A photo of Ken Meuleman in Nagpur?

Nagpur is a difficult place to work out. It’s the city of oranges, yet my hotel breakfast buffet offers no orange juice. It’s smack bang in the centre of India, but feels out of the loop. It is, according to Lonely Planet, “hopelessly devoid of sights”, yet has one of the finest cricket stadiums in the country.

The big, new VCA Stadium is an impressive sight. It’s located well outside the city itself, so transport can be an issue, but the facilities are first-class. That includes the press box, which is so extensive that it puts the MCG’s Long Room to shame.

It’s so vast that as I watched the Australian fielding session on Thursday, a colleague at the other end of the room who wanted to let me know lunch was served had to ring me to pass on the message. He was so far away that I couldn’t see him, let alone the sandwiches.

And all around the room are wonderful old cricket photographs, mostly in black and white. There’s one of the Nawab of Pataudi with Len Hutton and his son Richard; one of Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott, the three Ws; one of the late Trevor Bailey running in to bowl. There’s a great caption on an Ian Botham photo that reads: “a flamboyant allrounder but erratic performer in one day cricket”.

Some of the images make perfect sense in their surroundings – a photo of Neville Cardus, for example, is the perfect fit for a room full of cricket writers. Some are more baffling. One of the most unexpected photos is of Ken Meuleman playing a sweep.

Consider that for a moment. Meuleman was an Australian batsman who played a solitary Test match in Wellington in 1946 and scored a duck in his only innings. What on earth would his photo be doing in Nagpur, alongside Viv Richards and Garfield Sobers?

On closer inspection, Meuleman’s presence makes more sense, for in 1953-54 he toured the country with a combined Commonwealth XI, and was named one of the five Indian Cricket Cricketers of the Year. He didn’t play in Nagpur, but made first-class centuries in Madras, Lucknow and Baroda.

On even closer inspection, the person in the photo does seem to belong among the other greats in the gallery. It's actually a photo of Keith Miller. Right initials, wrong name.

That aside, the photos add a sense of history to a stadium that was built only three years ago.