Dimapur - Quiet, Laidback Town

 Our first Ranji match was at Dimapur, Nagaland and I decided to go. Chatterjee came from HCAE with his local expertise of having coached Nagaland for three years. We took off early since our flight to Kolkata was at 6 am - 330 am to the airport, the prebooked cab chap didn't show up, a new guy came when I booked but he was so sleepy he kept veering off until we veered into the airport. Realised that digiyatra does not offer more benefits because the queues were equally long but then the process is faster. One uncle got stuck and he squeezed into the gate when his wife's was cleared!

View of the match from the top

Anyway we met our captain Tilak on the flight. Caught some sleep. Chatterjee knew exactly what to do once we get off at Kolkata and we followed him. The flight to Dimapur was a hour and we finally hit ground at a small airport which they say was built by the British at about 11. Contrary to our expectations, it was quite warm. We were put up at Zone Niathu, a resort owned by the CM someone said. Quite decent.

The dining area

This entire piece is one block of solid wood

Some interesting murals

Match the next day. The ground was quite nice and Chatterjee and me sat on the hill and watched Rahul Singh get a double hundred and Tilak get a hundred before we declared and got a wicket as well.

Mornings were about walks - Chattu is rather military about these things with timings etc and I would get a call at 545

and we would out at 6 am. Walking around the resort was good enough - again surprisingly not too cold. This day Hyd bowled Nagaland out twice during the day so we had to full days to spare.

The match referee announced Rahul as the man of the match and we were all offered beautiful scarves of Nagaland and took a nice group picture. Good souveneir.

Lovely gesture by the NCA

At lunch Chattu took me to a few spots around on a Scooty he borrowed from one of his old students. Hilly, green.

At the ground we met a few interesting people including a selector Keviso. We chatted about the Hornbill Festival and he generously offered to host me when I come, he spoke about the time he was studying Law in Pune, asked about my books, checked out the IMDB score on Golconda High School and so on.

Good start to the campaign. Thought we would head to Kohima for a day.