My debut at the Chepauk

karthik seshadri
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

Having born in Tamil Nadu which respects cricket more than any other sport, my love for cricket didn’t come as a big surprise to my parents. Right from my childhood, my dream was to watch a cricket match live in the stadium and witness the aura that the crowd brings in. I did have a few influential “Chitapaas” and “Mamas” who promised to get me a ticket for any international match that happens in Chepauk (M.A. Chidambaram Stadium). Having moved to Chennai completely from Madurai, my interest to visit the Chepauk grew more and more. It took me sometime to realize that the promises made to get me a ticket were false and they were mere bragging statement to show out their influence. After this realization, I did gather the courage to ask my mom for some money to buy the ticket myself. Believe me, back then even 200 Rs was a huge amount to arrange. My mother never denies her son’s request and hence she gave me the money and I was all set to see a live match in Chepauk.

October 17, 2004 which fell on a Sunday, India vs taking on Australia. It was the fourth day of the test match. I wouldn’t say the match was well balanced. India was slightly ahead and had an advantage at that point of time to win the match. With the result in favor of India, I was so much excited to watch a great contest Live.

It was a pleasant day. I had a equally enthusiastic friend of mine whom I took along and went straight to the Chepauk. The atmosphere outside the stadium was brilliant. I have never seen a humongous, similarly interested crowd who were chanting their favourite players name and getting their face painted in the tricolor. In order to show them that even I am equally enthusiastic about the game, I did get my face painted in tricolor and me along with my friend stood in the very long queue to get the tickets. We stood in the queue exactly at 8 AM and almost reached the counter by 10 30 AM. There were couple of guys ahead of me to get the tickets. After a couple of minutes, there was just one. I was brimming with joy as I was about to get the tickets next. Once the guy ahead of me got the tickets and ran into the stands, out came the ticket vendor who put up a board saying, “Tickets Closed”.

I was literally shattered to see the board. But with nothing much that we could do about the situation, me and my friend decided to move away from the long queue and think of what could be done next. We were waiting near the ticket counter for a very long time hoping to see the counter open again. But that never happened. We had waited until the players had gone inside the dressing room for lunch. During this break, there were few people who came out of the stadium. By now, me and my friend were standing exactly outside a gate (Stands Entrance) believing that we could get some view of the ground. Both of us were kids and it was the first time for both of us to have come this close to watching a live cricket match. The disappointment of not getting a ticket was clearly reflecting on our face looking at which a middle aged man, who I believe should be in his late 30’s, walked up to us and enquired if we needed tickets. We were jubilant hearing him and with no hesitation, we answered, “YES”.

He walked us through a street for say about 500 mts and asked us for the money. Both of us, handed over 200 rs each to the guy. He gave us a couple of tickets, which read, India Vs Australia >> Gate 3 >> Rs. 350 ticket. We were so much excited that we got a 350 rupee ticket for 200. That was the first time we are even looking at a ticket that lets you inside the cricket stadium. We were continuously glancing through the ticket and the moment we saw the price on the ticket as 350, we became so much happy and wanted to thank the guy who gave us the ticket. When we looked up, he was gone. He wasn’t there with us. We looked through the crowd but could find him no where.

We ignored him and decided to get into the stadium. We ran the 500 mts back to the stadiums entrance with pure joy and reached the security who was in charge of checking the tickets. It was me who was standing ahead of my friend in the queue. When I showed my ticket to the security, he glanced through it for a couple of seconds, tore it and threw it into the dustbin. That literally pissed me off and I checked with him for his rude behaviour. He patiently took my friends ticket and pointed the date printed on the ticket. It was 16/10/2004.

That is when we realized that the ticket we got from the guy was not of that particular day instead it was of the previous day’s. We were absolutely shocked to see that and we didn’t know what to do. We could neither explain the security that we were cheated nor go in search of the asshole who cheated us. We walked around the stadium a couple of times explaining how we were cheated, to every single policemen whom we came across, expecting someone would somehow help us get into the stadium. All our efforts went futile.

Though our efforts went futile, we were kind of hesitant to head back home assuming our parents would screw us for getting fooled. We roamed through all the streets in and around the Chepauk and finally when the time was 5 30 PM, we saw huge crowd walking out of the stadium. We walked towards the huge crowd, got to know the score from one of the spectator and happily headed back home convincing ourselves that we could build our own story without revealing the truth.

That was the time when the giant screen was newly installed in the stadium. My parents had a lot of questions to ask about the giant screen. I somehow managed to have them all answered. Even though I answered all the questions, I was still unsure if they believed them all. Suddenly out of nowhere, my cousin came running into our house and shouted, “Karthik, I did see you on TV. You were jumping out of joy when Shewag hit a boundary”. I casually walked out to the balcony and started laughing out thinking who was the real fool amongst us: Me, My Friend or My Cousin.

karthik seshadri

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