Advani takes eyeballs off Inzy-Sourav clash

HYDERABAD: A man born in Sind rode a chariot into the heartland of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday and took centrestage, beating the Pindi cricket fever.
Till L K Advani’s motorised rath hit Zaheerabad, it was Sourav’s cherry hunt that kept the reception party busy.A car radio kept up the tempo as it gave ball-by-ball details of the Pak runfest.
A small group of people stood around, ears on the commentary, eyes on the road waiting for the man from Sind.A small distance away, the state BJP brass, including Bangaru Laxman, waited under a tent for the Bharat Uday bandwagon to roll into AP.
The moment the chariot dawned on the horizon, the commentary was turned off, as if it was a forbidden thing to listen to a cricket broadcast. As Advani took his place to address the gathering, netaspeak drowned out the sweet sound of willow hitting cherry. Advani kept it crisp and dashed off to Zaheerabad, 20 km away. All along, he sat in the front seat waving to clumps of curious onlookers on the road.
At Zaheerabad, he pitched it right from the word go. Addressing a gathering of 2,000, he connected with the crowd that had sweated it out in the hot sun for well over two hours.
Cricket was forgotten as he began — apologetic that he couldn’t speak the local tongue. "Do you want someone to translate what I say? I have this nagging doubt that all of you may not understand Hindi." A sea of hands waved to him in dissuasion.
With the transmission loud, clear and first-hand, Advani thanked people for the welcome, for the faith they had in NDA’s governance, its development agenda and for turning out on a hot afternoon to hear him. He signed off with an appeal for votes for the NDA at the Centre and the TDP in the state.
At Sadashivpet and Sangareddy, things were much the same. By the time Advani reached the Patancheru area, daylight had faded. But unlike in cricket, bad light didn’t stop play.
Here, the gathering, some mobilised and some voluntary, spent two hours watching the cricket contest on a TV set which was switched off as soon as Advani showed up. But that wasn’t before some muted protests were heard after an announcement went out on the TV set being switched off.
The announcers, though, quickly threw in a promise of more action from the field of cricket once the leader finished his speech.