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It's for their own good!

Saisuresh Sivaswamy at Chepauk

One could be excused for believing that the first day's play at Chepauk, aka M A Chidambaram Stadium, was not a full house. Occupancy was estimated to be only 35,000 as against a capacity of 50,000, yet, officially, it was a full house. But what about those near-empty stands?

An insider in the local cricketing establishment reveals that the reason for the emptiness was not lack of demand; in fact, many ticket-seekers were turned away, citing the 'full house' as reason. Seems the police, fearing that it may be difficult to control the crowd in case of packed stands, requested the TNCA to not sell all the tickets, which view apparently prevailed.

A high-risk audience

The tragedy about full security is that the press corps invariably bears the brunt of it. While a few scribes in the media centre complained that their notes, papers etc were not allowed inside, personal experience was only marginally better.

Like the 18 steps at Sabarimala which devotees have to negotiate, here too one had to pass through any number of body frisks, baggage checks, 'Sorry sir, no bags/papers/cellphones allowed inside' caveats which would be promptly overturned on appeal to a bigger wig.

Time spent from the main barricade till reaching one's seat: only 30 minutes on Wednesday.

So what's the score

Wrong announcements by the official scorer seem to be increasingly becoming the bane of cricket. On Wednesday alone, the score at Chepauk made the following gaffes over the public address system: Shahid Afridi's innings, which ended with 27 balls, was called as 21; Saeed Anwar's 30-ball inning was wrongly called out; when Yousuf Yohanna was on 22 his score was called out as 25, by which time he hit a boundary to move on to 26; Srinath's second spell in the post-lunch session, in which his figures were 16 runs for one wicket, were called out as 44 runs, one wicket; by the time the Pak score was called out as 195 for 6, it had moved on 197/6; Wasim was caught by Laxman off Kumble, but the scorer said Dravid, which error was also repeated by the television network; when the Pak score was 237/9, it was called out as 238/9; over number 76 was announced as over no 75; Sachin, who only bowled 3 overs, was called out as having bowled 21 overs; while the Pak innings folded up in 79.5 overs, it was called out as 78.5 overs.

A great home run

Sadagoppan Ramesh, who scintillated his home crowd with a sizzling 30 in fewer balls, received a standing ovation when he walked back to the pavilion at the end of the day's play.

Even more specially for him, was the bear-hug he received from TNCA honorary secretary Ashok Kumbhat.