Peacockery, posturing and patriotism

Today I saw a pantomime of peacockery, a charade of militaristic posturing so absurd it was faintly chilling. It was also uncompromisingly hilarious as well, which only added to the confusion I felt as a witness. For I was at Wagha, the most famous border crossing in the world, watching the full pomp and ceremony of Asia's two most dysfunctional siblings.

With a day to kill in the absence of any cricket, I had travelled in a minibus with the crew from the BBC, to witness the inimitable flag-lowering ceremony on the Indo-Pak border. We drove along the arrow-straight canal that heads inexorably eastwards, quickly eating up the 40 or so kilometres that separate Lahore from the land of which it once formed such a proud and shimmering part.

We jinked left as the road reached a fork and right again soon afterwards, bundling ever outwards as the landscape degenerated into a morass of frontier settlements. These became increasingly sparse as the flat earth of the Punjab stretched into the middle distance, with the occasional pillar of a brick kiln breaking the monotony.

Suddenly, Wagha arrived with an abruptness that only a checkpoint can provide, with assault courses and shooting ranges giving a foretaste of the machismo to come, and lorry parks and customs houses contributing to a mounting sense of finality. A steady stream of the curious made their way along the kilometre of road that separated the main drop-off point from what could only be described as an amphitheatre, but even at this distance, it was possible to see clearly, through the gap in the imposing gateway, the resonant word: "India".

As guests, we were quickly ushered past the masses as they squashed against the turnstiles, and invited to take our pews by the side of the arena - although most preferred to carry on roaming and examine the extraordinary surroundings. Curving out in a semi-circular viewing gallery behind us were hordes of delirious fans, the men on one side, the women on the other, already bopping and swaying as a succession of patriotic songs were blasted over the tannoy system.

And in front of us, there it was. Two gates, about two or three metres but a thousand miles apart. Pakistan's was wider but lower, green fluted iron embossed with a large white star and crescent. India's was thinner but taller, cream-coloured and topped with tall spikes, and set into a pair of bulky terracotta buttresses. Between them ran the border. The Partition itself. The line in the sand that had crossed a billion lives.

I examined the land that lay to either side. It was unremarkable to say the least. Flat, arid and enlivened only by the distant galloping of outriders, as they cracked their whips and patrolled this most arbitrary of divisions. For me, there was only one place in the world that evoked similar feelings. Checkpoint Charlie in Cold War Berlin, where I had stood in awe as an 11-year-old, imagining a thousand acts of espionage taking place before my eyes. That too had been the product of an unsatisfactory post-war settlement, and that too had become a metaphor for a wider clash of ideologies.

Pakistan, like East Germany, is the underdog in the relationship. Smaller, more put-upon, and misunderstood - reviled even - by a world suspicious of its secrecy. At this early stage of the proceedings, however, the underdog was punching above its weight. Two men in green shalwar kameezs - one young, one old - hared up and down the arena, yelling "Pakistan Zindabad" as they whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Whether they were the inspiration for Chacha Cricket or vice versa, I simply couldn't say.

India by contrast seemed yawningly disinterested. In the distance stood a pair of mighty stands that would not have looked out of place in Eden Gardens, yet not a soul had made his way onto them. A wag in the crowd, that ubiquitous addition to any sporting occasion, began to chant ironically: "You must have come in a rickshaw ."

Then it happened. Sikhs in their abundance, with yellow and orange and black and blue turbans, came tumbling along the long winding path, hooting and waving as they jostled for the best seats. They walked so close to the wire they could almost have been in Pakistan itself, except of course they could not. Over six million of each creed trekked in one direction or the other in those terrible months of 1947. Something approaching a million never reached their destination. Over there was India. The finality of this frontier was appallingly apparent.

And yet, almost 60 years on, it had all boiled down to this. A daily bout of chest-beating as the biggest, most terrifying members of the respective armed forces stamped and pranced and twitched with pure testosterone. At one stage, one of the goosestepping corporals kicked so high his nose felt the full force of his size 15 black boots, while those by the roadside could feel the tarmac shake with every nobnailed crunch. After a suitable delay, the flags were lowered with a vigour that teetered between camp and psychotic, and then hustled to their respective guardrooms with an urgent clippity-clop, like Monty Python's knights in pursuit of the Holy Grail.

The greatest act of pageantry was yet to come, however, as the barriers to the arena were thrown open, and hundreds upon thousands of revellers bundled in, carried on a wave of drumbeats towards the great divide, where they loitered and mingled and stared at the other side. Some did so with a wave and a grin, others with something more poignant in their eyes, as they contemplated a land lost to them forever.

Lahore, Lahore! There's nowhere on earth quite like Lahore. It is, as my colleague Rahul Bhattacharya memorably wrote, a city "so sentimentalised that it sometimes seemed to curl up and rest in the air like an eternal sigh". From the poetry of Kipling to the self-contained assurance of the Lahori elite, there is something about the city that is forever painted in sepia.

A late-night drive through the cultural heart of the Punjab provided a teasing glimpse of a world apart; as we wound down the Mall, past the brooding silence of the GPO and the Wonder House, with ZamZamah - Kim's Gun - imprisoned on its traffic island like the mightiest of caged beasts.

On we continued, a sharp right taking us past the Badshahi mosque, its minarets glowing dimly against the night sky, and its sheer vastness contrasting exquisitely with the low winding labyrinths of the old city above which it towered. The pots and stoves and roof-terrace pulleys of Kookoo's Den, the most famous restaurant in the land, were a foretaste of the sensory riot that awaited in Heera Mandi, Lahore's red-light district and beating heart.

Here was a district where rickshaws and fruit stalls hugged the cobbles and where improbably grand buildings - such as the pink-bricked Missionary School and the great mosaic-walled Wazir Khan mosque - burst out of the backdrop like figures in a pop-up book. Lights and noise and impossibly narrow lanes, where money-changers crouched over pocket-sized display cabinets, and shadowy figures whispered from unseen doorways.

Onwards we progressed, stopping off at Food Street - an avenue of outdoor tables and delicious on-the-spot cookery, bookended by two huge street-signs where men and their motorbikes would come and go in a puff of exhaust fumes, usually with a female acquaintance draped over the back seat, like a permanent procession of elopers. Beyond lay Abbott Road and the derelict cinemas of the Lollywood film industry, where a succession of fading billboards depicted, in once-glorious Technicolor, the stars of a bygone era.

And talking of bygone eras, as we returned towards the Mall to complete our loop of Lahore, there was time for a quick tour of Mayo Gardens, the most exalted of the city's colonial residences. Endless acres of prime British-era real estate, vast verandahed bungalows with gardens so sprawling that neighbours would have needed to don their pith helmets in order to make the trip from one house to the next.

And then, finally, back to the raison d'etre of this tour - to Gulberg and the sprawling arenas of the Gadaffi Stadium complex, where by day the England team are preparing for the third Test but where by night, Lahore's creative community have united for an international arts festival. The amphitheatre of the Alhamra Arts complex has been bedecked in purple lighting and packed with cogniscenti, who sit in appreciative awe of the acts on display.

A French vocal group strut their stuff on a crown-shaped stage, before making way for an "ethno-rock" collaboration from the Czech Republic, who share top billing with one of Pakistan's leading Sufi soul singers, Zahid Sayed. On the concourse outside, Norwegian puppeteers and German craftsmen display their wares to the curious throng. And once again, Lahore is suffused with a knowing sense of self-worth and importance, quite unlike any other city in the land.

Ah, the sweet fug of good old-fashioned pollution! After the swirling dust particles of Multan and Faisalabad, it was time to return to the cloying exhaust fumes of Lahore. A strange preference, perhaps, but after five days of filing from the open-fronted press-box of the Iqbal Stadium, my laptop and lungs had been left coated in a layer of grime so thick they could have been turned in a Mr Sheen case study.

Admittedly, most of the dust had been deposited after dusk, when the stands had been vacated and the jhaaroowallahs were whipping up a sandstorm as they worked their brooms along the terraces. It was entirely my fault for loitering at my desk long after the more sensible members of the press corps had fled for the sanctuary of their hotel rooms.

Still, after one last rickshaw rumble across town, it was goodbye to Faisalabad and hello to the open road, as I was acquainted for the first time with the remarkable motorway that links the two cities. Remarkable, because it seemed to have sprung from nowhere. My last memory of the trip had lingered from five years previously, when I had been wedged between two Pakistanis on an overcrowded local stopping service that had taken the scenic route, a potholed and precarious meander through the grainfields of the Punjab.

One of my two companions had started out very talkative, although the strange juddering noise that we emitted while trying to speak rather limited the conversation - that, and the fear of biting our tongues off mid-sentence. The other had the right idea - he went out like a light the moment the engine started and was oblivious to all that went by. Except that he spent most of the journey with his head lolling on to my shoulder, which was all very well unless the bus hit an extra spiteful bump, in which case I would get nutted on the cheekbone.

This time, however - older, crustier and more protective of my creature comforts - I opted for the air-conditioned coach option, and was rather taken aback when my entertainment for the trip turned out to be a showing of the classic war film, The Guns of Navarone. Result! So, I put my seat back, plugged in my earphones, and had become utterly absorbed by the simmering hostility between the Greek freedom fighter and the British officer whom he had sworn to kill the moment the Germans had been vanquished, when the TV went off and the coach pulled into the depot. All over in a flash - where's the fun in that?

Fortunately, the fun was soon to resume, as the tour party gathered en masse at the Pearl Continental Hotel for a quiz night, hosted by the Sky commentators, David Lloyd and Paul Allott. Seventeen teams, comprising the players, press and assembled extras, took part, and after 74 argumentatively contested questions, it was the four-prong "Tabloid Scum" team who emerged victorious by a clear margin. Which just goes to show, next time you read that Elvis has been found on the moon, don't dismiss the story at once - the facts, at least, are likely to be correct.

Every day, at around 2pm, a strange ritual would be acted out at the Iqbal Stadium. The police, bristling beneath their berets and twitching their moustaches with the intent of the power-happy, would take it upon themselves to rearrange the seating in the stands nearest the press box.

I can only assume it was done out of sheer boredom. There were, after all, 3000 police constables in and around the ground, and but a handful of these had any genuine opportunity to display their authoritarian credentials, especially now that Pepsi had evicted its gas canisters. Some had a gate or a metal detector to marshall, others had the crowds on the concourse to control. The rest were stationed in the enclosures themselves, and this menial posting clearly rankled.

And so, there was only one solution. Out with the lathis and time to create a scene. Row by row, they would push the crowds back up the concrete stands, with a swish and a bark and a threat of eviction, until there were three gleaming white tiers between them and their quarry. Part one of the job done, they could now settle back for part two, which would be to keep the fans from encroaching back down the steps to their original spots. Never mind Shoaib Akhtar's pursuit of Geraint Jones, this was a game of cat and mouse for the whole crowd to enjoy.

The crowds were a pretty inoffensive bunch, to be fair. They hooted, they hollered, they clapped at appropriate moments, they went deathly quiet the very instant after a Shoaib exocet had been deflected to the boundary. Chacha Cricket occasionally waltzed past to whip a particular enclosure into a frenzied cry of "Pakistan Zindabad!", and on the final day they serenaded Rana Naved-ul-Hasan with the chant (in Urdu, of course): "We'll buy you a wig if you give us a wicket ."

The ground would probably have been empty if the tickets had not been free, but no matter. They came, they sat, and they witnessed Test cricket 2005-style, a version far removed from the deathly safety-first abomination that had all but killed the game in these parts in the intervening years.

Seventeen of England's 21 previous Tests in Pakistan had ended as draws. That tally now reads 18 from 23, but even the draw has undergone a face-lift of late. Much more of this excitement, and the crowds might even be willing to start paying for the privilege once again. They might be less inclined to stomach the over-zealous officialdom, however.

November 23

A gripping read © Andrew Miller

Let's start with a joke.

"A bowler was up against a stone waler [sic] who never moved his bat. Every ball either hit the bat or passed harmlessly by no stroke being offered. The bowler turned to the umpire.
'Is he out if he doesn't move bat?'
'No,' said the umpire, 'but he will be, if he does.'"

No, I'm afraid I don't get it either, and if the subs at Cricinfo had any decency, nor would you. But this rib-tickler, among several others, has already been considered suitable for a publication far weightier than mine. If it's good enough for the Faisalabad Cricket Association Souvenir Brochure, then it's good enough for me.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the joke must be funny and it's me whose humour is lacking. Why? Because the number of hoops that poor pun had to jump through to make it to the page simply beggars belief. One organising committee, eight sub-committees and 104 good citizens of Faisalabad went into the creation of this match brochure. No wonder it didn't appear until the Test was all but over.

Bureaucracy is a lifestyle choice in Pakistan. Hundreds upon thousands of diligent desk-jockeys spend their lives weaving knots of such complicity that they could be framed and hung on the wall in Ye Olde Fisherman's Tavern in Falmouth. At irregular intervals throughout this tour, for instance, a sheet of paper has been handed around the press-box, requiring the same familiar faces to provide the same familiar details, like schoolchildren signing the truancy register. I haven't yet seen Edd the Duck and Bungle being entered into the class, but it's only a matter of time.

But back to the brochure. It is less a celebration of the cricket ("A game of fluctuating fortunes and glorious uncertainties" as one contributor puts it), and more a once-in-a-lifetime chance for those faceless armies of administrators to emerge like butterflies into the limelight. No fewer than 20 of the 58 available pages are dedicated to those men who make the city tick, including 11 full pages of colour photos. The teams, meanwhile, are afforded a grand total of four.

There's a 25-man organising committee. There's a reception sub-committee. A stadium renovation sub-committee. A law & order sub-committee. A technical sub-committee. A ground sub-committee. A medical sub-committee. A finance sub-committee. A liaison sub-committee. A media sub-committee. A brochure sub-committee. And a 25-man co-ordination sub-committee. Which is presumably there to co-ordinate the sub-committees.

But it's not all about lists and mugshots. There's a useful section on fielding positions ("an often neglected part of the game"), 15 important questions for an umpire ("What are the necessary qualifications of an umpire?" Answer: "Counters, pencil and paper, MCC laws book, balls, bails and bowler's mark drying material"), a trawl through the places of historical interest in and around Faisalabad, and two blank pages for those all-important autographs. Of the sub-committees, naturally.

But let's finish back where we began, with a joke.

"Great English Cricketer WG Grace was at the crease, he turned to the wicketkeeper.
'Tell me, my man, just out of interest, how many great players would you say there are?'
'One less than you think'"

Great administrators, on the other hand, are in abundance.

November 22

Tweet yourself © Andrew Miller

The streets around Faisalabad's clocktower lend themselves to idle chit-chatting. The other day I was wandering through town, searching - successfully, as it turns out - for an electronics shop to buy a spare dictaphone, when I chanced upon a knot of familiar faces from the Barmy Army. They were sat sipping chai at a dusty roadside stall, discussing the cricket as a pair of elderly Pathans listened on benignly.

With time to kill and my search for the perfect cuppa never completed, I wandered over to join them. I was served my drink in a hot metal thimble direct from a vat of simmering tea, and after pontificating about Vaughan's knee and other Test-related trivia, the conversation took an unexpected tangent. We began discussing bird etiquette.

Now this was not quite the bawdy conversation that you might have imagined of England supporters abroad. The few fans who make it this far afield do not conform to your average stereotype, and most are more concerned with immersing themselves in the local lifestyle than imposing their own values upon their hosts. And in their quest for cultural enlightenment, they had hit upon an imponderable.

Lindsay, a straggle-haired veteran who travels everywhere with the team, and whose light-blue England one-day top seems not to have left his back since the Zimbabwe tour of 1996-97, lent across and asked if I'd noticed anything unusual about the gents we were sitting with. I couldn't claim I had - two affable old men with long white beards and rolled fabric bonnets on their heads. Oh yeah ... and a sparrow on each of their laps.

Suddenly, like that moment when you finally "get" a magic eye picture, I was seeing lap-birds everywhere. At a neighbouring chai stall, there were two further fellows with what looked to me like mynahs, pulling at their legs and manipulating their wings, and occasionally offering a little finger to chew.

All most unusual, and Lindsay for one was puzzled. What was this ritual for? Why? And how did you go about ordering one? Should you just wander up to the chaiwallah and say: "Hi, I'd like a cup of tea and a sparrow please?" And even if you did, what should you do with them when you were finished?

That last bit at least is clear enough. You set them free. To free a bird is an act that pleases Allah, so why not do your good deed for the day while taking a well-deserved sit-down? The downside, of course, is the proliferation of the caged-bird trade - lurking not far from every chai stall is invariably a man with a small round cage, who charges good money for the privilege. It may seem cruel, but for many more of these traders, there's little alternative if they want to make a living.

So, there we have it. Pay your paisas, pick your parrot, play with it for a while as you sip your chai, and send it skywards as you go your separate ways. I always knew a tea-break was good for the soul.

November 21

The crowds were surprisingly calm as a gas cylinder exploded © Getty Images

The crowd is invariably the best indicator of an occasion. When Jonny Wilkinson's boot won the 2003 World Cup final, his moment of glory was telegraphed to an agog nation by the hordes of England fans rising behind the goalposts in acclaim. Likewise Shahid Afridi's flat six over midwicket today needn't have been referred to the third umpire. An entire enclosure of delirious fans was ample proof that the shot had cleared the ropes.

With that in mind, when today's afternoon session was interrupted by an earshattering boom from midwicket, the surest sign that a grievous atrocity had not taken place was the sight of a thousand cricket fans trotting urgently but calmly away from the blast zone. It was a strangely reassuring flutter of alarm, like a flock of pigeons realigning after the bark of a (gigantic) dog. The lack of panic quickly eased the concerns of the men in the middle.

Even so, it took a moment or two for the crowd's message to cut through the confusion. "I thought we were on the first plane home," admitted umpire Darrell Hair after the close, as he waded through another crowd - this time of cameramen and reporters - on his way to Shahid Afridi's disciplinary hearing at the team hotel in Faisalabad. "It made you realise you wouldn't want to be around when a real bomb went off."

The local police chief later praised the reaction of the crowd, and rightly so. Today's reaction did not begin to match, for instance, the abject terror that gripped the grass banks of the BKSP in Dhaka two winters ago, when England's warm-up fixture in Bangladesh was interrupted by a visitor from the undergrowth.

Now, depending on which publication you read the following day, the creature either fell from an overhanging branch, swam out of the adjoining river, or slithered from beneath a palm frond. Wherever it came from, it was nonetheless a cobra, and word spread pretty damn quick. The entire bank vacated in an instant - all bar three or four brave souls, that is, who battered the luckless serpent to death with a brick.

And, as a policeman demonstrated at Faisalabad today, as he paraded the twisted remains of a 9kg gas canister in front of the waiting cameras, it seems that in both cases, the perpetrator of the panic came out of the incident the worst.