Tour Diary
Commercial Modi turns Burgundy
Vanity has a new name in India: Lalit Modi
Allan Llewellyn
25-Feb-2013
Vanity has a new name in India: Lalit Modi. The IPL commissioner is starring in a television advertisement for something I can’t remember. It’s normal for the players to cash in (I’m not missing seeing Andrew Symonds emerge from a car wash every time there’s a break in the news back home), but it makes administrators look like they believe the hype about them. I can’t imagine David Morgan pushing rouge make-up or James Sutherland promoting pocket protectors.
In the advertisement Modi seems to be auditioning as a Democrat from Maine, standing in his den admiring his possessions. Ron Burgundy, the self-promoting newsreader in the movie Anchorman, instantly came to mind.
“I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal,” is one of Burgundy’s best lines. “I’m very important. I have a lot of leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.”
Modi is a good looking, successful businessman who has done some incredibly valuable things for the game and confirmed India’s superpower status. But talking to people in the stands in Bangalore it was hard to find supporters who thought the television move made him look better.
Full postVintage security
After the relaxed security on the practice days, inspections and searches have become more thorough, although they still carry an endearing local touch
Allan Llewellyn
25-Feb-2013
After the relaxed security on the practice days, inspections and searches have become more thorough, although they still carry an endearing local touch. Nothing in this sphere is more fun than watching the teams arrive escorted by police in their Ambassador cars. If Volkswagen made a sedan in the 1950s, it would looked like these charming, almost vintage, white vehicles.
With a whirring red siren on the roof, they cruise through the traffic as the lead and rear parts of the envoy, reminding me of slow-motion car-chases in black-and-white movies. The players sit in the centre of the procession in their modern buses and watch the policemen shaking their arms and beeping their piercing horns to create a clear path. I’m not sure if it makes the teams feel safer (they probably wish they were in their own swanky four-wheel drives), but the parade creates some Australian smiles.
Full postNoisy crowd minus the streakers
I think I’m going deaf
Allan Llewellyn
25-Feb-2013
I think I’m going deaf. One day in a stadium that was a third full and my head is echoing. The best I can do to describe the noise is to compare it to when a streaker runs out on an Australian ground. There it might happen once late in a one-dayer, but here it’s every few minutes. For a single, for Sourav Ganguly fielding cleanly, for Sachin Tendulkar running to the boundary, for a Ricky Ponting four. And every time they roar I look for someone running on the field wearing nothing but an Australian flag – or less. Like much in India, it’s a fabulous experience that will take a while to get used to.
Full postSleepless in Bangalore
What seem like small time-changes change everything
Allan Llewellyn
25-Feb-2013
Jetlag is least fun when the changes don’t turn the days upside down. Heading for England or Canada from Down Under isn’t usually too bad because the time switch is so severe there is no option but to adjust quickly. Being in India is trickier for east-coast Australians, who have to deal with a difference of between four-and-a-half and five-and-a-half hours. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough to upset the balance. After three visits here in three years I haven’t found a solution.
I’m determined to focus on India time, but that plan falls down when thinking about contacting my family. In Australia my two babies wake between 4am and 6am, so while I’m not always up with the sun, I’m usually starting to stir (Dear wife, please stop laughing). The upshot is that In India my usual wake-up time is the middle of the night, meaning dozing to 4am counts as my longest sleep-in since the second baby arrived. I’m still waiting to feel refreshed.
So it’s now 6.43am and I’ve been up for almost three hours. I feel like I’ve slept worse than Cameron White and Jason Krejza, who are waiting to find out if they get their first baggy green today. It’s going to be a long first day at the cricket for a few people.
Full postGanguly retirement stir creates echoes of Waugh
India's hysterical 24-hour news coverage is unrivalled
Allan Llewellyn
25-Feb-2013
Twenty-four hour news channels all over the world are prone to constant exaggeration, seemingly capable of turning a shop fire into a global terrorism threat. So when something big happens they sometimes struggle to do it justice because there is no room left for extra flexing. One place where it doesn’t seem to be a problem is India, where the coverage of Sourav Ganguly’s retirement plan quickly reached hysterical limits.
It was like a president or prime minister or rock star had died. One station had four talking heads in various parts of the country swapping back and forth as they told of the disbelieving reactions in their city to an event that wasn't exactly a shock. Even so, the news was so big it didn’t need a mumbling past player acting as on-screen expert – the presenters were able to do it themselves.
Full postMission Impossible made easy
After a quick request for directions I was suddenly in the middle of the Chinnaswamy Stadium
Allan Llewellyn
25-Feb-2013
Getting into the Gabba in the lead-up to the first Test often feels like a job for Jason Bourne or Mission: Impossible’s Ethan Hunt. Over-sized security guards stand watch, telling people they can’t come in with a backpack or a watermelon on their head, and the stadium has more dead-ends than a new housing estate. Achieving a look at the pitch gains more satisfaction than watching a Queenslander’s century.
Security has been a buzzword in the lead-up to the series due to the postponement of the Champions Trophy due to safety, and then there were recent bombings in Delhi. So it was a treat to walk straight into Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Stadium without encountering any roadblocks or army lines.
Full postThe party never stops
Never mind it had been raining before the toss, the covers had been on for hours, and that there was hardly any chance that play would happen
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
Never mind it had been raining before the toss, the covers had been on for hours, and that there was hardly any chance that play would happen. The Sri Lankan spectators in the stands at the Premadasa were here to have a good time.
Running an inventory of the cricket grounds across the globe I've been too, it was hard to rival the interactivity of the fans at the Premadasa. This wasn't up there in the pantheon of pre-game rituals - Liverpool fans singing their anthem in a match against Chelsea – or fan-to-fan banter – a Red Sox v Yankees game at Fenway Park – but in cricketing isolation it was something else, because not a ball was bowled. I imagine it can only be bettered in the Caribbean.
I've seen spectators in Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and London leave when it rains. Fans are a part of any game, and the passionate ones at the Premadasa took plenty of attention off the lack of cricket. In a fantastic conglomeration of hip twists, knee jerks, claps and elbow shaking, the entire Premadasa came to life.
Full postThe buff masters
Hindi films share pretty much equal space in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and you won't have a hard time striking up a conversation about them
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
Hindi films share pretty much equal space in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and you won't have a hard time striking up a conversation about them. Whereas the language (Hindi or Urdu) is the common denominator in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (to a lesser extent, though some people will understand you a little), in Sri Lanka it is impossible to strike up a conversation in that form. If you speak Tamil it's not that difficult, but there is not a trace of Hindi spoken anywhere.
Hindi films aren't as popular in Sri Lanka as in the rest of the subcontinent, but they are shown in select theatres. Wasantha, who works at a barbershop, said the fashionable clothes, beautiful leading men and women and catchy music are among the reasons he and his friends watch the odd Hindi film, even though they don't understand what is happening on screen.
Full postThe travelling soldier
Abhishek Sudhir has been watching live cricket since 1992, from the time Vinod Kambli 'brownwashed' England
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
Abhishek Sudhir was born in 1986, the year India won a Test series in England. Twenty-one years later, when they broke a drought with a draw at The Oval, thereby securing a memorable 1-0 series win, Abhishek was there, and savoured the moment.
It was his first Test outside Bangalore.
"It wasn't cheap," he says, "but it was definitely worth it ... a good way to start. I had always dreamed of watching a series in England."
Full postA Sri Lankan institution
There is history at the PSS
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
As I stepped into the P Saravanamuttu Stadium (PSS), nested along a discreet road by the name of Lesley Ranagala Mawatha ('avenue' in Sinhala) in Colombo, it was just as I had read and heard it to be. After the impressive SSC, home to Sri Lanka Cricket, and the Galle Stadium, which is open all around with virtually no raised structures barring the pavilion, allowing passers-by to take in the cricket, the PSS was small and unobtrusive. Its setting is akin to something of a club venue, with low stands and grassy banks, and the ivy-covered scoreboard.
The media had yet to descend on the venue, being an optional day for the players to have nets. I had planned to meet Kumar Sangakkara here, but he hadn't arrived and so I walked around the stadium to bide my time.
What first caught my attention were the massive honours' boards, listing cricket and hockey players to have been produced here. The PSS is host to the Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club, inaugurated in 1899 and which has produced a superstar by the name of Muttiah Muralitharan. The ground used to be called the Colombo Oval but was changed to its current name, after Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the Tamil Union's president from 1958-50 and chairman of committees from 1935-50.
Full post