CHENNAI: On November 1, 2009, when Palanivel and Murali, engineering students residing at Venkatrangam Pillai Street near Ayothia Nagar in Triplicane, got up early and walked to the Marina with their friends for their usual Sunday match, they were surprised to find the service road along the beach deserted. A large number of policemen were on duty, turning groups with stumps and bats away from the beach.“That was when we learnt that the Corporation was imposing a ban on playing cricket along the Marina after some walkers complained of inconvenience.It was such a shock to all of us who had played a match there every Sunday from the time we were kids,” says Murali, recollecting that a strong crowd of about 2,000 got so irritated that it sat on the beach road in protest.Two years on, while residents of Triplicane have resigned to the fact that the “good old days” of beach cricket might never return, what has kept their anger simmering is the failure of the Corporation in living up to its promise of providing alternate spaces nearby for their favourite sport.Many youngsters in Ayothia Nagar now say that during the current local body polls, they would not vote for those who snatched away the “freedom” of playing on the beach from them.“Twenty-seven of us decided in the last Assembly elections that we will not vote for those who took that decision. This time, when they came campaigning, we told them the same thing though we were promised a remedy,” says a resident. This can seriously hamper the chances of incumbent Mayor M Subramanian in the local body polls, as the huge community of beach cricketers is spread across age groups and geographical locations in the city.Sudarshan Balan, a resident of Allankatha Street, who has played the sport on the sands of the Marina for over 15 years since he was a 12-year-old, says, "When officials tried to persuade the protesters to leave the road, they promised that apart from opening up all grounds in the vicinity for playing cricket, new facilities would also be built.“However, not only did they ban cricket on the beach, the ground overlooking the Marina, which was open to all of us till some time ago, has also been leased off for competitive league cricket.So, there is absolutely no place in Triplicane now to play the sport freely.” Currently, youngsters say that the closest playground they can go to is in Gopalapuram. However, the ground becomes very crowded on Sundays as locals from the area also play in that small space and this sometimes leads to confrontation.Old timers in Triplicane, some of whom went on to play higher levels of competitive cricket for the state, say that playing along the beach improved their skills tremendously as nature provided innumerable challenges.Srinivasan of T P Koil Second Lane, who has played for Tamil Nadu in the Buchi Babu Tournament, says that on a breezy day, the tennis ball would do so much that it required a really sharp eye and hand coordination to stay in the wicket for a long period.“Also, restrictions such as runs only on the off-side ensured that we played as straight as possible without hitting the ball across the line. This discipline helped us so much when we played competitive cricket,” he says, adding that his own seniors in the team used to narrate tales about how greats such as Venkatraghavan and Krishnamachari Srikanth had played along the very same stretch.The beach was also a place where two different communities blended, erasing barriers such as caste and religion.Says Varadarajan, currently a banker, “When you went to the beach, you invariably played matches with strangers.Many of them used to come from the fishing hamlets with whom we developed strong bonds of friendship. Therefore, it clearly helped build a bridge between the agraharam and the kuppam.” It is a pity that the next generation will not have such an opportunity, he adds.
Comments
0 comment