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Thursday, March 24, 2005
Catching sixes
The press box at Eden Gardens was really far from the action, high above the field and far from it, enclosed in an allegedly airconditioned glass-fronted cabin. The one here is quite different, though. It's open air, and just above the sightscreen at the Pavilion End. Where I am sitting, in fact, is just above a right-hander's straightish long-on when a bowler is bowling from this end. It's close to the action, the noise is fabulous, and the breeze is superb – I've already lost one pen, kept on the table, blown away. There's just one problem: the press box is in the six-hitting zone of a number of the strokeplayers in these sides.
Shahid Afridi and Virender Sehwag could go over long-on, and Sourav Ganguly could hit it over long-off, which would be especially ironic given the criticism he's got from the media – including me, I admit – about his batting form. "So you think Kaif should be in the team in place of me," one can imagine him saying. "Ok, take this." Thwack. One journalist carried away in a pool of blood. Thwack again. One more gone.
"I don't play for records," he could say later at the press conference. "I play for revenge."
Shahid Afridi and Virender Sehwag could go over long-on, and Sourav Ganguly could hit it over long-off, which would be especially ironic given the criticism he's got from the media – including me, I admit – about his batting form. "So you think Kaif should be in the team in place of me," one can imagine him saying. "Ok, take this." Thwack. One journalist carried away in a pool of blood. Thwack again. One more gone.
"I don't play for records," he could say later at the press conference. "I play for revenge."
