Stopping by the Marina

On my way to Chepauk the other day, I had to stop at the traffic signal before Presidency College, as I do so often. Idly watching the cricket in progress at the Marina ground while waiting for red to turn green, I experienced a sudden rush of memories from the distant past. Caught up in nostalgia, I stopped at the gate of the ground, and decided to enter, to sit in the pavilion and watch the proceedings. A desultory league game was going on, singularly lacking in the drama of some of the matches I have witnessed there over the decades.

Once the pride of Triplicane, the Marina or Presidency College ground really went to seed, before it received a facelift a few years ago. After years in the wilderness, the historic venue of many a stirring cricket contest has now been adopted by the Amalgamations group, which renovated the pavilion and fenced the ground before starting restoration work on the ground itself.

In the 1990s, the ground was really ragged, unkempt and bare of grass. Competing with the cricketers running into nearly a hundred spread over many ill-defined, makeshift pitches, were footballers making do with tennis balls, gymnasts doing somersaults, a couple of drunks discussing politics, cows and goats, stray dogs and a handful of girls playing hopscotch. Where the old spectators' gallery once stood, only advertisement hoardings remained, and beyond that the MRTS train rattled along once every hour or so. No serious cricket took place there anymore, but a huge six could very easily carry all the way to the train, just the way a massive heave from R Raghavan or a more cultured pull from AG Milkha Singh sailed into the Buckingham Canal all those decades ago.

Through the first half of the 20th century and beyond, the Marina ground was a green carpet at its best, but at all times a reasonably well maintained ground, with its matting wicket yielding even bounce most days. Bowling into the wind was a greater challenge than the other way around, but either way, the bowler needed a bit of experience of local conditions before he could achieve any kind of success, but once he did that, he could really exploit them to his advantage.

Though it is the league games and representative matches like Buchi Babu that drew sizable crowds, the intercollegiate encounters did not fare too badly either. As someone who played for Presidency College for five seasons, I took part in many exciting games there. Of all the matches I ever played there, the most exciting was a Pennycuick league match between Presidency and Vivekananda, which the latter won by one run. Chasing a target of 121, my college seemed to be cruising at one stage, but a superb running catch at midwicket by KG Appaji to get rid of VV Rajamani turned the match on its head, and we fell short by a whisker.

Marina was the home of several distinguished cricketers from Triplicane, including giants like MJ Gopalan, the double international. Countless others from the streets and bylanes of that teeming residential area famed for its Parthasarathi temple, converged on the Marina ground to graduate from street cricket to more formal cricket. Yet, quite often, the lure of tennis ball cricket on the sand, with the tarred side-path parallel to the Beach Road acting as the pitch, proves too strong even for mature cricketers already well into serious cricket on turf wickets.

If you look carefully at one of these informal sessions in progress, you may discover at least one first class cricketer still crazy enough about the game to find beach cricket irresistible. In the nineties, when I was still playing first division cricket, I was delighted to learn of a great slice of good fortune one of my younger teammates enjoyed during one of these casual games. The tall, slim opening batsman, CP Sridhar was spotted on the beach by a talent scout from England vacationing in India. The result was an invitation to play league cricket in England. Sridhar flew to the UK soon afterwards, had a good season, and many more seasons as a professional followed.

The Marina ground looks a pretty sight today, with its carefully manicured turf wicket and green outfield, jealously protected from common humanity by its tall walls, but kids still find a way of gate-crashing there of an evening and enjoying an informal game of cricket or even football. The lazy romance of the cricket of old is no longer part of the scene, but it is still a legacy worth clinging to.