May 24, 1999
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WORLD CUP The Carnival Begins An English game has passed on to new owners. As the World Cup gets off to a glitzy start it is the subcontinent that is propping up this great cricketing event. By Rohit Brijnath
Cricket was once an English word that denoted tradition, echoed class and defined the gentleman. And Lord's was His abode. If you wished to pass it, genuflection was a prerequisite. Outside the ground stands The Lord's Tavern. Inside hang pictures of a gentler, sweeter time. Donald Bradman in a black and white portrait of an artist as a young cricketer, a framed photograph of his Whiskered Lordship, the glaring W.G. Grace. Here, so we imagined, old men gurgled into their bitters and argued about Stan McCabe's brilliance and Fred Trueman's fire.
Thank the Lord for the subcontinent, for like some subterranean cult it is the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Sri Lankans and the Bangladeshis who are stoking the passions of this Cup. The heart of the game has crossed continents. Some 48 hours before the first match there were more Indian journalists at Lord's than English to interview the Sri Lankan captain who was readying for England! A simmering displeasure between those who invented the game and its new owners was evident in every question. In his new book on the tour to Australia last winter, where England and Sri Lanka (and Australia) played a fractious one-day tri-series, English captain Alec Stewart painted Arjuna Ranatunga as a captain with the manners of an escaped convict. Predictably, a tabloid journalist asked Ranatunga, "You seem to annoy people on the field." To which cricket's Buddha laughed, "I don't care if I annoy anyone, that's their problem. We're tough guys, we don't like to be pushed around." Away from the glare of the inquisitive, he reiterated his call for the stump microphones to be always switched on. It is the chess player that lurks in his genes that calls for this checkmating move. He knows the desis say little to their opponents but England, South Africa and Australia would offer an audio demonstration in the art of invective. It's the sign of a team sick of being belittled. As a player said, "I wish to God it rains for three weeks just to show the World Cup should never be held here." Be sure this is not the last you will hear of this. At least in the first week the Sri Lankans were providing a story, for journalists were going insane, and any fool with a bat was assaulted with a microphone and a notepad. Never has one man's arm been so photographed as when Sanath Jayasuriya rolled up his sleeve to show the scar of an operation that required seven screws and a metal plate. Gossip, meanwhile, was flowing among the counties, some hilarious, others downright libellous. Geoffrey Boycott has a new book out called Boycott on Cricket (or Why I Know Everything About Cricket And You Don't ) and a stranger at the bar blandly said it was previously titled Boycott Hits Out. After his conviction by a French court for assaulting his girlfriend "hit" wasn't quite appropriate. Elsewhere rumour raged that South African captain Hansie Cronje had a more than gentlemanly argument with Ali Bacher over the United Cricket Board of South Africa's political correctness. Even invention became the art of the desperate. The Daily Telegraph gravely noted that Sachin Tendulkar has a son and that the fortunes of the BJP depended on his batting. One man's status as residing deity is alas already finding an exploitation. More interesting, when each player was given a number, inscribed on the back of the shirt, Tendulkar chose No. 10. Ah, yes, said the learned, he thinks he's Pele? The small man has no such flights of fancy. "It's just because my name starts with T-E-N, it's lucky." In a land over which God's tap seems to be constantly leaking, the Indians seem washed by sunniness. There is a jauntiness to their step, like youngsters on their first date. Even Mohammed Azharuddin, whose face normally reflects the emotion of a lamppost, is laughing. Teasing journalists, he said, "When I walked into the Lord's press box I thought maybe I should do a piece on myself." Jokes, from the captain? You would have got more odds for Elvis' Second Coming. There is, at least now, a vibrancy about this team as their bus resounds with Shah Rukh Khan's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai dialogues. There exists a sense of purpose, as if young men bruised by criticism are undertaking some journey of redemption. Sometimes though the management has flirted with the ludicrous. Manager Brijesh Patel, who walks with his head down as if the ground possesses a hidden secret and is about as cheerful as a man who's failed a job interview, has forbidden all contact with the players. Fines too have been introduced, a measure that is part disciplinary and part fun, and the -- 5 and -- 10 payments range from being late (Tendulkar was the first to be fined) to leaving something on the ground to mmmmm ... Wives, who came visiting, were handed their return tickets before the Cup began. Only Azharuddin's wife Sangeeta and Robin Singh's wife Sujata have stayed on but they are forbidden from travelling in the team bus or staying in the same hotel. The team has refused all invitations so far, and technical expert Bob Simpson has asked "the boys to dine together so they can bond better". Simpson, who ranks only below South African coach Bob Woolmer as the decade's cricketing guru, has been pushing the team to look into the mirror and not flinch from the reflection. "Understand your talent, don't sell yourself short. Mom and Dad have given you good genes, don't waste them." He has turned practices into competitive affairs -- 'like a match', he says. "When Sachin goes out to bat, I don't want to give him practice. I want bowlers to get him out." There are few distractions. Apple Singh, the nerd from the espn/Star Sports advertisements, is here. Lesser known as Sanjay Mishra, an nsd graduate with a Patna ration card and an accent that would make a Bihari panwalla blush. "Ai lub Taindulkar," he intoned. "There is no press-sir on these faillows". Apple's no fruitcake but the relative absence of back slapping, please-to-give-photo-Sachin hordes with their never-ending expectations has been a boon, leaving the team to work in a zone of sanity. Yet in all the emphasis on team-building, it is fascinating to note the impact of foreign cultures on each team. The Australian Simpson cosying up to the Indian team is a sign of a sport that has outgrown borders. Woolmer the Brit works with South Africa, the South African Richard Pybus with Pakistan, the Australian Trevor Chappell with Sri Lanka, the West Indian Gordon Greenidge with Bangladesh. But it is more than that. Ever since Artless Andre Agassi sailed into Wimbledon with his agent, manager, brother, coach and fitness trainer, the word entourage entered the sporting lexicon. Now, cricket has adopted it. Once teams travelled with a manager who did the ticketing and hung around looking splendid in his blazer; today they have every possible assistance barring someone to give them a facial for television. Sri Lanka has Roy Dias (coach), Duleep Mendis (manager-cum-coach), S. De Silva (bowling coach-cum-manager), Alex Konturri (trainer) and Trevor Chappell who is teaching them fielding techniques; the English who go by the label Team England have David Lloyd (coach), Graham Gooch (batting coach), Bob Cottam (bowling coach), a trainer, physiotherapist and a dietician; and South Africa has Woolmer, assistant coaches Graham Ford and Corrie van Zyl, manager Ghulam Raja and physio Craig Smith. Woolmer, always practical, believes one coach can't help take 14 players through their paces. It is more than that. In a game awash with money and endless scrutiny, sportsmen are notoriously insecure and require to be constantly propped up. Support crews do that well. But it makes you wonder what captains are there for. Perhaps that is one of the lessons this World Cup, perched at the end of the millennium, will tell us. This World Cup, everyone says, will not be won by one man but by a consistent, motivated and unified team. Three weeks before the Cup began, Woolmer took his team to an adventure camp in South Africa, rather aptly called Around The Bend, where for two and a half days they canoed, abseiled and swam. "It was just to get together, to focus on what we have to achieve," said Woolmer. "So we wrote down our pluses and minuses. We listed what we would have to face, from the teams down to autograph hunters. It was an exercise in bonding." Ah but one man's team is another man's Tendulkar. |
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The expiry date on the
Empire has finally arrived. 
But cricket stood still and time passed it by. When I walked in, three bald
men with beards that pleaded for scissors and arms that resembled travelling exhibits from
a tattoo convention sat frowning over their pints, no doubt believing Grace was something
wimps said before meals. The cricket pictures remain, but outside, inscribed in chalk was
the sign, "Tonight, live, ARSENAL VS LEEDS". At 8 p.m., as Arsenal winger
Emmanuel Petit from France raced across the television set, that heathen chant from the
terraces would have filled the tavern: "He's fast, he's quick, his name's a porno
flick". So much for cricket. 
"It's the worst time of the year for this Cup," admitted The Daily
Telegraph's Clive Ellis. When Sky TV cameras ventured out one evening, most queries about
the Cup were met with a reassuring "What?" The receptionist at Brighton's Stakis
Metropole, where the Indian team is staying, made me spell out T-E-N-D-U-L-K-A-R. She's
never heard of him, but ask her who cuts Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke's toenails
and she'll know. Cricket in England has become a depressant, the refuge of the old and
weary. When India played a practice match at Nottinghamshire, 700-odd people and a lost
dog showed up. The grounds are wondrous but the sound of leather against willow is
inevitably accompanied by a symphony of snoring. As someone said tartly, "Even the
World Cup song doesn't have the word cricket in it." 
