Tour Diary

So goodbye India. I flew away from Delhi today with memories of a fascinating country where cricket has become as big as football in the UK – with all the associated plusses and pitfalls. Where enthusiasm for the game is such that Greg Chappell receiving an email is news. Where the money involved is massive – and likely to get bigger under the current regime. Where there is a gap between the old school of players – the Tendulkars, the Dravids and the Kumbles – and a brasher new generation, some of whom, such as Zaheer Khan, seem to have let success go to their head – just like young Premiership stars.

I’ll also remember the view over the huge bay at Mumbai; Nagpur and its heat and kites and grim English determination; Mohali and the surreal day it all slipped away from Flintoff’s team in an otherworldy din; and Delhi, where friendly locals daubed my face with colours as I made my way to the airport during the festival of colours, Holi.

As it turned out, memories were not all I took away. While making my way home on the No. 35 bus to Clapham Junction, I noticed that I was getting a few queer looks. Which was hardly surprising given that the other passengers were looking at a bedraggled journalist with a head still smeared in yellow and purple paint. Suddenly I remembered. The Holi festival. Best wash my face.

So England lose the Test and with it, most likely, the series. It will be a hell of an effort to win in Mumbai, traditionally a turner.

It was hard to pin down but something seemed lacking in England’s performance. Not effort or skill, but edge. No one really tried to rile the Indians, as England did at times last summer by throwing the ball at Australian batsmen, or very deliberately withholding sympathy when they were hit by bouncers. This time there was hardly any chirrup in the field. There were no sledges. There weren’t even any meaningful glares.

Now some would simply say "thank goodness for that". But, leaving aside the question of the rights and wrongs of trying to bully your opponent, there remains a question. If it was OK to direct it at the Australians, why not India?

There might be nothing in it, but you couldn’t help wondering whether this is because, even at some subconscious level, England are painfully aware of the bad impression they left on some previous trips to the subcontinent.

The front page of today’s local section in the Hindustan Times shows a sneering blonde English ladette giving the cameraman the bird.

This follows a minor kerfuffle yesterday when, in one of the few moments of sunshine, English girls in the stands stripped off to bikini tops. “English fans were a major draw for the crowd” , said the piece. And you felt they weren’t talking about the Barmy Army beer guts.

Greeted by whistles and unwanted attention, the visitors soon covered up again. This sort of thing is not done by respectable Indians. Despite that, the piece was still accompanied by a particularly large photo of one of the offenders.

The visitors should have known better. In India kit off is not on. But the incident and the following report seemed a curious parable, an example of modern India’s relations with the west: half drawn in, half repulsed.

The Punjab Cricket Association stadium rose from the Mohali swamp 12 years ago. Tidy and well-appointed, it stands as a glass-and-concrete monument to Punjabi affluence.

The Punjab is one of India’s richest states per head of population and it shows. There is a four-storey pavilion with a long room that is all wicker chairs and panelled walls. There are marquees on green lawns flapping in the breeze. There are mementoes in polished hard-wood frames. The cheap seats on the other side of the vast bowl don’t quite compete with that, lacking any sort of roof to shield fans from the sun (or the early-morning drizzle in today’s case). But they still seem more comfortable than most in India.

The ground feels well-heeled in a way Nagpur didn’t. And I presumed that was the reason there are no fewer than 16 floodlight pylons, from which the lights blazed away in today’s gloom. But I am soon disabused.

The Punjab split during the 1947 Partition (hence the building of Chandigarh: Lahore, now in Pakistan, had been the state’s principal city). So Chandigarh is about 150 miles from the border. And the floodlights? Well there are lots of them because they couldn’t just build four or six very high pylons, as at most other grounds. And why was that? Low-flying military aircraft ferrying troops to and from the Pakistani border. Which is a slightly sobering thought as we sit in the murk.

I discover today that the MP for the nearby city of Amritsar is Navjot Singh Sidhu – the Indian opening batsman turned TV commentator, famous for tonking John Emburey for nine sixes in a match. This is an intriguing thought for anyone familiar with Sidhu’s commentary, where he played just as many shots as on the field.

So has he yet told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as he once told a fellow commentator on air: “You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard-boiled egg”. Or that, like the former Indian wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta, the governing Congress Party is “as confused as a child in a topless bar”?

It comes as little surprise that Sidhu represents the conservative and nationalist BJP party. Most cricketers, if they think much about politics at all, seem to tend in that direction. Of course there are currents that cut across that generalisation. Bob Willis added the middle name Dylan by deed poll, in tribute to the 1960s and ‘70s hero of the left, Bob. The Indian slow bowler Palwankar Baloo stood for the socialist Congress Party before the War and was a great champion of the lower castes. Henry Blofeld (17 first-class games for Cambridge University), may, as Matthew Engel once wrote, be a member of the Norfolk branch of the Socialist Workers’ Party in very deep cover.

But the known facts point in a different direction. ‘Lord’ Ted Dexter stood as a Tory candidate in the 1964 election, where he was well beaten in Cardiff South-East by the future Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. The Conservative Prime Minister of the 1960s, Alec Douglas Home, played first-class cricket as a right-arm quickish bowler. Ian Botham was an avid fan of Margaret Thatcher. (And is virtually the only man known to have stopped Tony Blair’s former aide Alastair Campbell in his tracks, memorably telling a bewildered Campbell that “his lot” knew “nothing about the countryside”.) Going further back, the Test players FS Jackson and Lord Harris served in Tory governments. (Though no cricketer I know of approached the views of the 1970s tennis player Buster Mottram, who once said “I hope Enoch Powell will never die, just as his namesake in the Bible never died”, and later had a brief dalliance with the National Front.)

So, goodbye Nagpur, hello Chandigarh. The capital of two northern states (Punjab and Haryana, predominantly Sikh and Hindu respectively), Chandigarh was designed on a grid pattern in the 1950s by Le Corbusier – a French modernist architect who liked concrete. A lot. Given that the city’s parliament building is rumoured to have been inspired by a power station, it’s rather nice really, all wide boulevards, neat flower beds and green leaves. A little like Milton Keynes with red flame trees.

The lushness of it all comes from the great Indus river and its tributaries, formed of run-off from the towering Karakoram to the north, home of K2, the world’s second-highest peak. But despite the unusual greenery, local sources discount the idea that the Test ground is some sort of Indian Headingley, with lots of zippy seam and swing. Haven’t seen the pitch myself, so we’ll see.

Like almost everyone else, I arrived by plane. Jet travel is booming in India, with some operators offering fares as low as ten pounds. But you do miss the old trains: a chat, a chai and chance to read a book. They certainly gave you more to write about. (Though the experience can be romanticised: I once spent 56 hours trapped in a small cabin with a man who ate nothing but the yolks of hard-boiled eggs – with predictable gastric results.)

OK, to finish, a little quiz. No points for guessing India’s biggest tourist attraction*. But the second? Well reportedly it is the ‘Rock Gardens’ here in Chandigarh. They are the strangely beautiful product of one man’s imagination, a surreal fantasy land of rocky chasms, waterfalls and statues, all built from overlooked bits and pieces (a bit like the England one-day team under Adam Hollioake). And it was almost all assembled by one man: Nek Chand, a retired roads inspector, who became a kind of Chandigarh super womble, a Dali of the dustbins. It’s all very impressive. And if one bloke can make the country's second-biggest tourist attraction out of a few bits of rock, some broken plates and a little imagination, I reckon 11 English cricketers can win a Test match in India.

The circus has left town. The players are long gone. Most of the commentators, reporters and fans flew out today, leaving me and a handful of others. The tourist bars and restaurants are suddenly empty and silent. Nagpur’s cash bonanza is over.

Still, that’s good news for some. According to the local papers, on February 27th police arrested two local waiters at the Hotel Hardeo. An indignant English tourist had lost his camera and suspected it stolen by someone at the restaurant he had just visited. However, after spending time in police detention, the waiters were released next morning when the tourist woke to find his camera safely in his trouser pocket. It was not revealed whether alcohol was in any way involved.

Those who flew this evening to Chandigarh now have 48 hours or so to get ready for the next helping. Time was when the few tourists who followed England in India – even a few players – could fit in a couple of side trips, tiger-spotting or sightseeing. Many years ago in England, the touring Australians even used to go on country walks together. Now you’re lucky to get time to catch your breath, let alone track a tiger.

That was in the days of Tests separated by about ten days, enough time to breathe a little. It allowed teams to mull over what went before, adapt and plan. To root around. Even find out a bit about the place they’re visiting. Of course it’s understandable that players want to get home to their families, perfectly reasonable that they push for short tours. But there is a natural rhythm to a Test series – and it’s not three days between games.

A friend of mine once came to Calcutta to teach small Indian schoolchildren. He began with some UK geography, asking his eager pupils to name a city in England which he would then point out on a map. ‘London’, came the first reply. ‘Very good’ said Mark, pointing to the Thames estuary. ‘Birmingham’ said another, at which my friend was impressed because these were young children. Then a third stuck his hand up. ‘Taunton’ he called out. Bewildered, Mark said, yes, Taunton was indeed in England, but how on earth had the lad known about it. He should have guessed: ‘Taunton sir – India v England, 1999 World Cup.’

And that appetite for cricket has not changed if Nagpur’s local Sunday paper, The Hitavada, is anything to go by. In a 16-page paper, there are 15 cricket pieces. Remarkably, one of them is headlined ‘Chappell has acknowledged receipt of email’. Over on the front page, the three lead stories are: ‘England Cook up a defiant story’, ‘Keep restraint, Pawar tells Chappell in surprise meet’ and, finally, the tiddling matter of President Bush snubbing a proposed nuclear deal with Pakistan.

I don’t know, but that insatiable demand for fresh news – any news – to fill the cricket quota in newspapers could be one reason that sagas like the Ganguly—Chappell spat seem to be dragged out for ever.

Although his stint as Channel 4 TV’s Analyst ended last summer, Simon Hughes is in India for the Daily Telegraph and continues to come up with sparky technical innovations. The latest is a ‘win-ometer’ on the Telegraph website; Yozzer produces regular updates on which side he reckons the match is swinging towards and the needle on the win-ometer moves accordingly.

The idea is that eventually there will be a betting tie in: you look at the needle to see what Hughes at the ground reckons will happen, eye-up the bookies’ odds on the alternative outcomes and decide whether he’s got it right or not before placing your bet. “Remember”, as Peter Snow, inventor of the original swing-ometer (used on UK election nights) used to say, “ it’s just a bit of fun”. Except, of course, if you take Yozzer’s advice and he gets it wrong.

TV’s loss was today my gain, as in the press box I ended up sat next to the man behind the new gizmo. “So Simon”, I ask while watching England’s batsmen play India’s spinners convincingly, “what exactly is the forward press?” Cue a generous, detailed description, complete with a full re-enactment. So today I had my own personal Analyst.

It is all part of the curious circulation of knowledge in a press box. Obviously scoops are kept to yourself (not that I’ve had any to keep hidden) but most of the rest is general currency, with people expected to chip in their own little bit of expertise.

I discover today that the young Indian quick bowler Sri Sreesanth is a former breakdancing champion. Now I’m no expert but to the best of my knowledge Sunil Gavaskar was not often seen ‘busting some moves on the dancefloor’. And Javagal Srinath, I’m reliably informed, was not a master of the Michael Jackson-style moonwalk.

Of course Sreesanth is a one-off but his breakdancing also seems a small sign of how the tide of globalisation is sweeping India, a country that at first glance seems to be becoming increasingly westernised.

On the roads, the old Hindustan Ambassador, the Indian version of the 1960s Morris Oxford, is seldom seen, replaced by nippy numbers from the Far East. In the big cities, the young middle-class guys and girls hang out in western bars, wear the latest western clothes and know eight times more about mobile phones and computers than a dunderhead like me. When Bill Gates recently planned a new so-called Hi-Tech City, he chose India.