The governor: All ears for two women at Satengabari and all eyes for the ball on the Nandigram college ground. Pradip Sanyal

Nandigram, Dec. 2: The first ball of the second over came in and the batsman tried an expansive cover drive. The middle stump was gone.

The score card read: Gopalkrishna Gandhi bowled Sheikh Sabir 4.

The 10-year-old boy had got the most prized scalp of his life, though not exactly in cricketing terms.

The governor gave the bat away with a smile to the next batsman at the Sitananda College ground.

On his way to the heart of the troubled zone around 10.30am, Gandhi stopped his convoy seeing about a dozen children playing cricket in front of the college.

Sheikh Jahangir, a Class V student of Nandigram High School, was batting.

“Boys, why aren’t you at school?” Gandhi asked. “It’s a Sunday,” said the children.

The governor, red-faced in the sun, said “I want to play” in broken Bengali and reached for the bat.

Jahangir offered the bat, looking in disbelief at the tall, fair man in churidar-kurta.

Sheikh Minazul, a Class VII student from Jahangir’s school, bowled the first over.

The new man at the crease let the first ball go outside off stump but swung his bat at the second. The ball raced to the fence.

Sabir, a Class IV boy, bowled his heart out and proved a difficult proposition for the star batsman. He whooped in joy as Gandhi got castled.

Sabir goes to a primary school in Samsabad, 2km from Nandigram town, where he stays.

Gandhi walked up to Sheikh Asadul, handed the bat to him and asked him the name of the college. Asadul did not know. One of his friends did.

Several smiling faces had surrounded Gandhi by this time. He called Sheikh Nawab, 13, and asked in Bengali if he knew about the Calcutta Test. “Do you know the score?”

“Yes, we watch TV. Three Pakistani wickets have fallen,” Nawab said.

Gandhi turned back. Near the car, he met Minazul’s mother Mukhreja. “Can you tell me the names of the places in Nandigram where the trouble took place?” Gandhi asked.

She named Sonachura, Bhangabera and Satengabari, which are about 10-12 km from here.

Before entering Nandigram, Gandhi stopped his car beside a paddy field at Khargeria. He got down and spoke to Netai Maity, 37, a farmer who had just harvested his paddy.

“How was your crop? Is this the harvesting season?”

Netai said: “There has been a little delay, but we will get the right price.”

The governor’s car also stopped at Muradpur, where he spoke to several villagers. One of them was Paresh Sau, 75, who was sitting near his two-storey, mud-walled, thatched-roof house. Fascinated by the building, the governor went inside.