An American cricketer from Tulsa appeared in Chepauk, flanked by four Englishmen and an Australian. Matthew Christensen has played “a lot of amateur cricket” in the United States before coming to India to work on clean energy. An India-England test that is welcoming fans to the stadium was too great a temptation to resist. From Delhi, where he is now based, to Chennai is only a little over two and a half hours by plane.
Joe Phelan, a boy from London, is Christensen’s colleague and the leader of the group. He organized the trip. Online tickets for the matches were requested and approved. So Phelan and Christensen, along with compatriots Harry Martin and Mark May, and Australian Peter Nicholls left for Chennai, where they were joined by another Englishman Simon Harrison from Hyderabad. Christensen’s background in cricket did the courtship work. For Nicholls it was pure love of the game. The four Englishmen in the group came together to form a poor man’s Barmy Army.
“Barmy Army is not here, so we will try to replicate them in a small way. It’s great to go back to the stadium again to watch a cricket match. We’re all huge cricket fans to begin with, ”Phelan says before he and his teammates are virtually harassed by the local television crew.
The age difference did not matter. Christensen, 30, seemed perfectly comfortable in the company of Phelan, who is 47 or May, 58. Four of them had already reached the entrance to the stadium. The other two at the party were a little slow to start. Shutterbugs kept them busy before they were ready to go. Encouraging good cricket was the main topic on the agenda.
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.