Dancing With The Green Robed Maniac

I haven’t watched cricket in months. A situation which, for any Indian male, would only be brought upon by long-term hospitalisation or imprisonment. Surprisingly, I continue to breathe and managed to plug that nosebleed with a little sterilised cotton-wool. I don’t hate cricket, although having collaborated to mass-produce a t-shirt that said ‘Fuck Cricket’ (sold like crazy too) I suppose I am guilty of double standards. I’d do anything for a good laugh. That, and it’s also nice to piss people off. I used to watch a lot of cricket in the old days. What else was there to watch? I can read a scorecard. I know what the Duckworth-Lewis method means and could explain LBW to you if you wanted me to. But all those years of watching cricket, instead of making me a more patriotic person and paint the tricolour on my face, made me a less patriotic one and paradoxically, turned me into a huge fan of the Pakistani cricket team. Two words – Wasim, Waqar. If there is a more terrifying new ball pair in the history of cricket, I’d like to know. Indian batsmen are to Pakistani bowlers what Vivien Leigh is to Vivian Richards. I still have the image of that clueless midget Chetan Sharma being slammed for six over mid-on off the last ball by Javed Miandad. And Manoj Prabhakar being savaged by tail-order batsmen. I have memories of Inzy lazily lifting a hapless Kumble over the boundary line. When Indian batsman did get some fight into them, more often than not, it looked laboured. There have been exceptions. Azhar was a classy batsman but sadly would’ve sold his mother for thirty silver pieces, or even twenty-eight, depending on the prevailing rate. Then there’s Tendulkar. Boy prodigy. Master Blaster. Little Runt. Doubtless, the boy-man/ man-boy has been touched with the magic wand. Superhuman hand-eye coordination and reflexes, textbook perfection. Possibly the most talented batsman ever since Bradman and Viv Richards. And what does he do with his gifts? Nine times out of ten, he chooses to play ‘safe’. Here’s a guy who is blessed with the kind of accurate timing that can cut field settings to ribbons and drive bowlers to drink. It’s not about his achievements, Tendulkar fans. It is the manner of his achievements. He’s a genius. But he’s also a fucking pussy. Steve Waugh had a mere fraction of his brother Mark’s ability (who, at any rate was second-rate compared to Tendulkar) and yet managed to tally impressive scores by playing safe, playing ‘in the V’ and hanging in there. On rare occasion Tendulkar has cut loose, but rarely against first-class opposition or in important matches. It’s like Francis Jeffers scoring 5 goals against Millwall F.C. in a League Cup encounter. Pakistan has its failings, its murky politics and its Aquib Javeds but has produced a greater line of cricketing personalities than we have. The resolute Miandad, the iron-willed Imran Khan, the frightening Waqar and the sublime Wasim Akram. No generation of cricket players from any country can boast of that. Who other than a Pakistani batsman will volley a pace bowler for six? This really happened. I swear. It was a preposterous shot to play. The batsman was Ijaz Ahmed. More ogre than man. With a face to curdle milk. The bowler, I don’t remember. Doesn’t matter anyway. It was a chest-high intended in-swinger. Ijaz, an otherwise clumsy batsman, was on this day in imperious form. He was on a 110 or something and playing like he was off his rocker. He leaned on the back foot and played a tennis-stroke, something like a cross-court return volley with such force that ball screamed into the stands, the flattest six I’ve ever seen. Who plays a shot like that? By contrast, our Vengsarkars or Gavaskars who are evidently more gifted batsmen than Ijaz would probably just run themselves out at 110, because their flabby bodies didn’t have the energy to carry on. At the time I thought maybe it had something to do with their diets. A natural assumption, considering the fact that the Indian team eats some watered down mixture of lentils and vegetables and the Pakistani cricketers eat rusty nails dipped in dragon blood. So the only thing left for me is to wait for Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf to win the general election, or launch a coup against Musharraff, take over the management of the team and restore it to its former glory. I’ll be the one on TV dancing with that green-robed, bearded maniac who you see at all the cricket matches.