Burn and Go Thirsty
While England wither against Spin
It was a tough day for England’s cricketers at the Rajiv Ghandi Stadium in Hyderabad on Friday but an even more arduous one for the many hundreds of their supporters who suffered through enough day of local inhospitality in the stands.
By the time professional cricketers reach international level they have learnt many lessons about ‘suffering’ in the sport, about being kept in the field for a full day while umpiring decisions don’t go your way and edges fall short of slip. They get it. They are also in the 20s and 30s, fit and strong enough to cope and recover.
Imagine never having had such an experience before and being in your 60s or 70s. Retired cricket lovers, having spent their working years packing picnic sandwiches, deck chairs and flasks of tea to watch their favourite teams, now fulfilling a retirement dream by watching Test cricket in India.
The list of prohibited items is longer than the list of permitted items they can take into the ground. Water and sun-cream, two of the most important ingredients for a day in the sun for elderly pale-skins, are…banned. You read that correctly.
How about an apple, or a banana, just to keep you going? Banned. Along with every other snack you may try to smuggle in. Lip-balm and phone-chargers are prohibited, as are any backpacks over the size of a A4 sheet of paper in diameter.
Drinking water is available from taps at prescribed points and only in paper cups containing one mouthful (about 150ml). Spectators are not allowed to bring an empty plastic bottle into the ground to fill from the water-points. And I’m serious about the sun-cream. The sight of English supporters plastering themselves with UV protection outside the stadium is pitiful.
It was Republic Day in India, a treasured national holiday with a near-capacity crowd expected later in the day. England’s supporters dutifully arrived before the first ball and took their seats in the shaded areas of the grandstand for which they had paid. Tickets have no seat numbers, just the stand name to which they belong. They were moved by police in the morning session before the stadium was a third full.
England’s supporters reacted in different ways. Some were phlegmatic and philosophical. Others thought they might endure the conditions for a session, return to the hotel air-conditioning for lunch and come back for the final session. Good plan. But no! There are no pass-out tickets in India. You’re either in, or you’re out.
Some Britishers believed they were being victimised, retribution for the colonial years, perhaps. But no. Cricket supporters in India are routinely treated this way. If anything, the terms and conditions were marginally more lenient for the travelling visitors. At least there was no chance of them being ‘cane lashed’ by the constabulary if they’d stepped out of line.
The prospect of buying samosas, spiced chickpeas, dahl and roti bread for lunch (or popcorn) would satisfy me on my 16th tour of the country but it was a stretch to expect veterans of salmon canapes and Sauvignon Blanc to be excited about it.
And yet, for the most part, the ‘stiff upper lip’ prevailed. One lady was a little tearful in the morning, but the chaps rallied around her and she soldiered on.
Unlike following England in, say, the Caribbean where you might stagger out of the ground having had one too many rum punches, the only reason to do so from an India stadium is with back-spasms from the seating, dehydration or sun-stroke. Or maybe England’s position in the Test match.
The Cricket? England’s inexperienced and rusty spinners were very poor and India’s fine batsmen enjoyed the harvest. India’s brilliant spinners will ensure a comfortable victory, probably by an innings, probably on day three. (Almost certainly.)
I seem to remember reading about something similar in an English county game last summer, where water was on the banned list.
But hey, the customer can fuck off seems to be the motto of far too many organisations putting on public entertainment these days (and of course it seems to be the default BCCI attitude to most people and things!) The problem is. the players know that cricket works better as a spectator sport, where there's some semblance of atmosphere in the ground--Covid showed that. So how geed up are they going to get when the spectators do as they're told and do fuck off? Because I suspect that even if polite, demure British retirees take it on the chin with a weary shrug, I wouldn't be quite so sure about Indian Gen X consumers--they might want something a little bit more value-for-money, or at least not to be treated like criminals for having the temerity to want to watch a cricket match!
I would love to know the reasoning by authorities behind all the restrictions mentioned in this most interesting report …especially water and sun cream.