By Trisha Ghosal
It began with a mist-kissed morning in Leeds and ended under an open London sky. Fifty days in England. Twenty-five of those inside Test grounds, the rest chasing stories down cobbled lanes and terraced streets. Two teams fought tooth and nail, and between the overs and the deadlines, the writer learnt more than she had expected.
Test cricket is best cricket
They call it slow, they call it old-fashioned but for me, these 25 days proved it’s alive in every nerve of the game. Grounds brimming every single day, a carnival outside, friendly fire in the press box inside. In one session England turned the screw; in the next India prised it back. Shubman Gill summed it up: “Test cricket gives you a second chance.” Twenty-two players threw everything into it. If that doesn’t pull you in, perhaps the game’s not the problem.
When your perfect story collapses like a dodgy forward defence
Session reports are a peculiar kind of adrenaline. You spend two hours crafting a piece about India’s serene batting. Parallels lined up, opener polished, ready to hit send. Ten minutes before the break — bang, a wicket. And another. Suddenly you’re hammering at the keyboard like a tailender in a T20, rewriting the whole thing before the umpires call lunch. Lesson learnt: never get too attached to your first draft. In cricket, as in writing, the session can flip in a heartbeat.
Finding the soul of football, one small club at a time
Blame (or thank) my colleague Rohan Chowdhury, who lives and breathes non-league football. His enthusiasm is catching, and soon we were in the stands at Leeds United FC, where a boy posed by the memorial stone of his great-grandfather because fandom runs in the family.
Also Read: England vs India – 10 Unforgettable Moments from a Series That Had It All
We went to Bury FC to follow Bhaichung Bhutia’s trail and found new heroes we hadn’t heard of. Brigg Town FC and FC United showed me what “para” culture in Kolkata would look like in English drizzle — whole communities pooling their pride, their voices, and their pockets for the team. Yes, the writer ticked off Manchester United and City. But the heartbeat? It’s in those smaller grounds, where football still feels like it belongs to the street.
Every cab ride, every coffee, a potential headline
From cabbies who spoke of county rivalries to a food-truck vendor who’d been following India since ‘Kapil’s Devils’, the stories found the writer as much as the writer found them. A notepad, a pen, and a willingness to listen turned strangers into characters. This trip reminded the writer that sport is just the starting point; the real magic is in the people it gathers.
The aftertaste of effort
Now, as the writer sat to write this, the noise of the grounds has faded, but the images linger — the roar after a wicket, the taste of strong coffee on a damp afternoon, the warmth of conversations with people she’ll probably never meet again. Fifty days of chasing stories. Some made deadlines. Some never will. But all of them are hers to keep.
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