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Vol. XXXIII No. 14, November 1-15, 2023
Heritage Watch: Chepauk in Pictures
Watching a cricket match last week at Chepauk, the recent improvements to the stadium were made manifest with the sea breeze wafting in thanks to the slicing of the earlier structure to facilitate this. At the same time, it cannot be forgotten that the older structure, which made all of this possible, was a repository of much history too. And it owed its existence to the vision of one man – M.A. Chidambaram.
And before that we had old Chepauk, with its makeshift stadium of poles and ropes.In between we also had the Corporation stadium. Our pics show all of these – old Chepauk, with its poles, the Corporation stadium, and now the latest.
Madras Musings article on “Chepauk in Pictures” under Heritage Watch, brings me nostalgic memories of those youthful days of mine watching Cricket matches as a 15 year old. There were no ‘pole and rope’ stands at that time. We used to stand the whole day and watched matches. Indian Cricket Team did not enjoy recognition as a test playing team thus compelling the authorities to invite overseas teams like, Goddard’s Eleven from U.K.,West Indies Team etc. One of the matches which took place at the M.C.C. grounds witnessed by me then was between India and West Indies. The Windies team had the famous 3 Ws , Weekes,Worrel and Walcott, the Indian team,captained by Vijay Hazare had, P.Umrigar, G.S.Ramchand to name a few. There was no dearth of excitement despite the physical strain of watching a match standing all day long. To bring back my memories, I would like to mention an incident where the game was played with the utmost sportsman spirit. An aerial shot by Polly Umriger was caught by Frank Worrel on the boundary line when the batsman was on 99. The umpire’s finger went up signaling his dismissal. But Worrel ran to the umpire and told him that he took the catch with his feet just outside the boundary line, thus enabling the batsman to complete his century.