Of pylons and pilots

The Punjab Cricket Association stadium rose from the Mohali swamp 12 years ago. Tidy and well-appointed, it stands as a glass-and-concrete monument to Punjabi affluence.

The Punjab is one of India’s richest states per head of population and it shows. There is a four-storey pavilion with a long room that is all wicker chairs and panelled walls. There are marquees on green lawns flapping in the breeze. There are mementoes in polished hard-wood frames. The cheap seats on the other side of the vast bowl don’t quite compete with that, lacking any sort of roof to shield fans from the sun (or the early-morning drizzle in today’s case). But they still seem more comfortable than most in India.

The ground feels well-heeled in a way Nagpur didn’t. And I presumed that was the reason there are no fewer than 16 floodlight pylons, from which the lights blazed away in today’s gloom. But I am soon disabused.

The Punjab split during the 1947 Partition (hence the building of Chandigarh: Lahore, now in Pakistan, had been the state’s principal city). So Chandigarh is about 150 miles from the border. And the floodlights? Well there are lots of them because they couldn’t just build four or six very high pylons, as at most other grounds. And why was that? Low-flying military aircraft ferrying troops to and from the Pakistani border. Which is a slightly sobering thought as we sit in the murk.