A tepid start after the famous SRT farewell

Rohit Mahajan

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Tribune News Service

Mohali, November 5

This is the first Test in India since the farewell to Tests and all meaningful cricket by Sachin Tendulkar two years ago. That game was played amidst national fervour bordering on frenzy.

Today, the first Test in India since that farewell started in the near anonymity that Mohali — and perhaps Nagpur too — provides. Test cricket doesn’t thrive in Mohali. So, in contrast with the crowds that milled outside the stadiums in Kolkata and Mumbai two years ago, there was no spectator visible to the naked eye today morning.

If Mumbai featured an end, Mohali is a beginning. Virat Kohli is leading India in India for the first time in Tests. Kohli has inherited Tendulkar’s mantle as the batting genius of the team. But the welcome to Kohli is colder than this cool winter morning. Fans don’t throng the stadium in unmanageable droves. The few who did come into the stadium today remembered that today was Kohli’s birthday — in spurts through the day, the chanted “Happy birthday to you” and “Happy birthday VK”.

The chants of “AB, AB” for AB de Villiers were frequently heard, too. This is becoming something of a viral phenomenon, growing by feeding itself. When he rampaged against India in Mumbai recently, fans chanted “AB, AB”. He didn’t bat today, but the fans did it here too, nevertheless.

Mohali isn’t designed to welcome fans — which shouldn’t surprise you, for its origins lay in the dark days of serious trouble in this region. There are layers upon layers of security. If you’re not a VVIP and don’t possess a parking pass, you need to walk a fair bit to get in. This time the cops are kinder and gentler than ever before. But there are idiosyncratic ways in which they operate — for instance, they confiscate the cigarette pack of a colleague but let him take in a matchbox.

Part of the day is spent in trying to count people in the stands. A friend says he’s done it successfully in the past. The difficulty here is that a large number of the occupants of the chairs are cops. It is true that they are actively engaged in spectating, but they’re not spectators in the purest sense of the word.

“I don’t care about cricket, I prefer kabaddi and football,” says one of them. “Hope this ends within three days!”

Perhaps the curator had got his message in advance.