Pure, simple and unadulterated pleasures of cricket

The stands at the Wankhede

The T20 World Cup was in progress in Bangladesh, and, with India going from strength to strength, nobody seemed to know or even care about the domestic tourney. Mumbai was taking on Baroda, and the match featured a host of Indian stars such as Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel and the Pathan brothers. A well known ‘expert’ on a news channel, a day earlier, had said that Irfan Pathan wouldn’t have any chances to test his fitness before the IPL. I pity the ignorant viewers watching that programme, for the ‘expert’ doesn’t even know about the existence of this tournament. Well, with no television channel broadcasting the matches live and with none of the news channels devoting even a 5-minute slot to merely show the viewers the scoreboard, it comes as no surprise. I am pretty sure that more than 90% of Indians who claim to be cricket fans would be unaware that our country has a domestic T20 tournament apart from the IPL.

At the end of the match, both teams came up to our stand, signed autographs, posed for photographs, and some even spoke at length to a certain group of people. What more could an ardent fan ask for? All those who complain about cricketers being unapproachable have clearly never been to a domestic fixture.

The other ground in Mumbai where matches are sometimes played is the MCA Recreation Centre in the swanky Bandra-Kurla Complex. This ground has a grass bank beyond the boundary rope, and only a couple of shrubs separate you from the players. The absence of stands gives you the opportunity to walk around the ground and watch the proceedings from the angle of your preference. This is perhaps the closest one can feel to being a ball boy, which I am sure all of us have all aspired to be, as the open-seating area ensures that you get to field the ball more often than not. The Ranji match between Mumbai and Delhi, which overlapped with Sachin Tendulkar’s penultimate Test, was played here.

Being one of the thousands who were unable to get passes for the biggest farewell ever on Indian soil, I went to watch the Mumbai-Delhi game thinking that I would be the only moron out there. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole lot of morons out there, from the club members to the construction workers lazing around on the grass bank and having only one thing in common: genuine love for the game. When the passage of play got dull, the spectators started talking cricket. India’s new number 4 in Tests and the IPL auction were the hot topics of discussion, which were interrupted routinely by appeals.

These were the genuine cricket lovers, people for whom the game was bigger than any cricketing superstar could, can or will ever be. These were fans whose love for the game was irrespective of the format, the controversies, and the rude administrators. These are the fans the BCCI needs to treasure; not the NRIs, the affiliated club members and VIPs who did not consider it important to come to watch the greatest sporting icon play his last Test series. Now that the biggest and probably the only crowd puller in Indian cricket has retired, installing clean seats and toilets in the grounds would not be a bad way to start.

This is Indian cricket’s domestic circuit: a hub for cricketing nerds and fanatics. A hub which could certainly do with a bit of media coverage about its existence.