HOWWZZZAAATTT!? We Teach Them, They Beat us (Dawn Magazine, Friday, April 16, 1993)
Dawn Magazine, Friday, April 16, 1993
HOWWZZZAAATTT!?
We Teach Them, They Beat us
By Adil Ahmad
Cricket
What a strange game! Long leg. Short leg. Leg break. Stumps! All manner of
mutilated folk. Sillies at mid-on, and sillies at mid-off. All slightly off.
Blazing noonday sun with temperatures in the forties. Fifteen on ground. Fifty
thousand struggling to get on ground. Nation on strike. Yield per man
hour zilch. An inexplicable madness.
Talk
about suntan. That's how it started, actually. Those devious, ingenious
Englishmen, all lords and ladies. The winter season left them a little pale and
pouting. So come summertime and they had a legitimate excuse to just stand
around in the sun all day long being polite to each other. So why did the West Indies take up Cricket? They got talked into it.
Talk about deep tanned!
Not
content with just standing around and making polite applause for a well-struck
ball, this lucratively unemployed elite built strategy into what was otherwise
a very basic, dull game. Cricket was never conceived as a serious sport. Merely
something to pass the time with while restoring some colour to the complexion.
The
planners of British Imperialism seized upon Cricket's potential as an effective
training ground for future generations of leadership. The armer, the legbreak,
the inswinger, the outswinger, the backfoot, the late cut, and last but not
least, the googly. All this turned a simple game of stick and ball into a major
experience in strategy, planning and belligerence, and ball tampering.
With
the passage of time, and the trials and tribulations inherent in the learning
process, Her Majesty's colonial subjects broke loose from the shackles of
indifference and perfected a stratagem at the crease which bested and
bewildered their colonial masters. Down Under to the rescue of the downtrodden.
Don Bradman came of age, and mercilessly flogged the erstwhile floggers. It was
an intolerable situation. The Lords and Masters were embarrassed beyond reason.
Body line was born, and with it arrived open hostility and naked
aggression on the cricket field. It was 'just not Cricket' the way in which
Larwood tampered with the ball's mandate, going in for a physical 'kill’ of the
batsman and not the stumps which were beyond the English reach.
The battle
was carried to the English soil, and pretty soon the only saving grace left for
them was the intrinsic majesty of the grounds at the Lords and the Oval. The
English love for tradition kept their selectors in a high state of inebriation.
They were a lordly, honorary class who made their choices through the haze of
pre-lunch cocktails. The end product was usually a team in a hurry to get off
the field.
In the
subcontinent, the spirit of a newly acquired independence caused the Nawabs
to play alongside the less fortunate. The result was remarkable, and a further
pain in the English rear. The Indians and Pakistanis drew their line of descent
to the most ancient of civilisations. In their heritage lay proud dynasties.
They were born to rule, but alas had spent two hundred years playing second
fiddle.
This
may not have constituted as large a chip as the Aussies carried, but it was
sufficient to rekindle their natural desire to excel. The Caribbean Nightmare
was joined by the Pakistan Platoon of Tearaway Tornadoes who whirled and
twirled and battered and bruised the world's batting order. Needless to say,
our erstwhile Lords and Masters were not amused.
It
is unfortunate that the hallowed corridors of English cricket should have
resounded with the word 'cheat' for a deed that marginally enhanced the ball's
ability to perform. But then who is to pick a quarrel with our erstwhile Lords
and Masters? Suffice it to say that it was the East India Company which first
tampered with its mandate of 'peaceful trader', replacing it entirely with
'forceful occupier' and the 'maker of opium eaters'.
Wholesale
tampering that rewrites the entire rules of the game seems an English monopoly,
as evidenced also by the replacing of the princely princes of India
When
the Khans of Nuakilli proved to the world of squash that no one could beat them
in a nine point encounter, the English changed the very complexion of the game
by lowering the net and adding on an extra six points to the format. When Asian
style hockey became indomitable as played on natural grass, the English changed
the very turf to artificial, more suited to European strength and stamina. If
the tampering is wholesale, and if it's the English who are doing the tampering
then it’s not just acceptable, it's legitimate. But if 'lower' forms of human
life as found in 'other' parts of the world interpret the rules to their
benefit, all hell breaks loose
A
noteworthy fact is that the first people to censor 'ball tampering' were not
the English, but the Pakistani clergy who found it offensive to their very high
moral standards the manner in which bowlers rubbed the ball down their
frontsides to get that extra shine on the ball, specially with the TV cameras
zooming in and all manner of female frenzy evident. But the English have no
such problems with their morality. They just have a problem losing.
It
is sad that instead of augmenting their skills they have sought revenge in
attempting to trash and tarnish the image of entire generations’ role models.
Well, if the English will have no respect for our role models, then we cannot
be expected to hold their role models in high esteem, and let me confide in you
a startling disclosure made by usually impeccable sources. Both Ian Botham and
Alan Lamb favour polka dotted lace panties! Howwzzzaaaaatt??!!
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