Aala Santhosh Reddy

n unplanned and sudden visit to the city of Vijayawada made sure that I spent most of the weekend travelling. It gave me the much needed break and a welcome relief from the hectic life I have been used to for the past few weeks.

Source: Wikimedia

One day was all I got to visit as many places as I could in Vijayawada. But being an unplanned visit I had to restrict myself to a few places. With the visit to the famous kanaka Durga and Mangalagiri Temple a must, most of my time on Saturday went in travelling and visiting the famous temples. So much so that I could not even take out some time to take a boat ride which was available near our cottage.

Updated (July 3, 2008 ) - Lengthy post ahead

After much deliberation we decided to take a bus to Vijayawada. We started at 11:15 PM on Friday night from Hyderabad and reached Vijayawada early morning the next day.

The first thing one gets to notice entering the beautiful city is the lush green fields on the outskirts, reletively clean air (compared to Hyderabad) and water everywhere (in canals though). We got to the nearby AP Tourism hotel, Haritha in Berm Park. This place was wonderful situated on the bank of the reservoir offereing a spectacular view of the Prakasam Barrage, it’s reservoir and Bhavani Island.

Checked into the Rs. 1800 Executive Deluxe Suite. The suite was worth the money at least for the view it offered of the reservoir and the calm surroundings. The suite’s balcony was just 50 feet away from the reservoir. However, the place was bit humid probably because of the reservoir.

We started off to the famous Vijayawada Kanaka Durga Temple at 9:30 a.m in the morning and were lucky not to have a big crowd. We were informed that their is lot of devotees visit the temple on Fridays and Sundays. The temple is very close to the Prakasam Barrage, Bus Stand and the Railway Station.
The temple is situated atop the Indrakeeladri Hill. With the passage way for vehicles blocked to widen the road (a stampede recently led to the death of several people) left us with no choice but to climb up the 200 odd steps to the temple.

Legend has it that Goddess Durga stayed on top of the hill after slaying the demons here. The main temple is well maintained and the goddess looked splendid with the flowers, ornaments and the decoration. We were lucky that we had two visits in the space of half an hour as there was no rush in the temple. Being situated on a hill the temple offers a fantastic view of the city of vijayawada. One could see the dry krishna banks after the Prakasam Barrage. Wanted to go there but again paucity of time did not allow me the luxury of strolling on the river bank. So after climbing down we all had this strange feeling of our legs shivering. This was to do with the stairs which we had to climb up and down.

At 12:30 p.m we took an auto to the temple of Panakala Swamy in Managalagiri, another famous place which is around 12 km from Vijayawada. Locals believe that the god keeps the city safe by having Jaggery Water (Panakam) to keep the hill cool (the hill is made up of volcanic eruptions). We reached the temple by noon and offered our prayers there. As suggested by the pujari at the entrance we could hear a gargling sound as the deity took the offerings. Surprisingly we did not find any ants in the temple while the whole place was filled with jaggery water. There are a few more interesting small temples located on the same hill. Of interest is the rare idol of God Vishnu in a lying pose. This place has also got historic importance with the city being ruled by many kings and countries. Again this temple also offers a panoromic view of the city.

Returned to the resort by 3:00 p.m had lunch at the resort’s hotel and then slept till 8:00 in the evening. Have to say too much travelling and the heat took the toll on all of us. So much so that we couldn’t even muster up our energies to take a boat ride in the reservoir. While we missed the ride it was made up with a pleasant change in the environment. A nice brief shower of rain made the atmosphere more enjoyable and all the more beautiful. After having a quick dinner we spent the night strolling near the reservoir under the starry sky in the cool breeze and watching the waves in the reservoir hit the shore. We returned to Hyderabad on sunday afternoon. It was truly a memorable visit to Vijayawada.
More about Vijayawada

• Also known as the business capital of Andhra Pradesh and is the third largest city.
• Famous places to visit in Vijayawada: Kanaka Durga Temple, Prakasam Barrage, Undavalli Caves, Bhavani Island, Mangalagiri

This was a perfectly scripted and engaging story. A young Indian team takes on an experienced battle-worn and tough Australian side to hand over a 2-0 defeat in the final segment of a very very long Commonwealth Bank tri-series tournament. Now that the tri-series will never be played again at least in the near future, the Australian side has to live with fact that India will be the perennial holders of the series. This should trouble them more as it was their last chance to regain the trophy after losing it to England last year.

What the series also has shown is that a tough team like Australia can also be defeated in its own backyard. This was possible as the Indian side took on a different skin unlike the previous Indian teams that toured Australia. This was a team that did not blink an eye looking into the eyes of the world champions. Australia really got it wrong with its long lasting and successful strategy of playing the pressure game on the opposition side. Instead of sulking under the pressure brought in by the unnecessary controversies on and off the field, India managed to give it back to Australia. This was something the Australian team never expected and crumbled under the backlash.

The fact remains that Australia has been defeated convincingly both on and off the field and this should please the other teams who would now look to win in Australia. The series has proved to be a blessing for the Indian side as it threw up potential talent in youngsters like Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar, Rohit Sharma. And with the Indian U19 team already clinching the world cup the bench strength of India looks strong for the first time. Dhoni deserves a special mention and praise as he captained with a very very cool head on his shoulders. Leading a team with the most experienced and senior player Sachin Tendulkar and a young bunch of cricketers and managing to win is not an easy task and he did made the pressure look easy, but it was a tough and brave act from the Indian captain.

Sachin Tendulkar, the man always in the limelight, written off by critics, questioned by fans on his poor form showed why he is regarded as a master blaster. Getting back into his groove he did demolish the opposition. He had an exceptional run in the test series and also the final few matches in the one day series.

Looking at the positives for Australia Brett Lee and Nathan Bracken did well to take 37 wickets between them, but did not help their team win the tropy. They worked hard and never had anything to complain. For India it was good to see youngsters and newcomers Ishant and Praveen kumar bowl under pressure. If there was a chunk in the armour of the mighty Australians it was their poor batting with none of their leading batsmen showing consistency or taking the lead in scoring the runs. Gilchrist, Hayden and Hussey scored the bulk of the runs (1212) for Australia. Ponting had a disappointing show with his batting while he concentrated more on assisting the umpires with his decision making abilities and his new role of keeping the integrity of the game. The Indian batsmen had a dream run scoring runs at will and consistently. The top and middle order of Sachin, Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni and Yuraj came good scoring 1623 runs. Gautam Gambhir scored two classy centuries while Sachin played two important knocks, a century in the winning cause and another score where he again missed scoring a century in a winning cause.

India will go back home with lot more than the controversies and trophies that it won in Australia, confidence in their ability to win in tough situations.

Well, this was truly an exciting Sunday. India seniors backed their decent bowling performance with some terrific batting from the top order to crush Australia by 6 wickets in the first final of the Commonwealth Bank Tri Series. India juniors disappointed with some poor batting giving in to the pressure from some excellent bowling from the South African pacers. But the script had its thrilling moments. Defending a modest 159 the Indian bowlers matched their counterparts in restricting South Africa to 102/8 in another match decided by the Duckworth Lewis method and eventually winning the Under 19 Cricket World Cup 2008.

Whatever happened in the two finals, India clearly showed that they now play a different kind of cricket. After a long time Sachin Tendulkar opened his bat to some exciting stroke play and left the Australians dumbfounded. Never did he gave the opposition a chance to get on to him and stroked another memorable century on the Kangaroo land. He would be a satisfied man what with getting a century that eluding century in Australia fittingly in the first final to set up the remaining two finals.

Though the junior Indian cricket team disappointed with the batting display there was no sign of any nervousness on the players and they instead looked quite relaxed even with a modest total to defend. A tight bowling with some electric fielding thrown in left the proteas clueless and eventually fell short of 12 runs to hand over the trophy to India. Not to take away any credit the proteas did put on some terrific display of cricket and truly deserved to be in the finals, but as they say only the best team wins and today it was India.

It will be a terrific Sunday with India featuring in two exciting finals. While India seniors will be up against Australia hoping to win the eluding tri series cup in Australia by taking a lead in the best of three finals, the juniors will fight it out with South Africa in the U19 cricket world cup finals in Malaysia.

A terrific performance by the youngsters in the U19 world cup augurs well for India as it will help spot young blood to fill the soon to be vacant slots in the senior team. A strong U19 team will be even more useful as India is one of the few cricketing nations to have a very young senior team. The senior team after a long time has been performing quite well outside India. Hope to see both the junior and senior teams win their matches tomorrow.

Some interesting observations on all that happened on the cricketing fields in the month of January.