Match fixing: Playing the race card

Yesterday, two Pakistani cricketers, Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, were found guilty by a London court of conspiracy to cheat, and conspiracy to accept corrupt payments. Another cricketer, Mohammad Amir, had already pleaded guilty to the charges.
Discussing the issue last night on NDTV's Left, Right & Centre, the veteran commentator Kishore Bhimani played the race card. He said (starts at 16.18 of the discussion), "Both Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, two great cricketers, they were involved in fixing a match on the 9th of September 1994. This was the Singer Cup in Colombo, you don’t have to take my word for it, this is recorded... But they were mollycoddled so much that it wasn’t even told to the ICC. There seem to be different rules for the English and Australian players, and different rules for the continental players." Earlier in the programme he named Tim May along with Warne and Waugh as one of those guilty of match-fixing. Needless to say, he did not mention a single Indian cricketer among the guilty. Bhimani was media manager during the World Cup, and, like all Indian cricket commentators, knows the side on which his bread is buttered.
What he said about Warne and Waugh, though, is slanderously inaccurate. What the two did was deplorable, but could in no way be described as 'match-fixing'. They took money from a punter and in return for opinions about fairly innocuous stuff like pitch conditions. When asked to alter their play for money, however, both immediately refused. Pakistani cricketers, in contrast, were in the fixing game wholesale. Testimony heard by the Justice Qayyum is utterly damning of Salim Malik (the person accused most frequently in sworn statements of directly offering players money). Wasim Akram and Ejaz Ahmed come off pretty badly too. Inzamam, Saqlain, Waqar, and Mushtaq Ahmed appear involved in shady stuff at least some of the time. A finger is pointed at Saeed Anwar, too, but he appears to have struggled with temptation and gone over to the clean side (represented by Aamir Sohail, Rameez Raja, Rashid Latif and Aaquib Javed).
The Indian team was as embroiled in this jiggery-pokery as the Pakistanis. One of the prime accused in our own match-fixing scandal, Ajay Jadeja, is now contracted by, wait for it, NDTV. Wonder why they didn't ask him to comment on the London verdict?
Jadeja's interview with the CBI back when we had an inquiry of our own makes for interesting reading. Evidence was presented to him that he was in regular contact with bookmakers. He brushed it off, saying he met many people and couldn't remember them all. Some of these people, though, called him dozens, even hundreds of times during matches. The CBI had cellphone records to prove it. One bookie, Uttam Chand, called Jadeja ove 150 times in the course of a single Test Match in 1999. Here's Jadeja's explanation for his frequent chats with this guy: On being asked whether he knew Uttam Chand, a bookie/ punter of Chennai, he stated that he did not know him. On being confronted with Uttam Chand's cell phone printout, which disclosed very frequent telephonic contact between both of them just before or during cricket matches, he stated that he recognised Uttam Chand's cell phone number but knew him as 'Gupta'. He did not know how Uttam Chand got his telephone number. Jadeja stated that Uttam Chand used to ring him up often and tell him that if he did not talk to him, he would run into bad luck and because of superstition, he used to return his call. On being asked whether he knew that Uttam Chand was a bookie, he stated that he had an inkling to that effect due to the nature of conversation Uttam Chand used to have with him. On being asked why he did not discontinue his association with Uttam Chand after that, he said that he could not explain this.

So Jadeja's defence is that he took hundreds of calls from a bookie (and, on rare occasions, made calls to the man himself) out of fear he might face a run of bad luck if he didn't. If you believe him, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, a Nigerian businessman with a Swiss bank account.

Stray thoughts on the London riots

The British government has spent over half a billion pounds on street cameras, and London has perhaps more CCTV cams than any other city on earth. A couple of years ago, there were complaints that the crime-solving assistance provided by these cameras did not justify the expense involved in installing and maintaining them and the invasion of privacy that resulted from citizens being watched all the time.

Now, CCTV cam footage is going to lead to hundreds of convictions. I don't understand why people would loot shops in London. Surely they knew they'd be caught on a CCTV feed?

Many of the rioters certainly knew, which is why they wore masks and hoodies. So will there be calls for hoodie bans, like there have been calls for burqa bans?

If the Arab Spring was a Facebook and Twitter revolution, were these Facebook and Twitter riots? How does the Social Media shoe feel on the other foot?

The rioters (I'm differentiating these from opportunistic looters) appear mostly Afro-Caribbean, with a substantial infusion of White working-class / underclass youth. The vigilantes seem to be Asian (Turkish, Indian, Pakistani), East European and English. Strange coalitions, very distant from the world of My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.

I've always felt the partnership between activist Blacks and Asians formed in 1960s and 1970s Britain was flimsy. Maybe it was appropriate to that era, but it's broken down substantially since then, and is surely dead now. I don't see much common cause between the two ethnic groups anymore.

South Asians have serious problems to overcome: a conservative culture that does not respect free speech; a fealty to arranged marriage that can lead to forced marriages; extremism among Muslims that becomes terrorism at its most extreme. Afro-Caribbean Brits have a completely different set of issues to deal with: the breakdown of the family; drug use linked to violent crime; and low educational and economic attainment.

I can't understand why Britain has both a debt problem as well as an investment deficit after twelve years of Labour-led economic growth accompanied by high tax rates. Where did all that money go? I know we've been through a meltdown, but Gordon Brown's economy should've been better prepared for it. After all, there was no Blair tax cut to compare with the Bush tax cut.

One of the golden rules of party politics is that riots help the Right. They helped Nixon, Thatcher, Thackeray, Modi and Sarkozy, and will now help David Cameron, who appears really angry that his Tuscan holiday was interrupted.

It's good to see London cleaning up the mess. When citizens there come together to clean up, they do it in their thousands. It's different in India. Here, a few dozen meet, spend most of their time posing for cameras and leave the tough stuff to those meant for that kind of thing, if you get my drift. All acts in India are symbolic, even our recent 'Slut Walk', which consisted of about a hundred women dressed in standard Delhi college-girl clothes; a bunch of LGBT activists, mostly men; and about three hundred mediapersons fruitlessly seeking somebody slutty-looking to film.

India must be wishing the Edgbaston Test had been cancelled. I don't believe any World No.1 Test team has been at the receiving end of such a hammering in the past.

A few people have commented on the irony of an Indian tour of England been threatened by mob violence. It's supposed to be the other way round. The great example of playing cricket in troubled times must be England's 1984-85 tour of India.




This is a picture taken at Heathrow airport, on October 30, 1984, of David Gower and Allan Lamb boarding a flight to India at the start of that tour. They landed in New Delhi the next morning, just hours before Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards. The killing was followed by the worst sectarian bloodbath since Partition. The English cricketers stayed in their hotel before moving out to Sri Lanka, which had barely recovered from an even worse killing campaign. They flew to Colombo on Sri Lankan President Junius Jaywardene's private plane; he was returning from Indira Gandhi's funeral.
After playing warm-up games in Sri Lanka, the cricketers headed to Bombay for the first Test on November 28. On November 26, they attended a party thrown in their honour by Percy Norris, the British Deputy High Commissioner. The next morning, Percy Norris was shot dead not far from his Nariman Point office while being driven to work. The murder has never been solved, but it appears to have been an act of international terrorism, possibly masterminded by Abu Nidal, whose faction was demanding the release of three colleagues held in Britain.
It wasn't surprising that England lost that first Test at the Wankhede stadium.

Just as the match was winding down, Bhopal was struck by the worst industrial disaster in history. 1984 was definitely not a good year for India.

The tour went on, though, and the second Test was played in Delhi, which had returned to calm. England recovered to win that test, and went on to grab the series 2-1.

The Match

For once I wished I was on twitter. As it happened, I couldn't even blog from the stadium because I'd carried an old junk phone, just in case the police decided at the last minute not to allow mobiles inside. This is what my liveblog would've been, as best I can remember. I'm putting this in without having read any accounts of the match or heard any experts commenting on it. Will be interesting to compare my take to theirs once I'm done.

10.30am: I get to Churchgate early, having encountered no traffic on the inside roads.

My companion Nikhil calls to say he's running late. I have an ice tea at Tea Centre.

I join the Divecha Pavilion queue. They're confiscating all food items, all bottles, all bags. Some women are very upset. It's difficult for a woman to go ten hours without a handbag. Friction between female security personnel and handbag toting ticket holders.

We're in, after being felt up by five different guards, police, army, NSG, whatever. I'll never get used to being frisked.

We are pointed to the seats marked on our tickets. Those are not the seats we'd have chosen within the Divecha pavilion. Besides, if we knew our places were reserved we could have come two hours later; but I'm happy it's being done. Eliminates interlopers in one shot.

Our position is high and a bit square. There's a nice breeze blowing.

Lots of Indo-Brits around us. Were foreigners favoured in the ballot? I was told last evening that I entered 'Kuwait' in my address, instead of India. Providential slip of the mouse?

We hunt for food and drink. Only samosas available, greasy. I eat two, and decide to taste Gatorade for the first time. It's blue and disgusting.

Our seats are far too narrow. Only thing in their favour is they're better than the benches they replaced.

The sound system and acoustics are atrocious; announcements are really loud but we can't understand a word being said.

The teams come out to practice. Everyone's eyes are on jersey number 10. Sachin's hair looks orange-y. Definitely a bad hair colour day.

Gambhir isn't limping; Sreesanth's bowling quite a bit; Pathan and Ashwin aren't doing much of anything. Interesting choice, if that's what the playing eleven's going to be.

The toss. Dhoni wins it, or seems to, but then they do it again. This time, Sangakkara calls right. The crowd groans. They're going to bat. Memories of 1996 always in the back of my head. Will the ball start turning square under lights?

The squads come out, each member accompanied by a child. Some of the 'children' are gangly teenagers. National anthems. The Sri Lankan one is interminable. Sinhalese, being an Indo-European language, sounds much more familiar to me than Tamil or Malayalam.

Zaheer bowls a great first spell. Trying to erase the memory of the 2003 final. It's impossible to lose a 100 over match in three overs, but Zaheer came as close as humanly possible eight years ago. This time, he bowls three straight maidens, and adds one scalp to his collection.

Sreesanth's bowling rubbish; the least you can do if you're bowling rubbish is not give free hits, but he oversteps. What pressure Zaheer creates, Sreesanth releases.

The ball's doing nothing. Looks like a 300 pitch, but Zaheer's first spell has virtually taken that score out of the equation.

Sangakkara and Mahela are looking very comfortable, batting well within themselves. Mahela's getting a run a ball without seeming to try hard.

It's a joy watching the cat and mouse game between Harbhajan and Sangakkara. Live, one sees the huge difference between a specialist bowler and part-timer. Bhajji's variation of length and pace is superb, Yuvraj is one-dimensional, but lucky.

Imran Khan says weak bowling sides should prepare pitches that favour bowlers. It's counter-intuitive but dead on. Play to your weaknesses, not your strengths. We beat Pakistan, which has a better bowling attack, because the semi-final pitch assisted bowlers.

On a pitch like this, the difference between real quality (Zaheer, Harbhajan, Murali, Malinga) and the rest (every other bowler in India and Sri Lanka) is accentuated.

India are like Real Madrid in the reign of the Galacticos. We know our defence is weak, but back ourselves to score more goals than the opposition.

Mahela steps it up at the death, as do his partners. 65 runs in the final powerplay. People around me are despondent, but if the pitch stays true it's not a great score. I'd rate India's 260 in the semi-final a tougher chase given how oddly that pitch was behaving. Lanka seem to have decided to play for a baseline score of 250 and taken everything beyond as a bonus. Mahela gave them a good fillip, but I still think it's a 300 pitch. Unless it begins turning.

The break. We get a free lunch / dinner box with our ticket. It's from Croissants etc. Dry bread with two kinds of chicken, a fruit drink and brownie. Better than greasy samosas.

Malinga's bowling at one stump. He hits it over and over. His express pace is apparent even in these practice deliveries.

Second ball of the Indian innings, Sehwag is trapped plumb. As usual, he asks for a review without consulting the non-striker. Review shows it's plumb, one of Malinga's straight and low specials.

Sachin and Gambhir demonstrate there's nothing in the pitch; they play through the line comfortably. Sachin feels confident enough to drive on the up; one of the most breathtaking sights in cricket.

Malinga gets Sachin fishing and snicking. Henceforth, he's the villain of Wankhede, booed whenever he touches the ball.

Despair in the crowd at Sachin's dismissal. I say to Nikhil, "Come on, you can't expect the thirty plus guys to do everything. Let the youngsters show why they're in the team."

It's lucky Murali doesn't like bowling in the powerplay. The Lankan attack, like India's, is twenty overs of quality and thirty of garbage. Gambhir and Virat consolidate in peace.

Gambhir lofts Randiv, bisecting deep cover and long off, but the ball just hangs in the air and suddenly there's a fielder under it; but then maybe it dips and Kulasekhara can't get to it even after a dive. Really peculiar episode: a certain boundary turns into a certain dismissal only to end up as a dropped catch.

Moment of truth. Murali comes on to bowl. No turn, at least nothing troubling. This from a guy who could get the ball to deviate on a laminated board. Now it's entirely down to our mental strength. The Sri Lankan fielding is falling apart. No mental strength there.

Murali isn't hobbling, but doesn't appear 100% fit either. Even a 70% fit Murali would be deadly on a helpful track, though.

Kohli gets out needlessly. Dhoni comes in ahead of Yuvraj, a half-expected move with Murali bowling. He begins striking the ball cleanly, as all other batsmen have done beyond the first couple of overs in each innings.

We stay in touch with the required rate. Slowly, gradually, the match equation begins to favour India. We get ahead of the Duckworth Lewis requirement. The breeze is strong and has a monsoon-y feel to it. Nikhil says he'll take a thundershower and the win now.

Luckily the breeze isn't being felt downstairs. No drift in the ball. Dhoni and Gambhir reeling the match in like a giant marlin.

Malinga back on. A last throw of the dice. Any hint of reverse swing? Nope. After two fiery overs he's taken off. Soon after, Dhoni crashes a ball straight past the bowler and Malinga at long on chases it down. A tired pick up and a defeated throw.

Gambhir gets himself out before the fish has been landed. Yuvraj comes in and looks comfortable. 50 runs in 50 balls should be an easy win for this team. Not Indian teams of the past, of course, which have lost from more dominant positions. That, right there, is the crucial difference between this squad and previous teams.

Yuvraj and Dhoni bring it home. A hugely satisfying match which hinged on the behaviour of the pitch. Sanga depended on it helping the bowlers in the evening more than it actually did. 275 is always going to be a tough chase in a world cup final, but a little movement off the track could have made it impossible.

Lots of announcements. All better seen and heard on TV. We stay till the cup's in Dhoni's hands, and then head for a beer or two.

Wankhede blues

Here's a piece I wrote for Time Out after watching this match at Wankhede stadium five and a half years ago. Though not a fan of the IPL, I acknowledge it improved the spirit of spectatorship in India by mixing players from different nations and drawing more women to grounds.

Fan-aticism

The BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has botched its organisational duties in a variety of ways. A strict rotation policy has awarded matches to cities where it’s sure to rain. The board’s avarice has meant a preference for day-night games, though evening dew gives the side batting second an unfair advantage. There’s been chaos in the allotment of telecast rights.
The Mumbai Cricket Association’s as clueless as cricket’s national authority. The section of Wankhede stadium where I sat watching India play South Africa was packed at least 60% over capacity. Obviously, counterfeiters had gained an inside track on the ticket design. The scoreboard -- installed a few years ago at tremendous expense -- failed to function. The stadium, as characterless a pile of concrete as you’ll ever see, appeared in desperate need of an upgrade. Inadequate water supply, dirty toilets, cracked benches: that’s what my 900 rupee north stand ticket afforded me.
Perhaps we get the administrators we deserve. Indians are, without doubt, the most unsporting spectators in the world. Loutish behaviour, such as hurling projectiles at fielders, has led to stringent restrictions on patrons. All objects that can be thrown and cause damage, such as water bottles, are now prohibited in stadiums. This straitjacketing disproportionately turns off those who are usually well behaved, like women and senior citizens,. In the north stand at Wankhede males outnumbered females at least 20 to 1 and there were no elderly fans at all.
The crowd gratuitously chanted “Kallis is a bastard”, heckled Andre Nel, and fell silent each time the visitors scored or took a wicket. There was the usual racism, no less shameful because it is customary. Black players from the West Indies and England have endured taunts in the past, and it was Makhaya Ntini’s turn last Monday. Indian players didn’t escape either. Dravid was briefly booed even as he methodically guided India to the target. Winning, it seems, is not sufficient. Without a steady supply of boundaries -- it doesn’t matter if they’re wild hoicks or streaky edges -- the Indian viewer gets bored.
Television foreshortens sport, cuts it up into pieces, makes it look easy. Watching it live, feeling the real pace of the ball, ought to bring home the worth of well executed strokes, make the game less utilitarian. But we seem to prefer cricket in two dimensions even when watching it in three.
So what’s to be done? There are too many issues here for me to consider individually, but I’ve a couple of suggestions. Seat numbers printed on tickets must be taken seriously. Insisting that ticket-holders sit at allotted spots will deter fakers and ease crowd control. The BCCI could study how the Hindi film industry transformed its audience profile after the dire days of the late eighties. It could also emulate measures taken by football associations in Europe to curb hooliganism and racism. Instead, I’m sure it will slumber on until a stampede or riot takes lives, and then jerk a knee.

Road to the final: Jump the Q

The website Kyazoonga, which has partnered the Indian cricket board to sell tickets online, advertises itself with the tagline 'Jump the Q'. It seems a bit overstated for those who have spent hours waiting at the Mumbai Hockey Association in a queue that coiled and coiled like a giant cobra. Tickets are being handed out at a rate of about two every three minutes. My own tickets (I have got them in my wallet as I write) required just a two minute wait at one of the three counters. At that rate they'd be clearing three persons every two minutes, over twice the speed they're going at, and there would be no coiling queue. However, the line includes many proxies who have inadequate documentation, and everything is held up while phone numbers are verified and credit card numbers confirmed. There were about 150 people in front of me when I got there this morning at 11.30am. The ticket windows had opened early, and the queue was already moving when I arrived. I walked away a little after 3.30pm. At that point there were over 300 people in line behind me. At the pace they're going, the last person already inside the ground at 3.30pm would get his or her ticket at 9.30pm. For those entering later, well, the wait could stretch past midnight.
The counters were originally set to stay open for about 1500 minutes over three days. That would mean about 1000 applicants could be serviced at the pace Kyazoonga and the police have maintained. Since no individual is granted more than 2 tickets, no more than 2000 tickets could have been handed out in the time granted. The remaining 2000 (there were 4000 tickets in all in the online ballot) can't possibly all be taken care of in extra time. The maths is clear: lots of people who have booked tickets to the big game will not get their hands on them.
After my documents were checked, and details entered at the ticket counter, I had to fill in a form for the police providing address, phone number etc; then I was photographed on a cellphone. I wonder if all these records will be of any help if I was to lose my ticket. Something tells me they won't.

Road to the final: the ordeal

The story so far: having set aside a paltry number of tickets for the public, failed to control crowds at booking counters, and seen the ticket-selling website crash when sales opened for the cricket world cup final, the BCCI, through its partner Kyazoonga, opted for a ballot to decide who would get a ticket to the event. I was among those whose name came up. Two days ago, I received an email from Kyazoonga. It said the physical tickets would be available for collection from March 30 to April 1 between 12.30pm and 8pm at the local hockey association ticket counters near Wankhede stadium. Claimants of tickets were asked to bring printouts, a government ID, the credit card with which the purchase was made, plus photocopies.
The first collection day, yesterday, was also the day of the India-Pakistan semi-final. No cricket fan in his or her right mind would miss that. I stayed home and watched TV. This afternoon, I went to the pickup location, getting there at 4.30. A policeman barred my way, and told me to come back tomorrow.
"It's full for today", he said.
"But I was told the counters would be open till 8".
"Yes, but we've sent in four hundred people, and that's all we can accommodate today at the rate they're giving out tickets".
There was some back and forth with me and two others who got there immediately after; the policeman, expectedly, enjoyed our plight.
"I've come a really long way" one said.
"Long way? From Australia?"
"Powai"
"That's close by. Come back tomorrow."
"It's a working day; I've already taken half-day today".
"What can I do about that?"
And so on.
So tomorrow, I shall pack a picnic lunch and a book and get there before noon, prepared to stand in queue for five or six hours. But of course, news of this additional obstacle must have got round, which means there will be a rush early, which means maybe even noon isn't good enough. People selected in the ballot who live in other cities and will only get in tomorrow afternoon are in for a cruel shock.

Got tickets

Four weeks ago, I described my frustrating effort to buy tickets for the cricket world cup final. I was among half a million people who tried to access the site at the moment the tickets went on sale. Hardly surprising that it crashed. More surprising that the organisers didn't predict it would happen.
Belatedly, they put a fair system in play, based on a ballot. My name came up in the lottery, which means I have two very expensive passes to the final. But that's only stage 1 of the lottery. Frankly, although I'd love to see a game between, say, Australia and South Africa, I'd only find it worthwhile shelling out 35 grand for two passes if India are in the contest, which is only a 25% chance right now. I haven't checked the returns policy on Kyazoonga; the website might be crashed by punters seeking refunds the moment India are eliminated, if that dreadful event does come to pass.

Hitting Refresh

I spent over an hour before and after lunch hitting refresh on a webpage. The Board of Control for Cricket in India had decided finally to make available tickets for the cricket World Cup final, which is being held in Bombay for the first time. The stadium holds some 50,000, of which a grand total of 3000 tickets were offered for sale on the open market, of which 1000 were to be sold online starting 1pm. I knew the site was going to be overloaded, but I did what I could, as doubtless did like tens of thousands of others.
At one point I managed to get to the relevant page, a list of all matches to which tickets were available, but the final wasn't among them. I don't know if all 1000 passes had been bought up by then (it was about 4 minutes past 13.00 hours IST) or whether the BCCI and its partner the ecommerce site Kyazoonga hadn't managed to load the relevant page. When I hit refresh to see if an extended list popped up, the page refused to load, and remained offline till I gave up an hour later.
I just checked and the site is still down. I guess I'm going to watch the World Cup Final on TV as always.

UPDATE, 24 February: The website crashed and apparently not a single ticket was sold. So now they're going to redo the whole thing as a lottery. Meanwhile, in the brick and mortar world, there are riots and lathi charges at venues, with thousands queueing up for the few available tickets. Appalling mismanagement, considering the BCCI is among the richest sports bodies in the world.

Tendulkar and Bradman

Now Sachin Tendulkar's got his 50th Test century, the media have predictably revived the debate about whether he's the greatest batsman of all time. Well, of course not. Donald Bradman's clearly the greatest batsman who ever lived by a wide margin.
Batting averages have not shifted all that much in the past century. After a long career, a good Test batsman typically ends with an average of between 40 and 45; an exceptional one with an average of between 45 and 50; and an all-time great with a 50 plus average. That, at least, was the case before helmets became the norm, grounds grew smaller and bats more powerful. When helmets were rare, in the late 1970s and early 80s, there were four batsmen in the entire world with an average of over 50: Greg Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Javed Miandad. Chappell was replaced by Allan Border as the 50 plus Aussie in the 1980s. In the first sixty years that India played Test cricket, Gavaskar was the only batsman to end a substantial career with a Test average above 50 . Contrast this with the fact that the current Indian team itself has four batsmen averaging 50 plus: Sachin, Dravid, Sehwag and Gambhir. Pretty much every major team has one or two players in that category.
Judging by the stats, batting's become easier than it used to be; certainly no harder. It is reasonable to assume, then, that batsmen of the past would have had more or less the same success if transported to the present; their average would be in the same ballpark.
How, then, is there even a suggestion that Sachin Tendulkar, with an average in the mid-fifties, might be the equal of Bradman who averaged virtually 100? There simply is no comparison. Bradman is one of those outliers that defies comprehension; he is so far above any other batsman to have ever played cricket that he becomes a serious contender for the title of greatest sportsman of the twentieth century. I can't think of any sport where one person has left his contemporaries quite so far in his wake.
In any debate about the greats, Bradman should be left out of the equation, he's way greater than everybody else. What Sachin's done in the past year, I believe, is to put himself at the top of that group of 'everybody else'. About five years ago, Brian Lara and Sachin had similar records, and there was a valid debate about who was the preeminent batsman of their generation. Ricky Ponting had hit such a purple patch it seemed he might in the end overtake both Lara and Tendulkar. Well, Ponting's career graph has described a trajectory quite normal among great batsmen: a peak between the ages of 28 and 32, when the career average rises to the high 50s, and then a gradual falling off till it gets to about 50 at the time of retirement. Dravid's graph shows the same pattern, a rise to 57 or 58 and then a decline back to 52 - 53; The careers of Richards and Miandad also followed a similar arc. Sachin has defied this trend, by getting an improbable second wind late in the day. Having played more tests, scored more runs and hit more Test and ODI centuries than any other batsman in history, he's cemented a place as the second greatest batsman to have ever lived.

The new Australia

It was a painful experience that recurred over a number of years. I'd wake up, switch on the television and find Australia on approximately 165 for 1 on the first day of a Test match. By the end of the day, typically, the team would have put on something like 350 for 3, with Ricky Ponting 85 not out. On the odd occasion when early wickets fell, Adam Gilchrist or Andrew Symonds hit a run-a-ball century and the home team would get to 400 before the opposition fully understood the balance had shifted. Then, McGrath, Brett Lee and Warne would use the pressure of that first innings total to squash visiting batsmen.
It's all different now. Missing an established opening pair, and with middle order stalwarts out of form, Australia typically lose half their side before hitting 200, and it's left to Hussey to play the kind of role VVS Laxman did for India before Dhoni's emergence, and Steve Waugh adopted during the early phase of Aussie dominance (though Waugh, typically, took a tally from big to enormous, rather than from meager to respectable).
Out in South Africa, India can only pray for more rain after the first day of the first Test. I didn't watch any part of that match because it's on a new channel called Ten Cricket. I've already paid for Ten Sports, and now the firm has shifted some of its previously acquired and advertised properties to a new channel and is charging separately for them. How is this allowed?
There's also a channel called Ten Action which I can't get because TataSky has a problem with it. There's no point asking any customer service chaps what the issue is, they don't know, or won't tell. Ten Action was previously Zee Sports; TataSky cut deals with every Zee channel except Zee Sports, and the stalemate has evidently continued after the channel's change of name.
Ten Action broadcasts La Liga, which means I miss watching the two best football teams on earth. On the bright side, it also means I get a little more sleep.

You're out, just walk

Why are cricketers these days so demonstrative when they disagree with an umpire's decision to give them out?
In the old days, they just tucked their bat and walked off. That was when we had no way to tell if the umpire was right.
Now, we have a dozen cameras, tramlines, hotspots, snickometers, super slomo, and all sorts of other technology to determine if a decision was accurate. Surely there's LESS reason for batsmen to let us know they think they've been robbed.
And yet we have Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir and Rahul Dravid all looking shocked, and doing a Bollywood act on being dismissed during the current Test.
One of those three decisions was incorrect: Gambhir got a snick onto his pad and wasn't LBW. The other two calls were perfectly fine, and the great players who showed dissent only made themselves look foolish in the bargain.
Guys, stay dignified, just walk when that finger goes up. The truth will out.

A reason to cheer?

Today's Mumbai Mirror leads with a story about public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam's driver being transferred after showing up in a suit instead of his uniform on the day Ajmal Kasab was sentenced to death.
Forget the driver for a second, here's my question: why are people offering bouquets to the prosecutor? As far as Kasab himself was concerned, I have never heard of a more open and shut case in my life. The guy was caught on CCTV cameras shooting at people, clicked by a news photographer up close, and seen by over a dozen people who lived to testify about his actions. Plus he was captured quite literally red-handed at the end of his trail of murder. It would have taken a feat of incompetence beyond even the capacity of our police force to botch that argument.
There were, however, two persons charged with laying the groundwork for the terror attack who were tried along with Kasab. Both these gentlemen, Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed, were acquitted by judge Tahaliyani, who made deeply critical remarks about the investigation.
The response to the performance of Nikam and the policemen who briefed him is akin to cheering our cricket team for its showing in the T20 World Cup. It's true we lost to Australia, West Indies and Sri Lanka, but we did beat Afghanistan.

The IPL unravels

King Pyrrhus, after defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC, is supposed to have said, "If we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be utterly ruined". Lalit Modi is now tasting the bitter fruit of his Pyrrhic victory over Shashi Tharoor. It may be that he had no choice but to fight. Having failed to stage manage the supposedly open auction process, he took aim at the winning Kochi team's weakest link, the relationship between Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar, in order to make good his alleged promise to the Adani group which had failed to gain a franchise.
By revealing the names of the Kochi group's partners and their stakes, he created a demand for more openness about IPL finances in general. That kind of scrutiny is the last thing any of the franchisees want, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India is equally reluctant to face it. I recall, when Sharad Pawar became head of the BCCI, he promised to put an end to Jagmohan Dalmiya's legacy by bringing transparency to the Board's functioning. He spoke, if I remember right, of hiring McKinsey to create a vision of the future of Indian cricket, and to place that report online. The BCCI, one of the richest sports bodies in the world, has a barely working website to this day. The McKinsey report, if it was commissioned and prepared, has been quietly buried.
A month ago I wrote of the beginning of the end of the IPL, and readers said it was a premature judgment. That it might have been, but the point was that if huge amounts of money was being paid for franchises, with no possible way for the investors to turn a profit, we were entering really dangerous territory. I recommended that existing investors should exit immediately, because they would never get such high valuations again, and I believe I will be proven right.

Hypnotised by the Tharoor - Modi battle, the media underplayed the bombs that went off in Bangalore just before one of the matches. It was obviously a massive security lapse, but I don't see any investigation of who was to blame. Nobody died, so we think of it as a minor incident. But what if a small explosive went off during a game? I've been to enough such events to know that there's a stampede waiting to happen at one of them. There's absolutely no system in place for an orderly evacuation, and any panic will doubtless cost dozens of lives. So now they've moved the semis to the 'home ground' of the Deccan Chargers, who weren't allowed to play in Hyderabad because, let me see, Lalit Modi decided bombs might go off there.
This IPL started with the Pakistani player fiasco (so much for open bidding), moved to the Kochi franchise scandal, and developed into a security disaster. And yet, every day, commentators laud Modi for running the IPL smoothly. Only in India.

Benazir and Imran

In the mid-nineties, as Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto became implacable foes, I wondered what their relationship had been like when both were at Oxford. Benazir was a student at Lady Margaret Hall, and Khan attended Keble, housed in a red-brick neo-Gothic building down the street from LMH. There weren't many Pakistanis in Oxford in the early 1970s. Bhutto and Khan, as the two most prominent, must have met frequently, but they never spoke about those days after they became political foes.
I imagined a soap opera situation in which the prime minister's daughter and the young sports hero briefly became lovers before going their own way, only to end up on opposite sides of a political divide two decades later.
Now, a new biography of Imran Khan suggests that the two were, indeed, romantically involved. The actual evidence provided by the author Christopher Sandford appears pretty weak. He told the Daily Mail, "for at least a month or two, the couple were close. There was a lot of giggling and blushing whenever they appeared together in public," and added: "It also seems fair to say that the relationship was "sexual", in the sense that it could only have existed between a man and a woman. The reason some supposed it went further was because, to quote one Oxford friend: 'Imran slept with everyone.'"
Imran has already denied there was anything romantic, let alone sexual, between Benazir and himself. This hasn't stopped the Times of India from headlining its article: 'Imran, Benazir had a roaring affair at Oxford'. Notice the quote marks, though nobody has said anything of the sort. Interesting how the relationship mutates from, 'they giggled and blushed' to, 'it was sexual in the sense it could only have existed between a man and woman', to 'roaring affair'.

The IPL trophy and Tehran's Jewels Museum

The IPL trophy, like most prestigious trophies designed in India, is expensive and ugly. 2500 diamonds, 4500 yellow sapphires, eight rubies, lots of gold leaf and the labour of 14 craftsmen went into the trophy's making, along with zero imagination and delicacy. Its main features are a map of India with IPL crudely spelled out in the centre, and a batsman alongside, diamond-studded bat clutched in hands at an incorrect angle for the shot he's playing.
Seeing the trophy on SET Max reminded me of the Jewels Museum in Tehran, which we visited a couple of weeks ago. The museum, which showcases the wealth of Iran's former rulers, is housed in the basement vault of a bank, viewable by the public every afternoon. There are probably more diamonds, emeralds, rubies, spinels and sapphires in that room that in any other of comparable size in the world. The only similar collection accessible to the public that I can think of is the British crown jewels in the Tower of London, but I believe that Tehran's museum is superior carat for carat.
The problem with the Tehran jewels is that, like the city in which they are kept, they fail to transform wealth into beauty. Diamonds are naturally attractive, of course, but one expects that, when combined with other, equally beautiful diamonds, they will form a piece that is more than the sum of its parts. That expectation is consistently disappointed in the Jewels Museum.
Tehran was a small town that boomed after it was nominated capital by the new Qajar rulers in the late eighteenth century. Asia, at that point in history, was a declining force compared to fast industrialising Europe. The rapid progress of the smaller continent left monarchs in the east doubting their own value systems and the foundations of their societies. The confusion spread to everything, from administration to art and architecture. As a result, Tehran's palaces and mosques compare poorly with those of Esfahan, which was the capital of the Safavids during the 16th and 17th centuries, and represents the confidence of a civilisation at its peak.
The Qajar rulers inherited the jewels of the Safavids and those acquired by Nader Shah when he plundered Delhi. There is even, in the Jewels Museum, something called the Peacock Throne, though it is not the bejewelled seat depicted in Mughal miniatures and removed to Persia by Nader Shah. Having taken charge of a vast store of gems, the Qajars clearly didn't know what to do with them, and resorted to a sort of diamond-stuffing competition. Artisans seem to have been under instructions to stick as many gems as humanly possible on each hilt, crown, globe and goblet. This is not a strategy calculated to produce breathtakingly beautiful works of art, and indeed, Qajar creations are no match for what one has seen of Mughal and Deccani jewelled objects. The latter consist of diamonds and rubies utilised judiciously, in combination with highly skilled carving, metalwork and embroidery. They are opulent, but rarely appear vulgar. Tehran's Jewels Museum, on the other hand, contains a number of vulgar artefacts, some almost as hideous as the IPL trophy, though that is setting the bar very high.
There is an interesting change visible in the Jewels Museum when we enter the era of Iran's last ruling dynasty, the Pehlavis. The crowns and cloaks are much more tasteful than those of the Qajars, but they represent a completely European approach. Created by the most famous jewellers of Paris and New York, they symbolise the radical western tilt of the last Shah, which proved too much for the public to handle, particularly because it came without the democracy prized in Europe and the US.

Democratic feudalism

India is heading toward democratic feudalism. While the channels speak of a youth vote, it really was a vote for second, third or fourth generation political strongmen and women. Gandhi, Abdullah, Pilot, Scindia, those are the names of the smart young leaders of today, many of whom are poised to take over ministries in this administration. They were also the names of the smart young men of the 1980s. Regional leaders like Sharad Pawar, Karunanidhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sheila Dixit and Deve Gowda are preparing to pass on the baton to their sons, daughters, sons-in-law, while, in Bombay, the daughter of Sunil Dutt and the son of Murli Deora have won for a second time. The trend goes deeper than readily recognisable names. This morning's Times of India carries a story about four young female newcomers to parliament, Mausam Noor, Meenakshi Natarajan, Jyoti Mirdha, and Shruti Choudhry. Of them Shruti is grand-daughter of Bansi Lal, and daughter of Kiran Choudhry; Mausam, niece of Ghani Khan Chowdhury; and Jyoti grand-daughter of five time MP Nathuram Mirdha.
There seems no room for a new Sharad Pawar, Rajesh Pilot, Lalu Yadav or Ram Vilas Paswan to emerge. These people, and dozens of others like them, began from ordinary, even humble, beginnings and went on to establish a significant political base through the power of their personalities, their charisma, ambition and shrewdness.
We've seen a takeover by families happen in the Hindi film industry. Thirty years ago, there was one major khaandaan in films, the Kapoors, just as there was one dominant family in poliics, the Gandhis. Now the upper echelon of Bollywood consists almost entirely of sons, daughters, nephews and cousins, and the election of 2009 has advanced the process considerably within the political space.
To find people making it on sheer merit, one needs to look to cricket. Gavaskar Jr. might have gt more international games than he strictly deserved, but he was never more than a marginal figure. I can't think of any second generation batsman or bowler playing a major role in the current IPL. The very names of the teams, however, give away our feudal longings. Of eight sides in the fray, five have names with feudal connections: Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers, Knight Riders, Kings IX (or rather, Kings XI, my mistake, pointed out by Anonymous) and Super Kings.

Tendulkar, Goody and Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds is a scam. Celebrities are co-opted into this scam because being selected for a Tussauds waxwork has successfully been marketed as a huge honour. So, people like Sachin Tendulkar consent to spending hours getting measured for a wax figure, and, once the model is ready, posing next to the likeness in a publicity shoot covered in most national dailies. Indians planning a holiday in London see the article and put Madame Tussauds in their places-to-visit list.
The scam takes advantage of the fact that, while cameras do not function like eyes, people believe they do. In photographs, the wax Sachin Tendulkar bears a fair resemblance to the live man, though the Tussauds marketing team must have wished the great batsman had shaved before the photo-op. When people actually visit the collection and see the work in three dimensions, they will find an uninteresting dummy placed alongside other equally uninteresting dummies, which happen to be crafted in the dimensions of the persons they represent.

Jade Goody's husband has been lobbying to have a figure of his wife installed in the museum, claiming it was one of her final wishes. Tussauds is unlikely to consent, for featuring the reality TV star would lower the profile of its dummy list. A death mask of Goody might be more appropriate than a full figure. The original Madame Tussaud, after all, came to public attention in the era of the French revolution by casting the faces of executed prisoners. Many of those casts still exist, and are displayed in a back room of the tourist attraction, categorised under 'History'. When I visited the place, having been directed there by a solicitous aunt during my first stay in London, I found the history section a huge relief from the tedium of the main exhibit.

Update April 15: Today's Mumbai Mirror carries an excerpt from this post in its column Blogger's Park. While the publicity is welcome, I'm amazed that the Mirror has actually set one of its sub-editors on my piece. Is it ethical to change the content of a blog in this fashion?
Aside from being irked, I'm surprised that the Mirror's subs have time spare to correct entries that need no correcting. The shoddy grammar evident in pieces filed by their reporters gives the impression of an organisation deeply understaffed in the proof-reading department.

The Inimitable Bobilli

The Times of India's sports section is a source of hilarity each morning, thanks to the writings of Bobilli Vijay Kumar. Mr. Bobilli's approach to the English language resembles the batting of some tailenders who, undetered by their lack of eye-hand coordination, keep spectators entertained with extravagant heaves, swipes and slashes.
As the Indian cricket team's tour of New Zealand reaches its damp conclusion, let us cast our eyes back on some of BVK's memorable insights into the contest. These are not, I should stress, carefully chosen highlights: those who trawl TOI's user-hostile archives will doubtless land a richer catch.

14 February: Dhoni's men will be setting off in pursuit of the game's Holy Grail itself, on a mission many deem nigh impossible.
Yes, New Zealand, for all its beauty and purity, has always been a dreaded place for cricketing tourists: its spongy wickets, windy conditions, tenacious players (not to speak of blinkered umpires, not too long ago) made it an ideal holiday

spot for pesky mothers-in-law.
Playing away has, of course, rarely been as enjoyable as a walk in the rain: but over the years, thanks partly to the shrinking of the globe, such an idea doesn't give the shivers anymore...
Only five players have experienced the travails of New Zealand. A lot will depend on how well Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman convert that into an advantage. The others, even if they are in the pink of form, will have to grope and cope around them.
In the end, it will all come down to overcoming the conditions. Can India interpret the omens on their way correctly? Can they unravel the Holy Grail and come back triumphant?

Some might argue that lifting the World Cup or beating Australia in Australia would be a more substantial achievement than winning a series in New Zealand. What I really want to know, though, is how grails are unraveled.

26 February: The problem is, the next game is in less than 24 hours; there is absolutely no time to pull out Plan B.

Memo to Gary Kirsten: incorporate intensive training in pulling out Plan B, there is clearly room for improvement in that area.

7 March: The Indian cricket team was left swinging on a tricky question after the second one-dayer was officially abandoned at around 8.30pm on Friday night...
In a game that saw more stops than starts, or indeed wickets, India were ahead right from the time the dubious coin twirled in the air.

Which means that, on at least one occasion, play stopped without first having started, right? And why was the coin 'dubious'? Did it have two heads or two tails?

14 March: If the square is shorter than a fine lady's leg on the one side, on the other, the cover boundary looks even sweeter. The NZ bowlers must already be feeling bare and helpless: in fact, gang-rape can't be far from their fears...
It's their bowling that needs urgent aid from Red Cross: and India will not want to be that benevolent soul.

Bet you didn't know that fine ladies have short legs.

15 March: Sehwag faced four deliveries and couldn’t manage even one run: the ball beat his gasping willow and seamed maniacally, almost in celebration, after that...
Daniel Vettori stuck to his much-mauled seamers and reaped their dividends.

Allow your bowlers to reap their own dividends, Daniel, it's the considerate thing to do, specially in these harsh times.

30 March: Resuming the day on 252 for two, with danger still looming nearby, the overnight pair (Gambhir and Sachin Tendulkar), had to bury their heads into the ground and forget about everything else.

The myth that ostriches bury their heads in sand when faced with predators is used as a metaphor for the human tendency to ignore bad news. "Dig in" is the phrase usually utilised in the situation in which Tendulkar and Gambhir found themselves. It's derived from trench warfare, and refers to resolute defence in the face of sustained attack.

7 April: (I have provided more extensive annotations to articles published this morning) Rahul Dravid barely needed seven overs into the tour here to claim his 181st Test catch. The edge from Martin Guptill, in the first test at Hamilton, helped him sit on par with Mark Waugh, who needed all of his 128 matches to become the best catcher in the game.

Does having the most catches mean being the best catcher? Even if it does, Mark Waugh got to the world record long before his final test. Near the end of his career he dropped a few sitters.

But then the long wait began. India took 29 wickets since then but Dravid didn’t get his record-breaking catch... It didn’t help that in the second Test at Napier, he had to stand at third slip as Yuvraj Singh was handed that position. ..

Does this mean both players stood at third slip? Must have been cramped.

The 182nd catch deserved special treatment; he slowly got up and pumped his fists like Hercules.

Strangely, in books I've read related to Greek mythology, Hercules never once pumps his fists.

Zaheer Khan bowled 15 straight overs, either side of lunch, but couldn’t expose the top order.

That's like saying, 'he dug and he dug, but couldn't expose the soil's surface'. The job of new ball bowlers is to remove the top order, thus exposing the middle, and potentially lower, order.

He accounted for McIntosh and Flynn; but NZ are not all about apples: they have a few decent bats as well.

I get the connection between apple and McIntosh, but where does Flynn come into that equation?

Harbhajan, who had started bowling a few overs before lunch, was almost unplayable. Using the breeze, he got the ball to dip and turn or bounce after pitching. Suddenly, the Kiwis looked like they were on a burning tin roof.

Tin roofs get hot in the sun, but aren't flammable as far as I know.

I intend updating this post periodically with effusions from the keyboard of the inimitable Bobilli. If you come upon a passage worth a mention, do point me to it, I'll add it along with any comment you may have.

UPDATE 1: Gautam Gambhir completes his century: He punched the air, came out of his helmet and thanked the skies above. (thanks, pp)

2: After strutting around for more than 15 years, Australia have finally started walking with their tails tucked under the legs.
Are they really being ensnared by that monster called vicious cycle? Or are they just the latest victims of the malaise not-so-popularly known as the champion's syndrome? (thank you, av)

3. Sunday, April 19: Unfortunately, it looks like Bobilli isn't covering the IPL for the Times. However, we still have his column to look forward to. This from today's piece, make of it what you will: The cricket captain in some ways is larger than life, if not the game itself: unlike in other sports, he is not just the leader on the field whose job is to keep the flock together; he can't be only mother, father, brother, teacher for each and every player.

4: Monday, June 8, following Federer's victory over Soderling in the French Open final: ... the brave Swede just couldn’t pin Federer to his backhand, allowing himself to be demolished as delicately as a craftsman can. The grammar indicates that the 'craftsman' is Soderling, though of course Bobilli is referring to Federer when he uses that term. Craftsmen, it is worth mentioning, are not associated with demolitions, however delicate.

5: Sunday, July 12: Almost two years ago, when the Dilip Vengsarkar-led selection panel decided that it was time for hot blood, it seemed that Dravid's career was going cold too: his form had gone for a walk and his bat was behaving like an invisible stick; not too surprisingly, impulsive minds started ringing.

Lahore Memories

In January 2006, I travelled to Pakistan to watch the first match of a series between India and Pakistan. The cricket was just an excuse; for years I'd wanted to visit Lahore and the easing of visa restrictions during the test series gave me access to the city. I went first to Delhi to get the visa. In the morning, a crowd of us collected up at the Pakistan embassy in Chanakyapuri to hand in our documents. We were asked to return at 4pm to collect the stamped passports, which was cutting it fine, because my flight left at around 6.30. Till 4.30 that afternoon, there was no sign of any passports being given back. Then a small window opened in a giant door, and names began to be called out. By 5pm, I was sure I was going to miss my flight. I called Indian Airlines who told me there would be no problem. I learned later that the flight operated a bit like those buses which wait until they're full before leaving. My name was called at 5.15, and I got to the check-in counter at the airport 15 minutes before the scheduled departure for Lahore. As I'd been assured, it was no problem.
An acquaintance of mine, Quddus, had recommended a hotel near Lahore's museum and university, but I hadn't got written confirmation of my reservation because every Pakistani worker had taken the previous week off for Bakri Id. I'd had a telephone conversation with the manager, though, and that gave me confidence to head to the hotel, driven in a Ford taxi that was no more expensive than ones available outside Bombay airport, but offered a much smoother ride.
I'm glad cricket was not top of my agenda, because the pitch was the flattest imaginable, as docile as anything offered up during the current tour by the Sri Lankans which has been cut short cruelly this morning. Pakistan's batsmen butchered the Indian attack, putting pressure on the Indian line-up, which opened with Rahul Dravid and Sehwag because, controversially, only one specialist had been played at the top to make room for Saurav Ganguly in the middle order. Sehwag responded in his typical style, with which Pakistanis have become painfully familiar. He scored the fastest double century ever, Dravid supported him with a steady hundred, and they fell just three short of the world record opening stand. By the time Sehwag was first out, the match was virtually finished, because mist and drizzle allowed little more than 200 overs to be bowled in the entire game.
On my first morning in Lahore, I visited the museum, after stopping at a traffic island to view the cannon Zamzama which features in Kipling's Kim. The museum houses, among many fine artefacts, a startling fasting Buddha from the Gandhara period.



What photographs fail to capture is the impact made by the hollow sockets of the Buddha's eyes. In the story of Siddhartha, this represents a point before his enlightenment, when he fell in with yogis who believed in extreme austerities. He emerged with a comprehension of the Middle Path which rejects extremism of all kinds. Hmm.
At the museum's ticket counter, I paid the foreigners' rate, and was surprised by the surprised expression on the ticket seller's face. I had assumed everybody would realise I was an Indian as soon as I opened my mouth, but this was far from the case. Pakistanis simply are not geared to seeing Indians in their country, and so anybody who looks like I do is assumed to be a native. Also, there are great variations in the way Urdu is spoken, allowing my Anglicised Bambaiyya to pass with ease. For the rest of my trip, I quietly handed over the cheap local fee while entering monuments like the fort and Jehangir's tomb, saving a few hundred rupees. A pleasant change from being labelled a foreigner in many tourist sites in India because my shaved head, backpack, Lonely Planet and bottled water signal NRI.
That afternoon, I met Quddus for lunch at a restaurant on the Mall. I was surprised by the lack of beef on Lahore menus, and even more so by the absence of paneer. I knew paneer serves primarily as a meat substitute for vegetarian Punjabis, but wasn't prepared for its complete disappearance once the border had been crossed from one Punjab to another. For the rest, I didn't think the food was anything to blog extensively about. The stalls in Anarkali bazaar provided tasty fare, but nothing sublime, and the same was the case in top end restaurants. Two eating experiences stood out, the first being Cooco's Den at the edge of Lahore's red light district, known as Heera Mandi (Diamond Market). The Den is owned by a painter who grew up in the area because he was the son of a Heera Mandi prostitute. His paintings, many of which one sees on the way up to the terrace restaurant, are unexciting, glamourised portraits of local whores. The food, too, is standard Mughlai. What raises it above average is the excellent view of Badshahi mosque and an eccentric method of getting plates to tables. The kitchen is on the ground floor, and dishes are placed in baskets and hauled up by ropes.
On the third day of the test, I lunched at a restaurant near Gaddafi stadium, not far from where the shootout occurred this morning. The chef in charge, a man called Sajjad Mughal, initiated a long conversation after realising I was Indian. He was a Protestant, he said, and wanted to leave Pakistan. Were there good job opportunities for a chef in India? I suggested Canada or Europe were better destinations, if he could convince those countries to offer him asylum, which was very unlikely. He stuck with me through the meal, standing next to my table and asking me detailed questions about life in India.
That was a typical response even from Pakistanis who did not want to quit their homeland. Eyes would light up as soon as my nationality was revealed, and a flood of queries would follow. Almost all were friendly: the lone exception occurred in a dilapidated cybercafe where I was trying to finish a column before mosquitoes bites turned my skin into a mess of welts, while also answering the owner's questions about Sanjay Dutt and Shahrukh Khan. A loader who was sitting around waiting for his shift to begin, pushed a tabloid toward me and tapped meaningfully on its banner headline. "I can't read Urdu", I told him. "It says the Indian government wants to demolish every mosque in your country", he explained. "No, that's not the case", I said. He looked at me blankly, then went back to reading his tabloid.




On the fourth day, I headed for monuments in the suburbs: Shahjahan's Shalimar Gardens and the tombs of Nur Jahan and Jehangir. I wanted to climb to the roof of Jehangir's mausoleum to look for signs of a pavilion that was supposedly dismantled and taken away during Ranjit Singh's reign. The upper floors were off limits, but I was so comfortable in the city by then that I fearlessly slipped a hundred rupee note to a guard to let me up the stairs. The only persons inside the complex, aside from guards, were four students mugging for an exam, who gladly interrupted their work to chat about India and Pakistan and ask for souvenir currency. Indians going to Pakistan would be well served by a wad of their own ten rupee notes and plenty of small change.
That evening I wandered into the Badshahi mosque, more or less a replica of Delhi's Jama Masjid, aside for the exchange of some delicacy for sturdiness. If the two structures look similar, the atmosphere within could hardly be more different. Lahore's biggest mosque is almost a picnic spot, a place where families gather when prayers are not being said. Women walk around the couryard in salwar kameezes, many not even bothering to cover their heads with a dupatta. Delhi's Jama Masjid, in contrast, is very female unfriendly. The one time I visited it with my wife Jabeen, I, the kafir, was allowed in, while she, the Muslim, was forbidden to enter.
It wasn't the Badshahi mosque that became my favourite living monument in Lahore, however. That had to be the gorgeously decorated Wazir Khan Mosque in the innards of the old city. There's nothing in that style in India, as far as I know. The mosque is right in the middle of a crowded, dirty, narrow-laned precinct, but cross the threshold and you're suddenly transported into perfect tranquility. The morning I visited, an old maulana was tutoring two young boys, sitting on a carpet, reading off a low wooden table. But for the electric heater about ten feet from the group, the scene could have been taking place three hundred years ago.



The evening before I was to leave, Quddus and an artist named Rashid took me out for dinner to a hip place where the waiters were dressed as cowboys. The servers attempted to be gruff, banging mugs on the table while serving drinks, but their forced impoliteness was somewhat at odds with the spiffy decor which included monitors embedded in the wall next to each table, playing music videos. The drinks, moreover, were not alcoholic, further distancing the restaurant from the wild west. Since liquor is more or less prohibited in eating houses in Pakistan, outside of luxury hotels, the serious partying happens in private homes. Rashid said I had to visit for Basant, when there was kite flying during the day and revelry in the evening. I had found Lahore an extremely convivial town, and said I'd be happy to return some year in February or early March. Unfortunately, the Punjab government banned kite flying soon after, ostensibly on safety grounds.
Before we drove to the cowboy eatery, we had visited the home of two artists, one of whom was moving to Delhi later that year. She asked if I'd take some of her books over, and I readily agreed since I had little luggage of my own. On my way to the airport, I stopped at Beaconhouse university, where she taught in the art school. It was a different world, full of boys and girls in tight T-shirts and jeans, the sort of clothes never seen on Lahore's streets.
At the airport I was surprised (OK, shocked) to find luggage inspections being directed by two white men. My carton of books was suspicious enough for one of them to handle it personally. As he swirled a high tech form of litmus paper around the box, he asked questions in a Brit accent. After answering, I asked what people like him were doing in charge of Pakistani airport security? "It's a collaboration between our two governments", he said pleasantly. "Collaboration? So are a few Pakistanis flying out to take charge of security at Heathrow, then?" His expression darkened. We have a wise guy here, I could see him think. But he said nothing, just pointed me to a counter where my carton could be resealed.