At the outset, Agartala appears to be the perfect ‘non-theatre’ for hosting the Ranji Trophy, with the city’s broad but empty highways closely mirroring the state of the country’s premier domestic cricket tournament – a giant monolith whose importance is merely paid lip service to these days.
The capital of the northeastern State of Tripura wouldn’t capture the imagination of the modern-day vlogger, who craves plush hotel rooms and breathtaking landscapes for frenzied virtual eyeballs. The hospitality industry, perhaps aware of this reality, isn’t too honey-tongued in dealing with guests. Even as the din of a female airline staff complaining about a wrongly allotted room overwhelms the pungent whiff of mustard oil emanating from the restaurant, the young man at the reception desk browses through the logbook in post-prandial torpor.
Contrastingly, this reporter’s patient two-hour wait for a room he had booked a month ago is rewarded with a broad smile from the manager of the hotel’s travel desk, who later reveals he was in awe with the composure on display during the silent vigil. “Charity begins at home,” he would quip later during the trip, his thick Bengali accent and prudish tone implying the reporter had been raised well by his parents. This early impression meant the reporter’s travel to and from the ground would never be an issue.
At the Maharaja Bir Bikram College Stadium, the venue for the contest between Tripura and Mumbai, first impressions were easier to make. A giant poster of Mumbai stars Ajinkya Rahane and Shardul Thakur, along with local hero Manisankar Murasingh, at the entrance of the stadium were telltale of the excitement that lay within.
A near-capacity crowd graced the match on all four days, braving an hour’s delay on the opening day, cheering on an early Mumbai collapse while also hoping to see India internationals Rahane and Thakur as much in action as possible. The organisers had installed water cans in the stands for spectators, in sharp contrast to the concurrent water crisis faced by fans during the Test match between India and New Zealand in Pune.
The overwhelming support also prompted the Tripura team’s players and support staff to throw water bottles into the crowd to amplify the decibels. The reporter watched all of this from the comfort of a cozy air-conditioned press box, thronged by reporters and their families, some of whom were live streaming the match on their social media handles.
Unlike the prim and curt protocols at international venues, there was lunch, snacks and refreshments for all and sundry. While raucous children lunged at the sandesh box before swallowing an earful from their parents, this reporter was interrupted every half an hour with a bowl of oily chicken or paneer pakoda or constant invitations for lunch.
In all likelihood, the reporter was the sole vegetarian in the room but was treated to a variety of dishes on all four days of the drawn match. There was an air of merriment, festivity, and a dash of gratitude in the room for a reporter who had flown from Chennai to cover a match in Tripura.
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Some local reporters hailed Murasingh as the best all-rounder in the country and bemoaned the fact that he had been overlooked by franchises of the cash-rich Indian Premier League. As his son strode into the press box like a prince, he was treated by locals as their own.
The iron-bound boundaries that exist between fans, players and the media in Indian cricket seemed to fade into oblivion as Agartala preferred adding a personal touch to everything, much like the wizened man at the travel desk, whose fatherly tone erased the customary fault line between consumer and provider and diffused a potentially tense situation.
Small towns and nondescript venues are indeed suitable landscapes for the Ranji Trophy, not just for their languid charm, but for also bringing fans and stars closer together.