Sharmistha Gooptu in Leeds
None in the Indian media contingent at Headingley is a fan of the food served in the Media Centre. But it’s a little bit worse for those of us who cannot endure bad coffee. After two consecutive days of dehydration caused by the Media Centre coffee, I resolved to find a decent cappuccino before I entered the stadium this morning.
Directed by a police person and a security volunteer, I ventured in the first of the two directions pointed out by them. The Ugly Mugs Cafe, the only one on that side of the stadium, was overflowing, with locals on a Sunday morning, I guessed. This was clearly the neighbourhood brotherhood (incidentally I don’t recall any ladies amongst those eating their breakfast) and seeing no space anyways, I turned in the opposite direction and after a short walk found myself in a nondescript road. But with the inviting signage of COFFEE ahead of me.
A large cappuccino it was at the end of that effort. It was a gusty morning and the lady seated opposite me leaned over and grabbed my credit card as it flew off the table. I had missed putting it back inside my purse. Noting my accreditation, she said she had been in Hyderabad the last year for the India-England Test series. Never heard of the IPL, she said.
A couple of gents asked if they could share the table with me, and the conversation turned to Test cricket and Yorkshire’s very own Sir Geoffrey Boycott. “He’s a Yorkshire man you know, we don’t hold back too much if we feel something we need to say. And when we get over seventy, we just don’t care,” evidently with reference to Boycott.
“I remember seeing him play a series way back in 1977,” said one of them. “Though you might not have been born then!” I informed them that Boycott was no less a cult figure in India.
We talked a bit more, about the ongoing Test match, weather going on to be cooler over the next days and about the large numbers of Indian students living in the neighbourhood of Headingley.
Back in the Media Centre, it was a morning of cricket talk and chicken tikka masala for lunch, that one dish would be unlikely to find in any Indian restaurant. On the way back from the stadium at tea time, an excited Uber driver told me his last passenger before me was cricketer Shardul Thakur’s wife, whom he had dropped off at the stadium’s VIP gate.
From Boycott to Shardul, that was all in a day’s chit chat around Headingley!