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After two years without a Test here, 23 in which India’s red-ball side had visited only once, seven months since the last tickets for the first three days were snapped up and six in which the sum total of England’s action in this format had been a low-key three-day win over Zimbabwe, it is fair to say that Leeds was ready for this. Or at least, in classic Yorkshire fashion, that it would be ready in its own sweet time.
Play started with the stands barely half-full and television commentators feeling they had to remind viewers the day was actually a sellout. That much was swiftly evident, but as India’s batters settled in for the long haul there was no need for anyone to hurry.
As those words were spoken, and just beyond the reach of the cameras, the concourses were packed with people still getting geared – or in many cases beered – up. Behind the Western Terrace a lengthy queue snaked towards the main bar with a second queue just beyond for the chance to join it (the hack for anyone stuck in this situation is to climb the stairs at the back of the adjacent Howard Stand and give one of the underemployed bar staff there something to do). After eventually being served fans edged their way nervously through the masses carrying their drinks on flimsy cardboard trays, rendered ever flimsier by the beer inevitably sloshing over them.
There were surprisingly few India fans – rumours swirled that a rush of tickets had found their way on to the secondary market as soon as Virat Kohli retired – though the fact that in most of the ground the seats are much the same colour as their white-ball kit sometimes made it appear otherwise. Among their number was one who arrived just after play began, child in tow. Dad wore an India shirt, son full cricket whites accessorised with an England flag draped around his shoulders like a cape, with the crown of his head poking through a hole in a large sheet of cardboard to produce a makeshift sombrero. In most of this ground shade has to be self-created, and this promised to be a day that needed it.
Though a pleasant breeze took the edge off it, at lunch the biggest queues were for the water refill stations, and by tea the bars were virtually deserted but heaven help anyone who wanted an ice cream. A previously rather flat atmosphere perked up soon afterwards, potentially assisted by copious quantities of soft serve. Flake? Not us, pal.
Unfortunately the possibility of genuinely hot weather did not seem to have occurred to whoever planned the catering operation, leaving fans with an entirely unseasonal choice between such offerings as burgers, southern fried chicken and loaded fries. Pity the man staffing the wood-fired pizza oven, which was positioned next to the fish and chips truck – by the end of the lunch break its peas were not the only things that were mushy. The fans nevertheless attacked the offering just as Yashasvi Jaiswal tucked into England’s bowling: with relish (ketchup, in most cases). In all this the only sign of fresh fruit and vegetables was the group of fans in the Western Terrace who came dressed as two bananas, three strawberries, an orange and an avocado.
There is something particularly appealing about a stadium that is part of another different stadium, with the structure known to cricket fans as the Howard Stand Siamese-twinned with the rugby league ground’s North Stand, but there is no clever design that can disguise the lack of space behind some areas of the ground when there is no play on. Into the lunchtime throng behind the East Stand, a mixture of food stall queues and people endeavouring to walk around the ground in both directions, was thrown a group of bhangra drummers, four men making the noise of 10, who attracted a sizeable crowd while they added bonus percussion to an unlikely mashup of Peter Andre’s Mysterious Girl and Shaggy’s take on In the Summertime. They set up opposite the Gray-Nicolls stall, thereby ensuring the area had both bats and a racket, and there was not a bar in the ground with as many bottlenecks.
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Probably the most surprising lunchtimely hold-up though was on the otherwise deserted stairs outside the players’ changing rooms, where for a while India’s Kuldeep Yadav somehow found himself stuck without the pass necessary to convince the security staff stationed there that he should be allowed in, or a phone to summon anyone to vouch for him. Eventually the guard allowed him through – in his own sweet time.
