goggly

Seeing Brabourn stadium in Champions trophy brought memories of my early days of seeing live cricket matches. My first experience was Mumbai v/s Baroda. Mumbai team had Ajit Wadekar, Dilip Sardesai, Ajit Pai, Saeed Hathia. On that day, Baroda opted to bat and Vijay Bhosle scored a century. My second match was West Zone v/s South Zone Duleep trophy final. West Zone started with Niranjan Shah, Madhu Gupte followed by Ajit Wadekar, Dilip Sardesai, Vijay Bhosle, Ashok Mankad, Ajit Pai. South had Jayantilal, Govindraj, Krishnamurthi etc. Ajit Wadekar would get the rousing welcome he would enter to bat one down. In later years, Sunil Gavaskar, Sandip Patil and Sachin Tendulkar got similar applause. I remember a catch of the bowling of Govindraj. Second slip fielder dived and scooped the ball up, first slip fielder lifted it up and the ball was caught by the wicketkeeper. Kulkarni brothers – Vijay and Sunil, our second floor neighbour in Govt colony – both ardent cricket fans and players took...