Grand welcome for Sachin
When Sachin Tendulkar walked on to the field with just about an hour left in the opening day's play, a sizeable crowdu00a0a surprise in an era of lukewarm response to Test cricket revelled in the moment, giving him a huge round of applause.

As the master has enters his third decade of international cricket, his aura has risen with each season. One wondered though that how many of the 25,000-odd people screaming his name would have remembered that 20 years ago on the very same day, Tendulkar raised his bat in Test cricket for the first time after scoring a fifty against Pakistan at Faisalabad.

Shukla's a popular name too
Indian Premier League head honcho Lalit Modi isn't the only Indian cricket administrator who draws applause from the crowds.

When the Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association president Rajeev Shukla, walked outside the fence from the pavilion to the media enclosure at Green Park yesterday, he was cheered from every stand that he passed.

A group of spectators from one stand were screaming 'Shuklaji... Shuklaji' so loud that one wondered if the India batsmen would have been tempted to ask: "Who have you come to watch? Us or him?"