It’s impossible to miss the splendor of Sydney even before you step into the city. You get a great view of the city while the flight is about to land in the Sydney Airport, with mountains on one side and the most gorgeous sea on the other.  The city is just as spectacular as the landing prepares you for. In fact, any city which boasts of roadways, railways and seaways for local transport has to be beautiful. But unlike Melbourne, it has the feel of a major city. You see traffic, you see people on the roads – almost as many as some parts of Mumbai, you see queues, and a general sense of vibrancy that grips you.

I often think that a tourist should be the last person one should rely for an informed opinion of any city/place. In fact, after seeing MCG and SCG, I would even wager that a cricket ground in the city gives you a greater sense of the place than some of these ill-formed opinions. SCG is everything that MCG wasn’t. While MCG wasn’t intimidating for a stadium of its magnitude – in fact, from outside it looks extremely simple and small – its opulence can’t be missed. It was a breathtaking yet graceful opulence. SCG is graceful too but in a far more intimate way.

For all the intimacy of the SCG, it’s a bit underwhelming to be out there than watching the ground on TV. The members stand and the ladies pavilion look as picturesque as it does on TV, but the rest of the ground could have been a shot from any other stadium. Also, unlike MCG (it’s incredible that every angle made for a great viewing in such a huge stadium), it has a few spots which clearly make for bad viewing. Towards the Victor Trumper stand, the ground has a fairly big slope and if you are at the ground level, like we were for the first one hour, it’s easier to lose perspective of the action on the field.

Even logistically, SCG is a microcosm of the city itself. There were long queues to get into the stadium; rest rooms were overflowing during the breaks; to get out of the stadium and come back in after the lunch break is a task. It wasn’t inconvenient, certainly not anywhere near the standards of the stadium experiences in India. It’s just the way life in the city is. MCG seems to reflect the more comfortable life of its city where traveling at 80kmph in an 100kmph speed limit road is considered to be serious traffic congestion. MCG had 70k people on the first day of the test but you could have been fooled into believing that there were less than 5k people if you go by how conveniently people got in and out of the stadium. It’s both an engineering and logistical marvel.

MCG is the kind of stadium that you would travel halfway around the world to visit as pilgrimage, while SCG is the one that you would want to have in your city where you watch every alternate match – a bit like MAC in Madras. Oh yeah, a MAC with those picturesque members stand and ladies pavilion. 

After two thoroughly awestruck days, I have grown a bit more familiar with the G now. It also helps that I stay at a place which is extremely close to the G. For the first two days, I couldn’t figure out if what I was watching was special or where I am watching made it special. But today, it’s reached a comfort zone.  I am still awed by the stadium experience, but in a less-gasping, more balanced way.

After all these years of cricket watching, I still struggle to reach the fulcrum between altitude and distance.  But like I said yesterday, I seem to have come closer here at the southern stand. I can’t have enough of the top tier view.  It’s just beautiful.

When we left home in the morning, we were discussing about the quantum of lead for India by the end of day. Within a session, the equation changed completely. Before we could even ponder the worst case scenarios, Australia had the now all-too-familiar top order collapse. By the end of the day, I was talking to an Australian who thought India were the clear favorites to win the match, while some of us were wondering if we should emotionally hedge ourselves by punting some money on Aussie victory. What do you call this phenomenon? Reverse endowment effect, perhaps?

Hang on. Did we witness such fluctuating fortunes on a drop-in pitch? So, it’s not entirely difficult to produce a good sporting drop-in wicket, huh? What are we whining on and on about for a decade now? I would rather have this drop-in pitch than the organic ones in most stadiums in the world today.

While I absolutely cherish every aspect of the MCG cricket watching experience, I have a very clear preference for watching fast bowlers bowl here more than the spinners. I would prefer a Chepauk or a Trent Bridge over MCG (not that it’s a much lesser experience)  to watch a spinner at work, because I don’t really need the altitudinal beauty that the MCG adds. In fact I would prefer to be as close to the ground level as possible to fully appreciate the flight and the movement, and the MCG gives that too but with farther distance from the place of action than Trent Bridge or Chepauk.  But to watch fast bowling, there’s not a better place. It’s the most awesome theater.

I can’t envy the generation which grew up watching Holding/Marshall and Lillee/Thomson bowl here enough. While I thought about it, it also struck me that I have never seen a test match live where the quality of fast bowling was as good as what we have witnessed so far in this match. I have seen McGrath & Gillespie at their best in Chennai and Steyn & Morkel on a featherbed, again in Chennai. So, purely in terms of reputation, I have seen better fast bowlers in action before, but not better fast bowling in an entire test match. Here, we have 6 good bowlers who have consistently bowled well.  Forget live, I can’t remember the last time I saw fast bowling as consistently good as this even on TV.

The test match promises to be a humdinger. I hope it gets the final day it deserves. At a time where 55 has become the new 50 for batsmen, such tests offer so much hope.

 

“One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort.  A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”  ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Rarely do I disagree with Chuck, especially not on the abovementioned quote. But today, I have to slightly alter my agreement with the statement. Yes, a moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection, but sometimes your expectations could be surpassed. Be prepared to cherish it, if and when it strikes you. Today was one such day for me. I experienced perfection for nearly 2 hours.

To fully absorb the panoramic view of the MCG from the top tier of the Southern Stand is quite a surreal experience, even intimidating actually. Initially it’s scary to stand up without any support for the fear of gravitational pull. The stand is so beautifully constructed that it maximizes the capacity without pushing the field of action too far away even for the farthest spectators, which results in the stand being extremely steep. With far less distance than what an altitude of the top tier typically warrants, you get to have the most stunning view to watch a cricket match ever.  Pigeons are flying below your eyeline. There are only 3 floors of a rather tall Hilton hotel above your eyeline. You look up the sky and look down; you’ll feel a bit dizzy. But keep looking down on the field and it’s absolute bliss.

Add Tendulkar in divine form into the mix. And that straight drive, man….ahhhhhh.

 If that is not perfection, then nothing is.

If Cricket has any bit of relevance in your life, you must visit MCG once in your life and watch a match from the top tier of the Southern Stand. I can’t explain the feeling. I don’t think anyone can. I experienced perfection for 2 hours. Yes, it’s that same damned unexplainable fleeting feeling. But for 2 full hours.

It was everything I expected it to be. And then some more. Surprisingly though, for someone who’s used to seeing matches in smaller stadiums, the size of the ground was not the most striking aspect of MCG. In fact, that it appeared perfectly normal to my eyes was what struck me. It can’t be appearing normal. It shouldn’t be. I had always thought MCG is a huge stadium.  Of course it is. That’s what we saw on TV for all these years. But here I am, standing in the Bradman stand and wondering if it was all an illusion on TV. Then I started walking around the stands to get to the place where Indians were practicing, and that’s when the sheer magnitude of the stadium hit me. It’s huge. It’s wide. It’s long. It’s an amphitheater. It’s one of the few grounds in the world which makes you wonder about the difficulty of being a 3^rd man fielder before you can think about pitch, toss, team composition et al.

It’s both ironic and appropriate that the first two countries that I watched cricket in, beyond India, are England and Australia. I wonder if any other sport has such contrasting grounds as Trent Bridge and MCG. One is as accessible as it gets and the other is the most awe-inducing. One makes you feel closer to the game, relate to the players at so many levels, it makes you want to hug the ground if it’s possible. The other draws the line clearly. It places the athlete in a pedestal. It puts you in your place – you are just the spectator. And once it puts you where you belong, then it treats you royally. It allows you to absorb greatness from a vantage point, to stand in awe, to create myths.

It’s almost uncanny that the stadium in which the match takes place influences a fan’s experience as much as it does. At least so it was for me. When I see a short ball being pulled away for a six in Trent Bridge, I admire the shot for sure, but the bowler is still occupying my mind space. I almost feel for the guy. Of course he knows he shouldn’t have done it, but he did. He’s human. TV is a cruel device in that sense that it inanimates the whole experience. It’s easy to be cold. It’s an armchair critic’s best friend. And when I see the same short ball being pulled away for a six in MCG, my mind has no space for anything but glorifying the batsman, to marvel at his ability to pick the length early, to back his instinct, and to execute it perfectly to clear a rather lot of real estate. I am not sure if MCG inspires greatness from players but it surely elevates it for the viewer.

If Trent Bridge makes you want to hug it, MCG would make you want to prostrate at its feet.

 

 

When I was a kid, my dream was to save one lakh rupees.

When I grew up a bit more, I thought if I earn 50k a month I would be a contented man.

At around the same time, I had added a visit to the MCG to my bucket list.

Looking back now, I can dismiss the first two as naiveté.

Today, I took a stroll around the G.

I met Ponsford who was perhaps setting off for a run, yet another one in his marathon collection. There was Lillee a few meters away in all his brutal beauty, and Bradman too, basking in the familiar delight of yet another pom-bashing I reckon. Then there was the superstar, Keith Miller. If someone had told me that he ruled the world, I would have believed it. As if to get me out of the time machine, there was Warnie too, in that quintessential posture where every part of his body synchronizes to produce the magnus effect , only that looking at the ball wouldn’t give any clue of that to the batsman yet.

I did what I wanted to do 20 years back.

I was as thrilled as I had first entertained the idea.

And I haven't even been to the museum yet. Nor did I get to go inside the ground. Just the stroll around the G.