When I arrived this Friday in Chennai, in the back of my mind, I had the two washouts that I had. When I saw pools of water on the road and streets, it made me worry a bit. With two games lined up in the next two days, I was very sure that I would definitely have one game to umpire. Never I imagined that I will have two more washouts and that too on consecutive days.
The game was supposed to take place in CLRI grounds. As per the original plan, I was supposed to umpire at CPT-IP grounds, but since the ground was not available today, I was posted in CLRI. I did not think much about the ground, I was more interested in getting a game. But I knew the ground, so I could anticipate what to expect. This ground has already served as two first in my TNCA league career. This was the ground where I had my first game with TNCA as an umpire. This was also the ground where I had my first washout :). So I knew very well that if it rains then it will be difficult to conduct the game.
Yesterday, though I had to call off my game because it was cloudy and the situation would not have improved, but it did not rain the whole day. Even when I went to sleep around mid night yesterday, it did not rain. I cannot express my happiness that I felt when I went to sleep, here in writing. I went to sleep hoping that it would not rain.
When I woke up today, I did not see any signs of rain. But when I saw outside my house, it was all wet and I knew that it had rained sometime in the night but was not sure how much and for how long. So before going for my bath, I went to get the news paper for the day. I purchased the news paper and saw that the plan for the day was intact. So I came back and got ready for the game. But I knew for sure that it will definitely be a delayed start.
May be because I had this delayed start at the back of my mind, somehow I started a bit late from my house for the ground. This was definitely wrong my part. Irrespective of the situation, I had to be in the ground at least 45 minutes before the start of the game, which meant that I had to be there at 8:45 AM but I reached the ground only at 9:05 AM. I cursed myself for being late. When I reached the ground, I saw pools of water and my heart sulked. But the positive part was that the sun was shining.
I went and met my colleague of the day, C.P. Sridhar. He has played lot of professional cricket. He has been umpiring from 1989. He has wealth of experience as both player and an umpire. I checked with him if there was a possibility of a game. He said, we will take a call after our first inspection at 09:30 AM.
We did our first inspection at 09:30 AM. The pitched looked fine. With the way he sun was shining, we never had any doubt about pitch posing any problem, as it did the other day for me in CPT-IP ground. We saw that the bowler's run up at one end had a big pool of water. In the same end towards the boundary, there was a sizable area covered with water. This part of the ground did not have any grass. So we knew that if sun was out, then this part would definitely dry. We observed that near this part there was a big patch that was covered with grass and filled with water. The grass would not allow the water to be soaked. So we knew for sure that there was no way the play would start in another hour. While returning back to the pavilion, we observed on one of sides of the pitch around the 30 yard circle, there was again a big part of the ground that had grass and was filled with water. Anyone looking at these parts from a distance would never realize that these pockets of ground were water logged. Players were eagerly waiting for our verdict. They expected a cancellation. To their disappointment, we told them that we will take that call at 11:30 AM, the time for our next inspection.
We had only one person who was responsible for the maintenance of the ground. If we had pushed the water outside and spread it on nearby areas, we had a fair chance that this place would get dry. But then with just one person for maintaining the ground, it was too much for us to ask. So we did not have the man power to get the ground ready. We had to rely solely on the natural way (i.e. getting dry from sun shine). Now, these are very tricky decisions. We knew deep in the heart, even if the sun shines brightly, the water in the pockets where we had grass was not going to get dry. But we cannot decide upfront as sun was still shining. If it was cloudy, we could have taken a call to cancel the game around 10:30 AM itself, as we did in case of my first washout, in the same ground. But the sun made all the difference. Not that I was unhappy about the situation. I wanted to have a game and was ready to explore every possibility of having a game. In this case, that is why we decided that we will give sun some time to influence the ground situation and thus decided for an inspection after 2 hours.
Now we had to kill the time somehow. I suggested for a coffee break, to which my colleague readily agreed. We went to Hot Chips in front of the ground on the other side of the road. Since I did not have any thing in the breakfast, I decided to use this opportunity. I ate pongal and had a cup of hot coffee. My colleague had a cup of Tea. He had plenty to speak. One good thing about these unscheduled breaks are, we get to know about the colleague or some players a lot. Most of the times, when these people have been in the system for a long time, they will have several interesting anecdotes and they share them happily as well. So I heard lot of stories.
We came back to the ground in an hour or so. We still had one more hour before our next inspection. Again the chit chat and stories continued. In the meantime, quiet a few players approached us to check what were we up to. Will we call off the game or wait till 01:45 PM? So, several questions, several remarks. Several suggestions, but we have to be unbiased, unperturbed by the remarks that we receive, not getting influenced, we have take our decisions based on what we see and what we feel. The sun was getting brighter every minute. So that was making it more difficult for to decide. It meant that the waiting period will increase.
We went for our next inspection at 11:30 AM. The water had dried a bit on places where there was no grass. But places where we had grass, we could not see enough improvement. Also at bowler's run up area, we still had water but lesser than that we saw at 09:30 AM. We decided that we will have one more inspection at 12:30 PM. Players were not happy. But as I said, we had to go by our judgement. Since Sun was out, we had to see every possibilty, before calling the game off. We went for our next inspection at 12:30 PM. There was no significant improvement. We had to decide now finally. If we had to start the game today, then it has to be done latest by 1:45 PM and for that we have to take a call now. Because we need to give the groundsman also some time to prepare the pitch, do the markings, etc. So we decided based on the current conditions that it will not improve by 1:45 PM which is the cut off time for the game to start. So we finally called off the game.
You must be thinking, all this story just to say that the game was called off. What else to do? You cannot blog with just one or two lines, isn't it? :)
I do not have any game next week. I have office work the next weekend, so I cannot go to Chennai. May be I will do a game in the first weekend of October (of course if rain permits :)). Till then happy waiting :). In the meantime I will try to update the post on my second game.
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