It’s 12.30 on Friday afternoon and Srinagar was already feeling the bone-chilling cold. Real Kashmir Football Club had left the Tourist Recreation Centre Ground after a strenuous training session and now it’s the turn of “the away team” to get acclimatised to the weather and the artificial turf.
There was excitement among the fans and the local media because the away team was none other than Mohun Bagan. That’s why everyone is saying Real Kashmir’s match against Chennai City FC might have been the first sporting event since the abrogation of Article 370, but on Sunday there is a big-ticket match. Real Kashmir are hosting Mohun Bagan.
“It’s too cold,” Bagan assistant coach Ranjan Choudhury was heard shouting at a member of the support staff.
“Last year around this time I was in Poland and the temperature was — 15°C. So I am not someone who will be intimidated by cold,” Bagan coach Kibu Vicuna told The Telegraph, sipping tea.
After the customary warming up session, Vicuna, bandaged in woollens, got into the act. And the focus shifted to Bagan’s new signing Baba Diawara, the Senegalese striker who had plied his trade in Spain and Portugal. Diawara looked in perfect shape and was clearly the one who caught the eye.
The passing or creating space for young Shubha Ghosh or getting into goal-scoring positions time and again, Diawara did everything. Bagan’s new No. 9 should cause some serious damage to the rival clubs once he gets going.
It’s however not clear whether he would get a start on Sunday. The cold weather and the artificial turf could tempt Vicuna to use Diawara sparingly on Sunday but a clearer picture would emerge only on match-eve.
Then Joseba Beitia, the brain behind Bagan’s every attack, was seen taking treatment on his left heel from a member of the support staff. Later it was learnt that Beitia was practising wearing a new pair of boots and wasn’t feeling comfortable by the way his left heel reacted.
Meanwhile, Bagan are not just worried about the weather or the 11.30am kick-off. The players not being able to remain in touch with what’s happening in the digital world is also giving them sleepless nights.
There is clampdown on Internet connectivity, and the Bagan players are finding it difficult to live without it. To make matters worse, they cannot even talk to their dear ones, since all of them have pre-paid connections. In Kashmir, your mobile phone becomes redundant if you have a prepaid connection.
Such is the predicament, that a Bagan official and assistant coach Choudhury had to go to a property owned by Real Kashmir FC co-owner Sandeep Chattoo to use the Internet facilities.
Demand for tickets
There is huge interest for Sunday’s match but it’s not clear how many spectators would be allowed to watch from the stands. “The administration and the police would decide on that. There is a market too on match-day — the Sunday market as we call it here... That’s why the kick-off time was advanced by 30 minutes to 11.30am,” Chatto said on Friday evening.
