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BANGALORE: These were scenes straight out of a dystopian movie. India had gone to lunch on the second day of the Delhi Test with the scoreboard showing a commanding 500 for 5. Virat Kohli was batting on 225, the first captain in the game’s 140-year history to score six double-centuries.
But all such milestones were forgotten after the interval, when half the Sri Lankan side emerged wearing masks to ward off Delhi’s notorious pollution. At 12:32 p.m., 22 minutes after the restart, Lahiru Gamage, the Sri Lankan pace bowler, pulled up, feeling unwell. Dinesh Chandimal, the visiting captain, had animated discussions with the umpires, with a visibly irked Kohli also offering his viewpoint.
Ravichandran Ashwin fell to the first ball on resumption, but the drama was far from over. Kohli went for 243, with his rhythm clearly affected by the stoppage. And when Suranga Lakmal, Sri Lanka’s other pace bowler, went off sick not long after, the tourists were down to bare bones.
Sadeera Samarawickrama was resting in the dressing room after taking a blow to the head on the opening day, while Dhananjaya de Silva was in the dressing room vomiting. A doctor was in dressing room, and Nic Pothas, Sri Lanka’s South African-born coach, said later that oxygen had also been made available.
Nick Lee, the Englishman who is Sri Lanka’s fitness trainer, changed into whites, as did Manoj Abeywickrama, their fielding coach. When Lakmal went off, Sri Lanka had just 10 on the field. With the officials figuring out a solution, a fired-up Kohli gestured to his batsmen to come back in. Play was halted for 20 minutes.
By then, Asanka Gurusinha, the team manager, and Pothas had already been in the middle to talk to Nigel Llong and Joel Wilson, the two umpires. Ravi Shastri, India’s coach, had also stormed on to the ground to make an angry point or two. Bharat Arun, India’s bowling coach, told the media later that Shastri had told the umpires to “get on with the game.”
When it was their turn to bowl, both Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma nudged the speed gun beyond 140 km/hr, reducing Sri Lanka to 14 for 2. And the 15,000-strong Sunday crowd, few of whom had bothered with masks, made it plain what they thought of the Sri Lankan team’s actions.
Pothas, who refused to comment on the crowd’s reaction, spoke of an unprecedented situation that the match officials were not equipped to deal with. “There are no rules regarding pollution,” he said, insisting that the team management had only been looking out for the health of their players. You could see where he was coming from. Even at 6 p.m., long after play had ended for the day, with Sri Lanka battling on 131 for 3, the levels of PM2.5 (particulate matter) and PM10 were 234 and 120, more than twice the acceptable levels. The overall air quality index read 195, which is classified as “Unhealthy.”
 In November 2016, a Ranji Trophy match between Bengal and Gujarat at this venue had been called off because of smog, with various players complaining of breathing difficulty and burning eyes. And as recently as October, schools across the city were closed as the air quality reached crisis levels. Javier Ceppi, who was tournament director for the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, which India hosted in October, tweeted: “You can’t host sport events in Delhi from Diwali till end of Feb, at least. It is a fact. We had to accommodate our whole schedule to avoid it and others should also think about athletes’ health first #DelhiSmog.”
Arun expressed no sympathy for the Sri Lankan bowlers, but it’s obvious that the Board of Control for Cricket in India will have to rethink hosting matches in the national capital at this time of the year. Nearly a decade ago, pictures from a Kotla Test match went viral after a swarm of bees forced the Australian and Indian players to lie prone on the ground till they dispersed. That evoked much mirth, but there was nothing remotely funny about Sunday’s stoppages.
Delhi has a problem, and no amount of bluster or indignation is going to make it, or the masks, go away.