A debut to remember

Reporters, I imagine, attach the same significance to their debut Test matches as cricketers do, and treasure their memories with emotion and nostalgia for the rest of their lives in cricket. So here, for the record, are some observations about the Kolkata Test - things that might have gone into my diary were I in the habit of keeping one.

The Entrance
Eden Gardens at 9am every morning is a battle between chaos and good order. Representing Chaos are the teeming crowds, eager to get into the ground and to take the shortest possible route to achieving this end, and on the side of Good Order are the honorable Kolkata police, attempting to channel the crowds in order through a variety of entrances and barricades, one-way passages, and, when all else fails, with gestures and irate shouts.

Entering through Gate 1 every morning, we found ourselves having to make our way through some rather offensive-smelling gook. The liquid, it turned out, was a compound of two elements. Every morning the street outside the entrance is watered, to clean it. In theory this is an excellent idea, but the authorities seemed not to have accounted for one thing. The Kolkata police, in their infinite wisdom, have posted some men on horses near the entrances. As everyone knows, horses will be horses, and these animals, although very well-trained in all other respects, deposit great heaps of dung on the street from time to time. As a result all the esteemed members of the press corps begin their match-day by walking very gingerly through 50 yards of horse-dung solution.

The Ground
This Test match was not a big enough occasion to make for a capacity turnout at the Eden Gardens, and the ground was usually only about a third full. So there were no awesome scenes of the two sides slugging it out in an atmosphere crackling with tension and excitement. But the sun was pleasantly warm on the back when you went down to sit in the stands for a while, and the crowd was knowledgable and enthusiastic.

If the Test was conducted at a pace rather more sluggish than we are used to, there were still a number of passages of play and individual moments worth cherishing: Virender Sehwag's batting on the fourth afternoon, VVS Laxman's leaping catch at slip yesterday to dismiss Graeme Smith, and the lovely delivery, held back just a little, with which Harbhajan Singh induced a return catch from Jacques Kallis on the fifth morning. The vital partnership between Dinesh Karthik and Irfan Pathan on the third evening, allowing India to extend their lead inch by inch, was perhaps the most interesting passage of play, with every run being lustily cheered. But the moment of the match was Virender Sehwag's six off Shaun Pollock six or seven minutes into the third morning, a sweet strike with a full swing of the blade that hit the bowler like a bolt from the blue.

The City
Kolkata is a rather laid-back city, and "organisation" is a word here mostly found in books, or on the lips of people complaining about its absence. But is also has an olde-worlde charm about it, and this is not just to do with its architecture. Many people here really do live in traditional ways, and to slower rhythms than in the other Indian metros, with great importance attached to family gatherings, festival days, and other things that draw the mind away from thoughts of work.

Another source of pleasure is in the conversation and speech patterns of that famous entity always spoken of by Indians but never actually located, the "common man" or the "man on the street", whose language is often mellifluous and pleasing to the ear. How hastily people scrabble out their words in Mumbai, as if they have a train to catch at the end of their sentence, and how different it is here.

Come to think of it, this was a Test match rather in keeping with Kolkata's rhythms: slow, measured, and a little sleepy, but rising to a crescendo of excitement and celebration as India sped to victory on the fifth afternoon.