Ahmedabad, second Test, day 4
Friday, December 14, 2001

It was January 26, 2001 - Republic day. Throughout Gujarat, people were sleeping in late because of the national holiday. Thousands of them never woke up. At 8.45am, an earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale hit Gujarat, and in a period of 70 or 80 seconds, more than 20,000 people lost their lives, about 167,000 were injured and a million families were left homeless. It was the worst earthquake in India for 50 years. In terms of lives lost, it was six times worse than September 11.

The epicentre was in Bhuj, where entire communities were destroyed. Bhuj is where Vandana Ramprakash, Mark Ramprakash's wife, is from. She was in England when the earthquake struck and struggled for three days to contact her relatives.

Three hundred kilometres from Bhuj is the industrial hub of Ahmedabad - the second most badly affected city in India. The earthquake here reached 6.8, and hundreds of people died. A school offering extra classes for children collapsed, killing more than two hundred students; two ten-storey blocks collapsed too, killing another hundred people.

The Sardar Patel Stadium where England and India are now struggling for supremacy was relatively unscathed. None of the 30-40 people in the ground at the time was hurt - though many had to run out of the gym half-naked to reach safety. The pitch undulated like the sea but didn't crack. The stands swayed from left to right like silver birches in an autumn storm but didn't collapse. There was structural damage to the north and east ends though, and work to strengthen the entire stadium only finished ten days ago, at a cost of 40-50 lakh (four to five million rupees, about £60,000). Most of the cash was raised on credit, and the Gujarat Cricket Association are hoping that the Indian board will make a contribution.

Today three documentary makers were at the stadium - French producer Florence Corver, journalist Dominic Nutt and cameraman Jonathan Allen - to make a cable-TV programme on Gujarat one year on. They'd already been to Mumbai and Bhuj and had come to Ahmedabad to speak to government officials and engineering experts about the resconctruction work. They had spoken to Mark Ramprakash about the quake and both he and they were amazed by the resilience of the people.

"It's amazing," said Nutt. "People just get on with it - it's a case of business as usual, you fall off your bike and get back on again. It was very different in Orissa after the cyclone - people there were far more passive."

But the resilience doesn't mean there are no scars. The psychological effects remain even for those who were not bereaved - people are scared to go upstairs, or take a bath. Memories of the terrible sound of the earthquake echo in millions of ears at the dead of night.

Gujarat A Year On will be shown in the UK on January 26 on various cable channels including Channel East and Zee TV.

Tanya Aldred, our assistant editor, is covering the whole tour for Wisden.com.

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