"Orissa loves you all, who cares for a mad man?"

RATIKANT MOHANTY


Bhubaneswar, Jan. 23: A day after a frenzied political activist man-handled Team India coach Greg Chappell bringing Orissa one of its rarest moments of embarrassment, hundreds of cricket lovers on Tuesday queued up on the streets of Bhubaneswar to cheer their beloved cricketers and coach when they were on their way to Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University.

The large crowd of over ten thousand people, including women and children, were seen standing for hours with bouquets in their hands on the 10-km Jayadev Vihar-Chandaka road to have a glance of the players and coach Greg Chappell.

Although the enthusiastic crowd could not personally hand over the bouquets, they sent nearly a truckload of flowers to the hotel where the players are staying.

In the busy Bapuji Nagar area, a zealous crowd of young men and women nearly jostled to see R.P. Singh and Ramesh Power who launched a Reebok India outlet there. Both the players freely interacted with the customers and gave autographs to the fans standing in the queue outside the showroom.

A group of boys were heard saying, "Orissa love you all, who cares for a mad man?" obviously disapproving the Monday's attack on coach Greg Chappell by a Kalinga Sena activist.

In KIIT University, as it appeared, the players and the coach had forgotten the unpleasant incident that happened at the Biju Patnaik airport here.They were seen freely interacting with the students and delightfully sipping green coconut water.

Coach Mr Chappell was all smiles when he was honoured by the University.
Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid were seen sitting together and sharing some lighter moments.

In Puri, noted sand artist Sudarsan Patnaik created a 21-feet art piece welcoming coach Greg Chappel and Team India . He also wished best of the luck to the Indian players for the Wednesday's encounter with West Indies.