The weather at Natham, a quiet village guarded by the Sirumalai Hills in southern Tamil Nadu, was capricious on Thursday.
It drizzled, but the sun would peep out of the clouds teasingly. Then it rained and before long there was bright, glorious sunshine.
Cricket, to be played at the lovely NPR College ground, over the next three weeks could well be as unpredictable and therefore fascinating.
The pink ball, the floodlights and what seems a sporting wicket, with evident shades of green, could spice things up in the Duleep Trophy, which begins on Friday with India Green taking on India Red.
India Blue is the other team in the fray. The three will play each other before the final — a five-day affair — starting on September 4.
No longer the bridge
The five-decade-old tournament may no longer be that bridge between the domestic and international cricket — the IPL has taken its place — but much is still at stake for the players.
The next three weeks would provide opportunities for many of them to try to make it or get back on to the big stage.
The fact that the senior squad is touring England and India A and B teams are in Andhra for an international quadrangular series, has helped the selectors to give chances to a wider pool of players for this tournament.
Thankfully, the season-opener begins on a firmer foot this year than the last, when the tournament was scrapped only to be reinstated three days later, following the intervention of Sourav Ganguly who was the head of BCCI’s technical committee.
With Virat Kohli’s men not exactly having a good run in the Old Blighty, at least a few players from across the three teams will be keen to impress the selectors who have to pick the teams for the last two Tests.
Among them will be the wicketkeeper and captain of India Green Parthiv Patel, whose last Test was in South Africa earlier this year, and India Red skipper Abhinav Mukund, who scored 81 in his last Test innings, against Sri Lanka at Galle a year ago.
It would be interesting to see how the younger, lesser-known players — India Red’s left-arm pacer Yarra Prithviraj, for instance — perform, too.
