MY VERY OWN BARABATI

Whenever there is an announcement of a cricket series in india , people first try to find out the centre as to where these matches are going to be held. Many discussions follow up after that , be it the “pan shop” or the “chai ki dukan” , government office or the IT hub , discussions rage everywhere as to why the other city is luckier than their’s.Is it the strong hold of that state boards president in the BCCI or the lack of influence of our own state board president. We being an argumentative nation andthat too a cricket crazy argumentative nation tend to discuss everything from the icecream sachin likes to the favorite “golgappa” spot of shewag , so the venue of the matches only become a natural choice to discuss.
A match being alloted to a particular venue brings in different reactions in different places. For a place like the bangalore’s chinnaswami or mohali’s PCA stadium ita may mean a banquet of earnings for the organisers and a lovely outing for the spectators but for a small venue like our barabati, a match always carries with it the apprehensions of wether this will be the last match that we would ever get.For the organisers in katak it is less of an earning oppurtunity but more of a struggle to arrange the match in the best possible manner so that we get a match in future , after this one. The spectators also are not in their best coz tey fear one wrong step from them, one water pouch thrown at a player , one abuse hurled , one banana thrown on the field may well result in this being the last match that tey r goin to spectate at their hometown.
But I stand up and applaud the spirit of the people of this small state struggling to find a place on the map of indian cricket.Match after match they come in settle down peacefully and enjoy within their limited domain and make sure that their favorite indian team will come back once again.It may be a luxary for other venues to organise a match but for us it is always a struggle to cement our place in the indain cricket map , an effort to move from just a dot on the map to a dot havin a circle around it(denoted for major venues).And after the shameful events that occurred in the so called big major venues like kolkata and delhi, I can sit assured that we will get many more matches to host.With our undyin spirits and love for the game, we will become the eden and the feroz shah kotla’s of the future and matches will not be held in katak wid apprehensions about getting any other match in future but with the feeling of making this current match as big as possible.