening; perhaps the only thing louder was the roar of approval each time Umar Akmal or Shahid Afridi jogged to the boundary to field in the deep later in the day. When David Hussey was fielding on the rope earlier, he had to shrug off a few heckles.
The crowd rose as one for every Pakistan run early in the innings, be it a boundary or a single tickled to fine leg. One portly, balding gentleman who might have been in his fifties was waving a Pakistan flag while sprinting up and down his row with the sort of energy you might expect from his son or grandson.
Full postMore than just a tree
Canterbury
Nagraj Gollapudi
25-Feb-2013
The Tree is being missed, but luckily the anecdotes will remain
© Cricinfo Ltd.Canterbury. What does it remind you of? For me it was always about the Tree. The Lime Tree. The St Lawrence Lime Tree. It is marked in capitals because it was a special one, one that went on to occupy its own space in cricket’s history.
On the turbulent night of January 9, 2005, gale force winds felled this iconic Tree, bringing to an end its nearly 200-year vigil at Kent’s home ground in Canterbury. “There it lay, trunk snapped at a point some seven feet from its base, at rest just outside the playing area. It looked like a giant, hungry crocodile with jaws wide open waiting to swallow its quarry,” David Robertson, Kent’s honorary curator, wrote in A Legend Dies – The Story of a Tree with Cricketing History, a tribute to the Tree’s significance and standing in the club’s history.
Mourners from all around England, and letters and telephone calls from the rest of the cricketing world, poured in. It was a Tree that had seen a lot, and survived the two World Wars, including the Blitz. All the while it had stood there strong and tall, urging the batsman to hit over it, acting as a blanket to the fans during the cold and shade when it was hot.
Full postViva la sport
I thought I would kick off the tour by writing about the historical contest between old timers Eton and Harrow
Nagraj Gollapudi
25-Feb-2013
Any guesses which sport?
© Getty ImagesI thought I would kick off the tour by writing about the historical contest between old timers Eton and Harrow. But it would be plain dumb to ignore a contest, more immediate and more important at the moment, that will have millions of fans across the globe glued in for the (hopefully) 90 minutes of play between another pair of old enemies: England and Germany.
As soon as I set out this morning, I noticed the multitude of Union Jacks fluttering proudly out of car windshields and apartment balconies and pub terraces. Bare-chested fans with their bodies painted in England’s colours of red and white, or wearing Rooney-numbered t-shirts, are parading the streets blowing the world’s most popular musical instrument at the moment – the vuvuzela - and screaming "England! England!" with half-full pints in hand.
All my life I’ve read a lot about Super Sundays and derby clashes, but this is the first time I’ve been a witness to something where the air is so full of hope, expectation, national pride; an occasion where sport becomes the melting pot into which fans of all hues and nationalities
plunge and experience a pleasure that is so unique, and which only sport can provide.
Full postThe stamp collector
Ranjib Biswal , the current Indian team manager, has had a long involvement with cricket
Siddarth Ravindran
25-Feb-2013
Philately has remained an enduring hobby for Ranjib Biswal
© Associated PressRanjib Biswal, the current Indian team manager, has had a long involvement with cricket. He played his first representative match as a 12-year-old in 1982 for an Orissa age-group team, worked his way up to the national Under-19 team and had a nearly decade-long Ranji Trophy career as an allrounder ending in 1996-97 with respectable first-class averages of 40 with the bat and about 24 with the ball. Since then he has dabbled in politics, but has stayed in touch with the game as an administrator, besides serving as national selector and team manager.
Around the same time that he took up cricket, he picked up a hobby which he still maintains a keen interest in – philately. Over the years, his stamp collection has expanded to a huge 3.5 lakhs. "It's organised country-wise in albums, which take up a huge space at home; nearly an entire cupboard," Biswal says.
He says he has 4000 cricket stamps, with the legends of the game finding pride of place. “I've got Bradman, Frank Worrell, Garry Sobers …” he says. “[In] India we don't have stamps on the cricketers, basically the stamps are from England, West Indies, Australia, who come out with commemorative stamps.”
Full post