Sam Mendes bats for Afghan cricket

Paul Croughton, in the Sunday Times, writes of how Sam Mendes, the highly-acclaimed director of the Oscar-winning American Beauty, was prompted to co-produce a documentary, Out of the Ashes, about the rise of the Afghanistan cricket team.

The film follows the team’s coach, Taj Malik, as he prepares his charges for one of the first rounds of the World Cup qualifiers, division five of the World Cricket League, in Jersey in 2008, against such cricketing minnows as Japan and Nepal. Taj is filmic gold, the same sort of bumbling hero that Hugh Grant has built his career upon — though infinitely more endearing, and with none of the floppy hair. He is an enormous bundle of nervous enthusiasm and perpetual wonder. Like a precocious child he introduces himself to strangers at Dubai airport — having first overcome his nerves to travel down the escalator — and, spotting an elderly Japanese man wearing flip-up sunglasses, he blurts out: “Hello, six eyes!”