Come Play !!!!

"I can't quite understand what motive one can have to kill a person like Bob Woolmer." crooned former Pakistani great Imran Khan.

A youngster seated next to me, snorted in derision - "Can't quite understand?? Kya bakwaas hai. It is obvious that the betting mafia used the underworld dons to eliminate him because he was about to spill the beans."

Really? Is this what cricket has become? Is the "murder" of a cricket coach during the World Cup the culmination of years of corruption that has seeped in or is it just the tip of the iceberg? And to think that when my father used to watch cricket avidly, teams didn't even have coaches !!

Indeed, so much has changed for the game. Hanif Cadbury, Saleem Langda, Arshad Pappu - are these then, the characters that decide the fate of international matches today instead of the Brian Laras and Glenn McGraths, that we are made to believe? Why, the names remind me of typical Bollywood masala flicks and indeed, that is typical of the drama that is now unfolding in the Caribbean.

"It is time for cricket to exorcize the ghosts of yore once and for all and start afresh" says Alan Border. But who will do that? Is anybody beyond reproach? Pardon me, but all the conspiracy theories have demented my rational thinking - can it be possible that just like in a typical Hindi film flick, when our honest cop finds out that even the Police Commissioner is in cahoots with the bad boys (recollect all those insufferable rehashes), perhaps all and sundry are involved - perhaps, Malcolm Speed is the very Head Honcho who is driving this all??? Not plausible? But then, what is? That gun-toting mafia dons who are planning to blow up railway stations and World Trade Centers are also determining the outcome of cricket matches? Perhaps, this is the example of the growing clout of cricket internationally that the ICC boasts of !!

There was a time when cricket was just a sport. Or at least, most of the times back then. And it was not too long ago - I was a kid then and I am still a young guy. When one would be all pumped up for a cricket match and invite anybody and everybody in the neighborhood for a good day of cricket watching. There were no odd coloured Pepsi colas or batsmen with weird drawings under their eyelids. But it was still enjoyable. Television channels did not disseminate information about the details of the Thai cuisine that the newest kid on the block likes or which brand of toilet paper he uses to wipe his ass in the morning, but then we still liked our players. Cricketers did not endorse everything from multi-grain biscuits to flavoured condoms, but people still bought those products. When 250 was a winning total in 50 overs and the first 10 overs were still about consolidation and not inane power-hitting without any semblance of technique on subcontinental dustbowls - one still had exciting matches. Dickie Bird would not raise crooked fingers at people or spectators were not addled by concepts like Power Plays - fixed and flexible and what not. One did not have telvision channels like Set Max which is all so eager to air the same ads zillions of times, that it often eats up the last delivery of an over or the first of the next one and God save you, if that last ball ended up as a wide or a no-ball. Don't even expect to watch the extra ball which was about to be bowled because by then the idiot box is spewing out some cranky ad where a bunch of ruffians are shouting "Ooh - Aah India" [how obscenely kinky words :)]and cricketers are transmogrified to tigers - the fact that they are soon to become lambs for slaughter only increases the irritation levels.

I had read somewhere that Erapalli Prasanna took a break from cricket to complete his education so that he has some recourse to good jobs once the cricket days were over. The other day, Lala Amarnath was recounting the early days and how cricketers from different parts of Mumbai would catch the train that would take them to their next test match venue, at different local stations depending on where their residence were. Now, with a huge army of support staff that does everything from massaging their legs to pressing their underwears, with stays in the most deluxe of hotels in the most elite of company, with brand endorsement moolah rivalling those of the Bollywood Badshahs, are the cricketers still not satisfied? Perhaps, such is the slavery of Mammon.

No Cheers for 300

So this is some new genre of film-making and Frank Miller is supposed to be its high priest? And like we have found inane euphemisms for all kinds of things in life these days, we have started calling comic books as graphic novels?

I must admit that I had really looked forward to 300 – the battle of Thermopylae occupies quite a distinguished place in history and for history buffs like me, the spectre of watching an action filled historical with the heroic Spartans and the legendary armies of the Achamaenians was quite mouth-watering.

Unfortunately, 300 is not a historical movie at all – the visuals might look stunning to naïve 10 year olds who perhaps are only interested in that kind of stuff, but it does no justice to more serious pursuers of historical movies. The fanatical heroism that Sparta has always been known for has been treated, for want of a better word, in some kind of an immature manner – you do not feel any kind of a glowing pride as one might have expected of the bravery shown. I also could not fathom the reason for the sudden volte-face of the Judas of Thermopyale – Ephialtes (who for no reason that I can think of, is shown as a hideous, diseased hunchback – a kind of throwback to the Golum of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – must things be unnecessarily distorted, just because it is a comic book?) – He says that he wants to fight for Sparta and redeem his father’s honour etc and yet, rejection of admission into the Spartan army suddenly makes him so vengeful that he turns against them? Or for that matter, even if Leonidas is unable to employ Ephialtes as a member of the phalanx, couldn’t he possibly have given him some other role to play in the Spartan army? Historically, there have never been any reports of Persian armies employing war elephants and Frank Miller perhaps deserves credit for introducing war-rhinoceroses for the first time ever.


The Monument to Leonidas in modern day Thermopylae

But perhaps, most of all, what was so disconcerting to me, as a viewer in India, was the not-so-subtle racist underlining that permeates the movie. And while some may just call it historical inaccuracies, I can’t buy that line of thought. It is quite simply put, an effort to show everything Asiatic and Oriental as quite debauched and barbaric, as against a superior and honorable Occidental culture. Can anybody pray tell me who gave Frank Miller the absurd idea of showing Xerxes as some weird, body-piercing Nubian assassin rather than the Achaemenid prince with full beard, long gown like dress and a crown on his head that stares at all in countless stone reliefs found in Persepolis? And are those Halloween type mask wearing monsters supposed to be a good illustration of the legendary Immortals of Xerxes? Perhaps, one would do well to remind Miller that both Iranians and Greeks, neighbours in the Mediterranean for centuries, do not look all that different from each other – his fetish for depicting all the Persian soldiers as some kind of dark devils is rank racist.

A depiction of Xerxes-I from a stone relief in Persepolis

So Long and Thanks for Everything, Inzy

It has been the most unusual of times for Pakistani cricket over the last 2 weeks in the Caribbean. Even the cataclysmic loss to Ireland which saw Pakistan tumble out of the World Cup was overshadowed by the sudden and mysterious death of Bob Woolmer which has shrouded the World Cup in a pall of gloom and unleashed the many dormant evils that have plagued the game of cricket in the recent past. Unfortunately, all this has kind of pushed the ODI retirement of Inzamam-ul-Haq to the background. And that is so very unfortunate.

This was sadly, not the way Inzy would have liked to end his long innings on the international platform. Over the last one year, so much has changed for Inzamam. After being hailed as a hero after standing up for Pakistani pride in the Oval test fiasco, Inzamam’s pictures were supposedly stomped on in Lahore and even his hometown Multan and his house attacked, post the disaster at the World Cup. But for one last time, when he trudged back, teary-eyed, to the pavilion after another typically belligerent innings against the hapless Zimbabweans, everything was forgiven. Like a supernova, which flashes brilliantly before its final imminent collapse, all that was good and great about Inzamam shone forth in our eyes and minds, one last time.

That brutal assault which zapped the Kiwis into submission in the 1992 World Cup semis was the first to spring to mind – Inzy, then a cherubic, clean shaven youngster, staked his claim for inclusion into the pantheon of cricket greats with that impudent, audacious knock. Through the years, he mellowed, the clean shaven look transformed into the bearded patriarchal look that the later generation would perhaps, remember him for; religious moorings took shape and press conferences and post match tête-à-têtes started increasingly with “First of all, thanks to Allah….”. Some things however, never changed – the innocence and general amiability that always characterized and in many ways defined him as a gentle giant, the ever bumbling running between the wickets, the safe pair of hands in the slip cordon, the sometimes bemused and absent look on the field when things were not going his way, the elegant bendy flicks off his hips, the hunched cover drives and savage cuts, that almost lazy stride to the middle when he came out to bat – beautifully and quite ironically, epitomizing both an aversion to any kind of hurriedness in life as well as a supreme confidence in his self and utter disdain for any bowlers, the constant gum chewing which would put the most arduously ruminating of cows to shame – we will definitely miss all of these. But perhaps, what Pakistan would miss most of all was the eternal hope that Inzamam provided, every time he walked out to the middle, irrespective of whether he was in form or not. Like his illustrious predecessors Salim Malik and the peerless Javed Miandad, no opponent could ever heave a sigh of relief till Inzamam was at the crease to guide Pakistani fortunes, no matter how choppy the waters seemed.

Of course, he has only bid adieu to ODIs and that leaves a possibility of us seeing some more of Inzy in the Tests. But considering the tumultuous world of Pakistani cricket, you never know.

As the saying goes, the show must go on, but when people like Inzamam take a bow, somehow, it is never feels the same without them.