Praveen’s Magic Quill

Every time I watched Virender Sehwag hit a boundary every single over on March 28^th, I cursed myself for not having gone to the Chepauk Stadium to watch those shots eye-to-ball instead of sitting in front of the idiot box. At the end of the 3^rd day of the ongoing India vs South Africa Cricket Test Match at Chennai, I made up my mind to definitely go to the match at all cost for the 4^th day’s play so as to possibly witness Sehwag crossing the 400 run mark set by Cricket Legend, Brian Lara. I made a few calls to friends to know the various prices for various stands. That’s when I found that Navneeth had an extra ticket for the IOB Stand and so I decided to buy it from him and go along with him the next day.

This morning, I had my breakfast at 9AM and left, hoping that I would reach the stadium before the start of play, but alas, by the time I picked up Navneeth and reached the outside of the stadium, it was already 10AM. It was damn difficult to find a parking place for my vehicle, and in the end, without any choice, left it in front of a shop, despite the security’s constant scolding. We silently left for Gate no:10, and as we were going in, one thing was going over our minds – the match shouldn’t have started yet (even though it was 10:15AM already) because the crowd seemed to be absolutely silent.

At the first sight of the ground once inside, the first thing that occurred to me from the IOB Balcony was that how small the ground was (doesn’t look as big as depicted on TV) even though this is my 3^rd visit to the stadium in the past one year. At the second sight, I was disappointed to see that play had already started and was even more disappointed to see the reason for the silent nature of the crowd - Ganguly and Dravid were at the crease, meaning Sehwag was OUT!!! After getting seated in one of the seats, I took out my binocular and zoomed to the scoreboard to see whether Sehwag crossed his previous best of 309 and was delighted that he had made it. But the pleasure was short-lived when I noticed a ZERO against Tendulkar’s name! Damn! Two wickets in just half hour! Phew, it had us crest-fallen!

Fifteen minutes later, Rahul Dravid scored his slow and steadily earned 10,000^th Test Run. He started celebrating this milestone even before he crossed half the pitch! And that flying kiss he gave to his Wife and Daughter will be remembered for a long time. It took Jammy nearly an hour to reach his 25^th Test Century. At the other end, Ganguly was playing reasonable well, until he nicked one behind. Even as the match had taken a boring turnaround, the Chennai crowd was cheerful as always. The wave games, drumming with empty water bottles, blowing horns, waving the Indian Flag high were all good fun! The Chennai crowd even kept up with the Sportiveness we always show, buy applauding Opponent Team’s fielding. I, especially, applauded Amla’s awesome fielding within the circle.

Soon, it was lunch time, and I went down to the “canteen” to see what’s there to eat. Yesterday, Sathya had cautioned me that the meals served in my college are 10 times better than that sold here. So, I decided to take his advice and bought a cup of fruit salad for Navneeth and me. As we were eating, Hari came with one of his friends and sat with us. He said that this was his first visit to the stadium and that he was disappointed that the Camera Crew was busy focusing only the hot babes but did not take any notice of us guys. It wasn’t much of a pleasure watching Cricket as our players were playing defensive cricket after lunch. Even Dhoni let us down with only a couple of boundaries before nicking a comical shot to the wicketkeeper. Just a few boundaries here and there. Believe it or not, not even a single shot was played in the air! Soon though, Dale Steyn fulfilled my wish by making stumps to fly in the air by getting Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and R.P.Singh getting out in quick succession. Laxman was the last one to get out with a plum catch back to bowler Paul Harris. I was quite surprised to see the usually naughty Hari sitting silent, even though I was frantically blowing horns, cheering along with the crowd by waving the Indian flag vigorously.

I went back down to the canteen to buy some Bread Omlett this time while South African batsmen got ready. As soon as I came back and sat, Hari pointed to a girl and said that she is his Tuition mate. As I turned to see, I was quite surprised to notice that the girl he was talking about was none other than Raja’s beloved GF wearing a sleeveless White T-Shirt and Jeans sitting with her cousin a few yards behind!!! A quick SMS from Navneeth’s mobile reached Raja on this update, and he replied that he din’t believe us, and for him to believe, he needed a photograph as evidence! Damn him! I managed to take a single photo of her drinking coke and showed him later in the evening after which he finally believed…

Soon, the South Africans came in to bat, and with that, Saurav Ganguly came to field near us! My camera started clicking photo after photo, and every time he faced the crowd (around 6 times per over), our part of the stadium went mad with noise! On the other hand, it was quite disappointing to see Graeme Smith and Neil McKenzie hitting boundaries. Even after Smith fell for Bhajji, the boundaries continued to flow in the form of Amla. As the match started to get boring, we started to pack up. I just turned back once more and noticed that Raja’s GF had left before us!

Just as we were about to leave, Sachin was placed close to us, at the boundary line, and I restarted clicking my camera till the Memory got over! Finally we called it a day when they were about 82 for One and left the stadium. We then went directly to Raja’s house and had a petite chat with with Raja, Sundararajan and Rajaganapathy. After that I left Navneeth at his place and drove back home. Even though its only 8PM as I am typing this post, I can feel that my stomach is growling. Just now, I remembered that my lunch was only a cup of fruit salad and a couple of slices of Bread Omlette. So, I am off to have dinner now! Ciao!