...Let My Country Awake !!!

Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The City Of Joy. The City of the great Rabindranath Tagore. Of Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen. Of Jagmohan Dalmiya and Sourav Ganguly. And of course, home to the most beautiful and magnificent cricket ground in the World - The Eden Gardens.

Of course, there will be dissenting voices from the Brtitish bigwigs with their "Lord's as the spiritual home of cricket" mantra and the Aussies who will go gaga over the sheer size and grandeur of the MCG - but, for me, the manner in which a hundred thousand people cheer the first ball of a Test at Eden is a phenomenon unmatched anywhere else in the World. There is no city more passionate about cricket than Kolkata. In fact, the Eden Gardens crowd, in the middle of which you wouldn't hear a volcano erupt if India were doing well but would hear the tiniest of pins drop if they had just lost a wicket, contributes to almost half of its charm - the other being given by the magnificence of the stadium, the lush outfield and the sporting wicket.

Yes - unlike some of the crap served up by recent venues in India, I expect that the Eden Gardens wicket will be a really sporting one. There have been so many great matches and memories associated with this ground: - here I saw Azhar singlehandedly demoralise England with the most delicate 182 in 1993, here I saw the same Azhar hit Lance Klusener for 5 successive boundaries in a most destructive century in a losing cause against SA in 1996, then the same Azhar return with a magnificent 165* as his team thrashed Australia in 1998. Here I saw Shoaib Akhtar bowl 2 of the most unforgettable deliveries in Test Match cricket bowling out batsmen of the calibre of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar; and then controversially running out the Master Blaster much to the horror and anger of the crowd in 1999. And most importantly, here was played the greatest innings in modern times in the greatest Test Match of the greatest series - the unparalleled 281 by VVS Laxman (with able support from Dravid and Harbhajan) to script the most incredible of all victories to leave Steve Waugh's world-conquering Aussies stunned in 2001.

Ah ... the past ... coming back to the not so rosy present - this will be the first time I won't be seeing an Eden Gardens Test match live :-( ... but there are some important points to prove here ... mostly for the Indian captain and the hometown boy, Sourav Ganguly. I have been a most ardent supporter of him and his captaincy for the last 4 years but an equally vocal critic over the past 6 months. Matter of fact, I was hoping he would not be able to play this match for the sake of the team. Hoewever, now that he is playing, I hope he is reborn at his home ground as the positive and determined captain we had all come to admire so much.

Much to look forward to for Anil Kumble as well - just 5 wickets to become India's leading wicket-taker - amazing bowler - Ill write a complete tribute to him in a later post - but he could have asked for no better venue to achieve this feat. The response that he will receive from this magnificent sport-loving crowd, he will trasure forever.

For Team India as a whole, let us hope that the Eden Gardens factor brings in a new zest - after all we only play matches here once in 2 years (a crying shame - a result of the stupid quota system - unlike in Australia and England - where they honor their traditional venues with regular matches) - to try and recapture the passion they showed Down Under last year and in Pakistan this year.

To sign off I will borrow a line from the great Tagore in one of his most famous poems - and modify it slightly to say - ... In The Garden Of Eden, My Father, Let My Country Awake !!!