(Disclaimer: This piece was written before the India-Pakistan high-octane clash at the MCG)
Hobart, Tasmania, is so far away and remote to most non-Australians that when you arrive here, you realise that the “other end of the world” does exist.
But then the folks in both the coastal and the middle towns and villages that laze in the most abundant landscape of gorgeousness look at the rest of the world with the same sense of remoteness, and get on with their lives, and doing stuff like playing cricket.
Very differently, cricket in the subcontinent is a potpourri of ambition and riches, with a travelling contingent way beyond the official squad. The noise in the universe of commentators and experts emanating from every conceivable channel, digital site or print was so deafening on the eve of the India-Pakistan game, that the calm of the Bellerive Oval in Hobart was a different planet. It was the same World Cup, but worlds apart
To those in Goa, Hobart could well be a past version of Panjim. Nestled on the waterfront with boats bobbing, and ancient colonial structures, each laced with heritage. The pace is languid with notes of music emanating from cafes and homes. This Tasman capital could well have been the Panjim of the fifties.
Cricket is still a game here, in a World Cup stadium or in the six odd grounds where Sheffield Shield and other local Tasman province games happen. From players to support staff to fans, the community of cricket is pulsating.
In the Ireland -West Indies qualifier stage game, where the once invincible Caribbean exponents and now so fallible, the stands and the member’s area were a lovely picnic spot with folks from Hobart and nearby small towns in a radius of 30 kilometres, turning up to watch all games played at their “oval”. Many men still play weekend games and almost always turn up for matches across the region.
Jack Andrzejczak (try pronouncing this), a fan, was dressed in green from head to toe in the Irish colours. He isn’t Irish but a friend in the group is. So about six of them turned up, boisterously backing the Irish.
But Jack himself is a fine candidate for a docudrama on cricket.
In his sixties, Jack, of Polish descent (doesn’t the surname say it all), is a die-hard Aussie whose love for the long format good old cricket endures. And he has a simple life desire which is a work in progress for a little over a decade — to travel and watch Test matches at every cricket ground in the world. Yes, simple, that’s what he does, and when he is not travelling, he lives in Hobart, plays some village cricket, and goes and watches games at every level, spending his days in cricket grounds, his second home.
From Rawalpindi to Galle and Chennai to Chittagong in the subcontinent to Cape Town and Lord’s and cross the pond in his country to New Zealand, Jack has been to each of these grounds, mainly with Australia playing, for the sheer love of watching the battle between the red ball and the bat over five days. His first solo forays were around 2010 and 2011 when he went to Galle in Sri Lanka for a Test match, till he met the love of his life Jackie, a proud equal to her man’s peripatetic passion for watching cricket all over the world. “I took Jackie to Lord’s,” he says proudly, watching Ireland’s Paul Stirling hit yet another boundary.
For the past decade and a bit more, Jack and Jackie have been to parts of the world where cricket is played, not just ticking off each box in Jack’s goal of seeing Test matches in every country but experiencing the country and its cultures to the fullest. Just as the pandemic waned, they went to Pakistan, in 2022, for the Rawalpindi Test match versus Australia. But they didn’t just get into town, stay in a fancy hotel, see the game and get back. They took off into the mountains travelling to see the villages and their people.
“The sights we saw will be embedded. In one village, kids were playing cricket on the rooftop. In the backdrop were the looming mountains. What an image. We also saw kids playing on a dried up river-bed. There’s cricket played in the unlikeliest of places”
Just one thought crossed this writer when Jack spoke so effusively about these regions — how many Indian cricket journalists have explored the mountainous regions of Rawalpindi, even when they had a chance and a visa to be there?
The 12-year journey, to places, that love and play cricket is a marathon innings unsurpassed by any lover of the game, who doesn’t get paid to write on cricket. Beginning with the “Mecca” at Lord’s at the turn of the century, he was in Wellington at the Basin Reserve in 2010 (Aus v England), at Galle in Sri Lanka, one of the most picturesque grounds in the world in 2011. Next year, he travelled even further and beyond right across the world to Barbados, to watch Australia play West Indies at the melting pot of charm, the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown.
In 2013, he was in our backyard — Chennai, arguably MS Dhoni’s adopted home ground where MS hit his majestic 244 against Australia before he became “Thalla” to all Chennai Super Kings fans.
In 2014, he crossed the Indian Ocean and travelled to the other side, in South Africa, and watched Michael Clarke’s magnificent 161 in the Cape Town Test, one of his best innings’ where he was peppered with blows on his forearm, chest, and shoulder by Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel. In the evening at a function celebration 150th of the Province, he was invited to have dinner with South African greats Kallis, Mark Boucher, Garry Kirsten, etc.
But his love for cricket is not going to the developed and the fancy places. Like Rawalpindi, he chose to take his wife to Chittagong in Bangladesh to see a local game between Chittagong and Barisal, where their national batsman Tamim Iqbal was playing. “Why Chittagong?”, one asked. His answer, to him, was simple: “Because our Jason Gillespie had scored a double hundred on this ground two years ago.”
Ah! the romance of cricket. The sheer love those mortal lovers of the game will know not. Ones who take their beloved to a small cricket ground in Bangladesh and their idea of romance, are special folks.
The likes of Jack Andrzejczak are “poles” apart and are the most dedicated ambassadors of a game that is so much more than a sport and a unifying culture, which stops warring and celebrates winning.
