By IANS
Melbourne : Successful blockbuster “Chak de India”, shot partly in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and based on the story of a hockey coach, is making its presence felt even at the ongoing first Test between India and Australia here at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Indian fans are coming in droves to watch the match. From students, who are doubling up as taxi drivers here in Australia, to the die-hard cricket followers, and all very vocal, have been cheering the players, even though the team was not in a good position at the end of the second day.
” ‘Chak de India’ — which translates as “Come on India’ – echoed around the stands from the small but significant Indian portion of the 68,500-strong crowd …,” wrote The Age here Thursday.
“Admittedly, field hockey – especially played by women — is unlikely to be the first turf-based pastime to leap to people’s minds when they think of the sport passions of the subcontinent, but the phrase will be implanted on the brains of the Hindi and non-Hindi-speaking sections of the MCG crowd,” it said.
Indian cricket fan Nitin Batra, 25, explained: “Hockey is the national sport. Cricket is the national religion.”
Horticulture student and taxi driver Sachin Deep Toor, on the other hand, enjoys sharing the name with maestro Sachin Tendulkar, who scored 62 Thursday. “He is like a god in India and people everywhere have heard of him. Here, when people see my name, they always say ‘like Sachin Tendulkar’,” he said as he watched the action.
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A school cleaner keep scores at MCG
Kevin O’Neill, who is one of the score-keepers in the first Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), has been in public service and currently works as a school cleaner.
“I was in the public service for many years and now I’m a school cleaner. When I was in the public service, I had a boss who was very keen on sport and allowed me to have time off,” O’Neill told The Age.
“I also do the stats for the ABC Radio for a Saturday afternoon. I did it for 25 years with Channel Seven, doing stats for the footy when they had the original contract, and after that I went over to the ABC.”
Now doing his 19th Test as a score-keeper, O’Neill says he marks boundaries with a red pencil and sixes with the blue.
Listings his memorable moments, O’Neill said: “When Warney [Shane Warne] took the hat-trick (it) was good. Last year was a good one with all the hype about winning the Ashes back. It is all still pen and ink in the book, so your every mark becomes the historical artefact with something like Warney’s hat-trick.”
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Warne’s gifts hat to museum
Retired ace leg-spinner Shane Warne has handed over a floppy white hat that he wore in his final MCG Test, against England last summer, to the National Sports Museum.
It is well known that Warne preferred to wear a floppy white hat rather than the Baggy Green. Explaining his choice, he said: “I love what the Baggy Green stood for. But to me, whether I wore the Baggy Green or the floppy hat, it still had ‘Australia’ written on it. I knew what I was wearing. To me, the white floppy was just more comfortable.”
“Warne also donated the ball he used to equal Muthiah Muralitharan’s then-world record 527 wickets at Cairns in 2004, and it will appear prominently when the new museum opens to the public in March at the MCG.”
That was the match when the Australian was meant to overhaul the Sri Lankan off-spinner’s landmark, only to be denied by the elements. “We went off for bad light. They were eight-for-183, (chasing 355 to win) and I was bowling and starting to go well,” said Warne.
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All about left-handers
Left-handers are to the fore in the ongoing first Test here. “The start of the Boxing Day Test was a tribute to ‘cack-handers’, with Zaheer Khan and Rudra Pratap Singh, both left-arm seamers, opening the bowling against the all-lefty pair of Phil Jaques and Matthew Hayden,” wrote Sporting Life.
“Seasoned observers could not remember such an occurrence in a Test. But it goes further. As Peter Roebuck, our long-time correspondent observed, had Singh not played for India then Irfan Pathan, left-arm seamer, would have. Had Jaques not been in such hot recent form, the most likely candidate to open the batting with [Matthew] Hayden was Western Australia’s Chris Rogers, who bats, need we say, left-handed.”