Happy Birthday Harsha

 In our short travel history, we could meet a few celebrities and had some interesting encounters. There was that time when we met Rahul Dravid and my companion started crying out of joy, or when we met Sourav Ganguly and my companion informed on his face that she is not a fan of him and likes Rahul Dravid more. But the funniest incident having with the man who is celebrating his birthday today.

It was that day in August 2018 when we could snick into the Lords’ media center during the lunch break of an England-India test match thanks to our good friend Sandipan and could meet legends like Michael Holding, Kumar Sangakkara, Nasser Hussain, Sanjay Manjarekar, and Harbhajan Singh. Our main target was Ganguly with whom we wanted to have a picture. Ganguly was late and it is a story for some other day of how we managed our picture with him. What we later realized was that during the break there was a special segment featuring Smriti Mandhana (we had a glimpse of her also) along with Ganguly and the hero of this story Harsha Bhogle.

Due to that segment, Ganguly came down to lunch pretty late. Once we had our photo session with Ganguly we just hung around for a bit to soak the environment. This was when in almost empty lunch room of the media center we found Harsha. He was the last man among the commentators to have his lunch that day. We noticed that he just took his plate and sat at one of the corner tables. He had his phone out and was looking at it while eating.

It looked like he was preparing for his next stint on air and at first, we were hesitant to approach him. But it is not every day you meet your favorite commentator and finally, we could not stop ourselves. I and my companion went near his table and very gently asked him whether we were disturbing him. To our surprise, he jumped out of his sit and in an urgent voice mentioned that, he is ready and coming to the commentary box in a minute. We were also surprised, I said, “Harsha, we are your fans. We are just looking for a picture with you!”

Then came the famous smile and silky voice, “Of course! You know what, I thought you are my production manager and came to call me for my next slot!”

The confusion was gone and then we got our photo with one of the most famous voices of cricket! Happy Birthday!!