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Scoring high on fun
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So what if your boss, teacher or whoever knows you're lying through your teeth to be at the cricket match? Aha! All's fair in love and war, insists an approving ROHINI MOHAN
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We are like this only... — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash
WE'VE HEARD of the city coming to a standstill every time a cricket match is on. Call up workplace, feign illness (even though your boss knows you're a big fat cricket-loving liar and forgives you for that), stay at home, and hide the remote. Everyone (soap-fan grandmom included) must watch the match, the whole match, and nothing b ut the match. So help them God.
Every sports fan wants to be where the action is, that is the stadium. So when the game is played right here, in our Chinnaswamy, how many wake up at four a.m. to stand at the ticket counter that opens at eight? Head straight for Cubbon Road, and the madness begins from the crack of dawn, right from Manekshaw grounds. Large groups of college-goers noisily debate the most economical seating, and weigh affordability against the view of the field.
Yawns, heat
This time round, the India-Australia test series is riding the anticipatory wave, and the pressure on both countries is the stuff of good old spitfire cricket. But it's a test match, you might say, referring to the more-often-than-not boredom, yawns, scorching heat, and more than a day of waiting to find out if you can burst victory crackers. Merely mention this to a guy wearing the Indian team's blue T-shirt (and being jostled around by his friends who want to talk to the press too), and his eyes narrow and turn bloodshot (too many Sunny Deol movies?). "Dravid is the god of test cricket. I will go through any fucking torture to watch him play in a test," he promises. I take a few steps back to put a safe distance between us, and begin ask what would happen if Dravid got out. Before I can finish, he hushes me hurriedly, lest I jinx The Wall's performance. (Currently, the entire country is mourning over the Wall collapse.) The fan even wore a red AIDS ribbon, earnestly supporting the cause his favourite cricketer endorses.
Two other guys are seen seething at a tricolour lying on the pavement. "Doesn't anyone know that our national flag must not touch the ground?!" they mutter, picking it up before someone steps on it. Just then, out of nowhere, a skinny man comes running to them, asking them whether they wanted to buy the flag. Ahhh... . marketing genius, right on the street.
All day, loud cheering, whistling and trumpeting (where did they find those trumpets??) fills the air. There are stories of people in the audience who stand through an entire innings, truly believing that their sitting was the reason wickets were falling. But come afternoon and grub time, overriding Bangalorean hunger brings the fans teeming out of the stadium. All I did is stand at one of the gates, and am immediately accosted by green shirt: "Do you want two Rs. 250 tickets?" He swears he's selling them at par, while other "cheats" were scalping at three times the price in the morning and at one-and-half times after noon. But there's also a college student trying to sell his two Rs. 400 tickets for Rs.150 and there are no takers. How come? "It's a test, no? It gets boring after some time."
But the men peering through the State Bank of Mysore gates (adjacent to the stadium), into the windows of the building inside that only give a minuscule glimpse of the periphery of the field, don't think so. "It's worth it. Sometimes we get to see some fielder running to stop a four in this place," Devaraj says, his eyes lighting up as he points to the little green patch that is all that was visible. This ain't cricket fever, my friends; this is blood-boiling cric-mania!
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