Sign language and rotting planks

During lunch on the third day, news of Matthew Hayden batting on 365 at Perth started to filter in. Cell-phones were immediately whipped out as reporters called acquaintances near a TV set or the Internet to get further details. Lunch over, they hastened back up to the press enclosure and tried tuning the TVs there to the Australia-Zimbabwe Test, hoping to catch the record-breaking moment. To no avail; only Doordarshan channels were on hand. Such irony that, very often indeed, Doordarshan's lunchtime entertainment is a clip of Brian Lara's 375?

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The most valuable tool at the disposal of an All India Radio commentator must be his proficiency in sign language. (The second and third most valuable, respectively, are a thick, much-thumbed folder containing printouts of Wisden Cricinfo's player pages and statistics, and a pair of binoculars.) When Atul Wassan dropped into the airless AIR cubicle during the tea-break for a chat, four commentators clustered around him on the edge of their seats, poised to interrogate. Since all five men were on the air at the same time, the commentators could communicate between each other only through hand-signals that, to the untrained eye, looked the same.

But spend some time there, and you will begin to spot the subtle differences. An index finger held up means that the finger's owner will ask the next question. When the finger points back towards its body, the commentator is done with his questioning for the moment. When the finger whirls around in a circle, the commentator has nothing more to ask the guest.

The AIR hutch is a cheerful place to visit; the commentators welcome you in, and when a window is finally cracked open to replenish oxygen supplies, passing spectators automatically lowered their voices, peeped in, and smiled appreciatively at the solid work put in by these unassuming gentlemen.

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Twenty minutes after the tea-break ended, there was still no sign of said beverage in the press enclosure. It is, actually, an enclosure only in concept; in reality the journalists sit at long white tables in the stands, above the dressing-rooms and the pavilion. It is definitively ad-hoc; one vernacular journalist fell through the rotting plank floor this morning, and if the staff at the Gujarat Cricket Association were not so sincere and courteous, more would have been heard about it.

When the issue of the tea was raised, a GCA official promised that when the press were here next to cover an international match, they would have tea-vending machines littered about a spanking new media center. The media center is to come up at the opposite end of the stadium, and the official pointed and said: "See, work has already started where those Birla Plus banners are." We must have looked a bit mystified because beyond the banners, we could see squat Motera buildings and above them, as John Lennon would put it, only sky. The official explained that the banners were in fact hiding the construction work, because it would look unsightly on a stadium that is otherwise quite charming.

The media centre, which will be ready when South Africa play here next year, will have an extended lunch room and individual parking slots for the journalists, not to mention the tea vending machines, the official said. He left us in a positive mood, which was just as well, because there was still no sign of the tea.