In July last year we launched journalist Soumya Bhattacharya’s book You Must Like Cricket? (Random House UK, Indian price: Rs 450) internationally; first in Kolkata and then in Mumbai. The morning after the Kolkata launch, I found myself on the platforms of Howrah Station, waiting for my parents to arrive from Bangalore on a train that was in delayed loop. For once I did not mind. Nor did I notice three hours flying by as I raced through Soumya’s compelling account of his fetish for cricket, part autobiography, and part bildungsroman. As I read his recollection of the moment when he completely botched up filming his daughter’s first steps on a camcorder because of a “re-re-re-run” of a Sachin Tendulkar innings on ESPN, I could not help smiling to myself.

Just a few evenings back my own nine-month old was on my lap and Wimbledon was on the telly. As the crowd roared its appreciation of a Roger Federer backhand winner swatted in from an impossible angle from the furthest corner of Centre Court, I suddenly noticed my nine-month daughter old bring her two hands together. Not once, not twice but four times, quite deliberately. Of course, on a mundane level the first clap is just one of those development milestones parents are supposed to be on the lookout for. However, for a sports nut like me, the moment will forever be etched in my memory as the day Lori appreciated the most difficult shot in tennis made absurdly simple.

Imagine then how it felt to be at the very Mecca of tennis in person! It was on a lark one evening in late June 2002 that I decided to make the trek from Reading, where I was a student, to London. I landed up at Butler’s Wharf near Tower Bridge, the students’ dig for London School of Economics where a pal from my university days in India was holed up. Late evening merriment over the best hilsa fish, procured from Brick Lane, and the cheapest Scotch student money could buy meant none of us had any sleep.

We set out for the Championship address, known simply by its postcode – SW 19 – at 4 a.m. and expected to be among the first persons in the queue for day tickets. We were wrong by a few miles and a half! I had never been at the non-receiving end of such a long queue. People had descended on the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club even before I had set off from my hall of residence in Reading the previous afternoon. And at six in the morning, signs were all around of a night long party coming to an end: heaps of beer cans cast carelessly aside like one-night flings, make-shift barbeque stands still smouldering, tired bodies gathering their spirits for one last push towards the turnstiles.

Though the queue slid forward in slow steps, there was no dearth of amusement. There were plenty of freebies to go around, from newspapers to bottled water to yogurt to shaving razors. The common love of the game and the shared goal of watching tennis at Wimbledon welded diverse people from across the globe into one community. I listened to the excited chatter of a bunch of schoolboys come to cheer for Tim Henman. In 2002, Henman was still in with a chance. Some French students attending English language school decided to try out their new-found conversation skills on us. We didn’t mind since the topic of discussion was Mary Pierce. She’s gorgeous, no matter what language you speak. As to her chances of winning Wimbledon… well that was the bit where we could not arrive at a common minimum understandable language with our French friends. We did not part as good friends.

It was well past mid-day when we paid the ticket booth its due and finally made it to the ground. We did not get the coveted Centre Court tickets, and were somewhat lucky to even get ground passes. But I couldn’t have cared less: I had dreamt of being here since the day Boris Becker lifted the Championship Trophy as a precocious 17 year old in July 1985. Age had withered my faith in my own tennis talent and time had taken the gilt edge off that adolescent dream. But I was ecstatic at simply having arrived at Wimbledon.

Play had commenced by then on the side courts. It was early in the first week, so we watched Kafelnikov play Woodbridge from close quarters, Taylor Dent up against Wayne Arthurs in a joust of the big-serves, cheered Mahesh Bhupathi in a doubles match as he and his partner – I think it was Max Mirnyi – take on a Pakistani pair (even at Wimbledon we struggled to keep a lid on our somewhat atavistic support for India against our arch sub-continental rivals).

Everywhere you looked you saw people you read about in the papers sweat it out in the heat and grass. I even summoned the courage to mutter a feeble ‘Hi’ to my childhood idol Vijay Amritraj as he walked past towards the media centre. Ever the perfect gentleman, Amritraj stopped, turned around and shook my hand!  

The action all around was so thick that I almost forgot to take a comfort break… till it hurt. Even as I made my way to the Men’s Room, I noticed a plaque on the main club house that listed the names of all champions, past and present. Though I could barely hold on anymore, I paused, mesmerised by this understated scroll of honour and looked up for names of Indian champions. I counted four names: Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi (doubles champs in 1999), Leander again as Boy’s Champion in 1990, Ramesh Krishnan in the same category in 1979, emulating his dad Ramanathan Krishnan’s achievement in 1954. I may not have stepped on to the courts at Wimbledon, but containing myself at that hour, searching for names of my heroes, was not a minor feat of endurance.

Wimbledon for me was nothing short of a pilgrimage, and as if by divine intervention, I found myself inside the famed Centre Court even though I had only a lowly ground pass (one that did not allow entry to any of the show courts – Centre and Court Number 1). I was watching, who else but Mary Pierce, on a side court very close to the Centre Court when there was an announcement that because the scheduled games were over much earlier than expected, there was to be an unscheduled mixed doubles match at the Centre Court and the hoi-polloi were welcome to watch. A mad dash later my bum was on a Centre Court seat and it was time for me to go berserk with my camera.

There is very little in common between the Championships today and the garden-party atmosphere in which the tournament started in 1877. Now it is an incredibly well-managed sporting event, the immaculate planning perhaps best reflected in the way the stewards manage the serpentine queues. However, some of the traditional garden-party atmosphere still lingers on in the abundance of strawberries and cream and Pimms - that quintessential British summer drink - that is sold from the food stalls, the picnic atmosphere in front of the giant TV screen in Aorangi Park (better known as Henman Hill in recent times, and is in the process of being re-christened Murray Hill, after the latest UK aspirant to the title, the Scottish prodigy Andy Murray.)

One has to step into the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum to witness sporting history unfurl. Tennis racquets from that era look like gardening implements rather than what they are. However, there is some thrilling memorabilia in there, including the shirt in which Bjorn Borg won his fifth and final title in 1980. Legend has it that it wasn’t even laundered before they put it out for display. All for the sake of authenticity!  

Wimbledon Factfile

Even as London prepares for the Olympics in 2012, Wimbledon waits eagerly to host the Olympics for the second time, after the 1908 London Olympics. To read more about how different the Olympics were and the several categories of tennis events that took place in 1908, log on to www.wimbledon.org

Wimbledon remains one of the very few major UK sporting events for which one can still buy premium tickets on the day of play.

Ticket Availability

Approximately 500 tickets for each of the Centre (except for the last 4 days), No.1 and No.2 Courts, are daily reserved for sale at the turnstiles.

Roughly 6,000 Ground Admission tickets are available each day for entry to the Grounds including the No.2 Court standing enclosure and unreserved seating and standing on Courts 3-19. This number may vary depending on the number of people already in the grounds, the number of courts in play and the weather.