tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124 2011-04-02T10:39:04Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22891 2011-04-02T08:47:50Z 2011-04-02T10:39:04Z

Sharda Ugra The semi-final was attended by two prime ministers; the final had two presidents in attendance © AFP
Here's the most definite 'learning' from this World Cup: lets keep the heads of government and state away from it. If the India v Paksitan semi-final featured two chatty prime ministers, the final is being witnessed by two heads of state, the presidents of India and Sri Lanka. With all due respect to the Excellencies, ask the two policemen who walked in to one of the old city's Irani cafes for tea and biscuits just after 10am. They had been on duty since 6am and would be working till the game finished and the crowds cleared - an 18-hour day. They were there because an area around the stadium was to be 'sanitised'. Read made inconvenient for the general public and the Wankhede has to be a presidential-size inconvenience. So spectators were told to be in the stadium by 1.30 pm because the ground was going into lockdown after that. Marine Drive, an iconic stretch of curving road that the stadium is built on, will have no traffic for a while, except the presidential entourages. The cops in the Irani cafe sighed because, to use a cricketing cliche, this was not going to be “a normal match”. One of them said, “So much bandobast.” It's an old-fashioned, Raj-kind of Urdu word now found in pucca English dictionaries and it means organisation or arrangement. The only way cops on bandobast duty outside the Wankhede will follow the match, one of them said, was to listen to the noise of the crowd. They will have no access to giant screens that will be set up in even the most crowded neighbourhoods and they have been forbidden from carrying mobile phones so their friends and family can't even text them the scores. All police communication is to be done in the old-fashioned way – via walkie talkie. Because of the presidents, of course. In all this maybe there lies the next brownie-earning political ploy: to show your love for the common man, don't go to big games. Stand outside a prime ministerial residence or presidential palace wearing a team shirt and wave for a photo opp. This World Cup final is actually being played on what the host city still calls a working day. There were people streaming outside the Marine Lines railway station, but walking away from the Wankhede Stadium as they were going to their jobs. Even that early, the spectators going to the stadium could be identified from 2 km away as they walked carrying nothing but their flags. There were people selling giant flags at traffic signals, or at spots where, in this north-south city, people had no option but to pass them. On the footbridge leading into the gate at the Wankhede, there stood a man who understood what 'sanitisation' and 'presidential lockdowns' really meant. He had a bucket at his feet, full of mineral water bottles and soft drinks. He knew that standing in queues waiting to get checked and frisked before entering the ground for the World Cup final, people would be tired and thirsty. Ambush marketing be damned, this was Mumbai. There's always a way to make a buck.]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22798 2011-03-27T15:50:38Z 2011-04-02T09:05:38Z

Sharda Ugra Security personnel stand guard outside the team hotel in Mohali © AFP
News flash: The Indian and Pakistani cricketers are not having bun-fights over breakfast. The world inside their world is normal. They are getting harassed for tickets though, with one Indian cricketer stating that the only tickets he could provide was bus tickets to Mohali. The world just outside Mohali actually is normal too. A short distance away from the stadium which will host the India v Pakistan semi-final, workers spend their mornings breaking bricks. It is a large pile but they should be done by Wednesday. Yet, it is not normal, not merely because one bunch of guys in blue will play another bunch of guys in green. The cricketers have suddenly become the bit-part actors in the drama. The two states and their prime ministers have struck. The Indian invited and the Pakistani accepted which now leaves the local hosts worrying about more than whether their sofas and carpets are spruced up and smelling of roses. Hosting prime ministers is one thing, but where the devil can the 50-strong 'entourages' that will accompany each of them, be fitted in? Surely their Honourable-nesses could have watched the game on some giant LED television? It is a very big match, in a very small stadium and security staff are now on something approaching perpetual alert. With all apologies to the headline-makers, this is not the "mother of all battles", but the grandmother of all headaches. After Misbah-ul-Haq finished his media conference, 17 uniformed officers of the Punjab Police and no doubt extensions of all civic security teams, and bureaucrats in civvies, met in the same room around a U-shaped table. They spoke in Punjabi, the speech therefore lost on eavesdroppers typing a few feet away from them, but the words that did hang in the air concerned mostly worse-case scenarios: "code word", "bottle-throwing", "traffic", "sabotage", "stampede". An hour or so later, a black Labrador called Rosie came sniffing around for explosives. And we believe that M S Dhoni and Shahid Afridi are under pressure.]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22796 2011-03-27T11:55:03Z 2011-04-02T09:05:38Z

Firdose Moonda Allan Donald has brought an aggression to New Zealand's bowling department © Getty Images
Two South African journalists travelled on the diverted flight that went to Dhaka to fetch the New Zealand cricket team and carry them to Colombo. When they got on the flight, they found that the seating plan was non-existent since the plane had made an extra stop and seating for the few passengers from Dhaka was free. They chose a row of three seats, leaving one free for a countryman of theirs – Allan Donald. The fast bowler walked on to the flight, spotted the familiar faces and soon found he couldn’t escape their familiar sound. “Howzit Allan,” they said. “Hi,” he replied. Hi?? Their faces dropped. He said hi. A few months in England, and now some time in New Zealand, does this to you, they eventually concluded. You have to say hi and not howzit. But they let it go, understanding that Donald is a professional, who puts his job first, and if his job is coaching another team that don’t say howzit, then so be it. Donald is a passionate man; that people have known since the days of his fiery fast bowling, but South Africans were surprised, and even a little alarmed, to see him punching the air and high-fiving his New Zealand colleagues on Friday night. Donald, to many South African fans, will always be the man who dropped his bat and caused the run-out that saw South Africa exit the 1999 World Cup. That semi-final against Australia could well be the moment that started the choking phenomenon, and to see Donald celebrating a choke in that fashion led to much criticism. ]]> “I’ve copped some stick back home from journos and the public,” Donald said to his two companions on the flight. “But the guys I respect will accept that when you do a job you want to do it properly.” Properly is an apt description of the way he has gone about his duties as New Zealand bowling coach. He has managed to turn an attack that boasts no out-and-out pace bowler and that traditionally relies on its ability to scrap into one that could defend 221 against a South African side that looked destined for victory. Not all of it is Donald’s doing, of course. Some of the persistence and patience New Zealand showed during the quarter-final in Mirpur was down to what they call “Kiwi fight”, but the attitude of aggression is something new to them, something they credit Donald with bringing to the team. “It’s a different voice, it’s a little bit more aggressive,” Jacob Oram said. “Immediately when he came into the camp, we were standing there and thinking, this is Allan Donald, and as soon as he started speaking, the guys were listening.” Donald has that sort of aura about him. When he talks, people listen. When he talked about travelling through Sri Lanka to the South Africans who were making their debut trip to the island, they listened intently. But he couldn’t stay long. As soon as a gap opened up in the seats where the team was sitting, he politely excused himself from the journalists’ company and went to sit with his new bunch. There, he laughed alongside Brendon McCullum, who had perched himself on the armrest of Donald’s chair, and watched Nathan McCullum and Daryl Tuffey play cards and James Franklin read a book. That's what the New Zealand team that had just caused a major upset by knocking South Africa out of the World Cup were doing on their flight to the semis. There they were, doing the same kind of things a touring bunch of schoolboys may do, and they looked as carefree and happy as teenagers might. So did Donald. tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22749 2011-03-24T15:21:09Z 2011-04-02T09:05:38Z

Sharda Ugra A section of road around Motera stadium building was re-laid just a day before the India-Australia quarter-final © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
If the World Cup is to be a roll call of some of India's leading venues across the country, then the ones lurking at the bottom of the pile should be Delhi (for administrative inefficiency) and Ahmedabad for a startling shabbiness. Delhi's Feroz Shah Kotla has been remodelled, but its governors have stayed the same. It is Ahmedabad which is a mystery. When the 1987 World Cup came to Motera, with an India-Australia game, crowds walked in carrying picnic baskets of food and spent the day munching through a hamper of goodies, which beat the quality and quantity of everything on offer. Motera was still a village with a cricket ground plonked in it. Its surroundings have gone from being fields, farmlands and mud houses to concrete low-rise homes, shops and a south-north access road. Over the last two decades, the stadium has made additions to its stands and is now entirely covered. In the city that has one of India's few drive-in cinemas still working, a big cricket match is still treated like Friday night at the movies. Everybody wants to make the only show on the solitary day. Two days before the World Cup, the ticket stands outside the Motera are not marked "Sold Out" but "House Full". ]]> The world around it and the sport it celebrates has changed radically, but on the inside, the Sardar Patel Stadium has stayed trapped in a time warp. Let it be known however that players facilities are immaculate: the dressing rooms are huge, there are a handy bunch of nets on one side of the ground and teams get feted and looked after like State guests. For the public though, it has all been allowed to go into what appears to be a state of decay: corridors are musty, toilets are dirty, their powerful smell hangs around the staircases along with paan stains. There are cobwebs and trails of dirt running on walls, this even through the newer parts of the stadium. Special 'boxes' in one section of the ground were ready for the big day with a decor that could only be called grunge. All of that could be window dressing but a section of the road being tarred and laid out just a day before the World Cup quarter-final is not. A two-kilometre queue of traffic three hours before the toss on single lane access to the stadium is not. Nor is the sight of people milling about dangerously in front of traffic prone to sudden acceleration at the sign of a turning or a gate, watched by indifferent cops who had thought nothing of organising a safe pathway for pedestrians. This was the city's biggest ODI in the last 15 years, surely the men behind Motera could have done better. They receive the BCCI's largesse in crores of rupees every year to update facilities and they have had three years to slap the ground into shape. The crowd atmosphere at the Sardar Patel Stadium was excellent and players won't complain. But Motera's fitness as a specator-friendly venue remains sorely suspect. tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22563 2011-03-13T16:12:33Z 2011-04-02T09:05:38Z

John Mooney The moment where the best result in Ireland's history was secured by John Mooney © Getty Images
The best 24 hours of my life – March 6 2011. A date that will be etched in Irish sporting folklore. Maggie Thatcher, Winston Churchill, your boys took a hell of a beating! It might have been portrayed as one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history, but this team were always confident that we could compete against the world’s best, and if things went our way, would prevail. We bowled well in the latter part of the England innings to restrict them to 327, when they seemed destined for a score in excess of 350. I was happy with my only personal performance dismissing Jonathan Trott, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood and Tim Bresnan to record my best figures in ODI cricket. When it came to our turn to bat, we got off to the worst possible start, losing our skipper to the first ball of the innings. Despite cameo knocks from Paul Stirling, Ed Joyce and Niall O’Brien we were staring down the barrel at 111 for 5 and the odds on the team winning were a reported 400 to 1. Enter the pink haired Kevin O’Brien – we had participated in a ‘Shave or dye’ campaign for the Irish Cancer Society the day before – and in the next 90 minutes he entered the record books with the best one-day innings I’ve ever witnessed. He smashed the quickest ever century in World Cup history (50 balls) as the England bowlers were dispatched to all parts. One of his sixes off Jimmy Anderson went a mammoth 102 metres, which at the time of writing is the biggest in the competition. The role of Alex Cusack, ‘The Quiet Man’ shouldn’t be under-estimated in the win. While Kevin took all the plaudits, Alex’s contribution in the partnership was equally as important. He hit boundaries at exactly the right time, and the over rate was never allowed to get out of hand. When I came to the crease I knew we were always going to win – no other thought was in my mind. We had missed a golden opportunity against Bangladesh – there was no way we were going to mess this one up. The feeling when I hit the winning boundary off Jimmy Anderson was just one of sheer joy and emotion. I knew just what it meant to all our supporters who had laid out a lot of money to support us here, and also to everyone back home in Ireland. The country is going through a tough period economically at present, and the win gave everyone a much needed boost. The reaction to a win over the ‘Old enemy’ has been fantastic and we dominated the media for days after – not something we’ve been used to over the years. Already there are reports of clubs getting calls from school kids wanting to take up the game, and this is exactly the type of legacy that we’re looking for. We’ve raised the numbers playing the game from 15,000 to 25,000 and we’ve ambitions to get that up to 50,000 in the next few years – the result against England will help us in that ambition. A quick word about the post match celebrations – we partied at the ground and soaked up the atmosphere until after midnight, before going back to the hotel where they had laid on a private room for us. We partied until 3am before going back to the skipper’s room for a few more celebrations. Just a quick word of praise and thanks to Andrew Strauss, Paul Collingwood and Matt Prior who attended the post match celebrations. I don’t know if I had been as gracious in similar circumstances. ]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22551 2011-03-12T11:21:22Z 2011-04-02T09:05:38Z

Sharda Ugra The Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium is a compact bowl of a stadium, built tightly around the field © Getty Images
There's something about Jamtha. It actually used to be a village just outside Nagpur but is now best known for its cricket stadium that can easily claim to be among the top three in India. When an outsider first arrives, Jamtha's inconvenient distance from the city itself suddenly shrinks into relative unimportance. The 1996 World Cup first gave to India the Punjab CA Stadium in Mohali, where for the first time Indian crowds were not packed in behind high metal fences as if they were in a cage. Mohali was open, generous and kept out pitch invaders with a moat. In 2011, Nagpur has set the standard that other grounds must follow. It is a compact bowl of a stadium that is built tightly around the field - and its moat has barbed wire - reaching its 45,000 capacity as its stands climb high. Yet the hallmark of this stadium is not its architecture or even what it gives to the cricketers, but the fact that its spectators have both been thought of and also included in the stadium's lineage. Ticketholders can travel free to the ground from the city, which is 20km away, with the Vidarbha Cricket Association putting out 150 buses for the India v South Africa World Cup game. Spectators are allowed to carry in cameras and binoculars, given free water and have space to walk around the grounds. As they walk towards their stands, they see a message on the walls in English and Hindi which asks them to be on their best behaviour. The stadium, the notice says, is the recognised centre by the BCCI/ ICC and spectators are asked to “retain this recognition, it is in your hands”, and the notice then goes on to explain what that all means. ]]> It may read slightly headmasterly but given that it takes little to turn plain partisanship into offensive jingoism, why not? The VCA built the stadium outside the city because its old ground in the heart of Nagpur could not accommodate the floodlights that could make it a high-income earning venue for top flight one-day internationals. Jamtha was built, an official said, at the total cost of Rs 100 crores. That is extremely economical when you consider the cost of some of India’s big-city stadiums, even after doubling the cost of cement, bricks, tiles and what not in the bigger cities. Rebuilding most of the Wankhede for the World Cup has cost the Mumbai Cricket Association Rs 250 crore. The renovation of New Delhi's Nehru Stadium for the Commonwealth Games has cost the taxpayers of India Rs 961 crores. Now if the good people of Vidarbha can produce such a fine stadium at such a modest cost, then why has the province not produced more than a single international cricketer? BCCI president Shashank Manohar, who used to head the VCA until recently, said that was because the people of Nagpur and surrounding areas were, in his mind, “contented” folk. “It is the way they are in any field of life; they are happy the way they are and in what they do. In cricket, that may be playing Ranji Trophy.” In the age of Twenty20, IPL contracts and surging small town ambition, that somehow cannot add up. There must be something about Jamtha. Maybe Vidarbha's next international cricketer will tell us what that is. tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22534 2011-03-11T12:16:40Z 2011-04-02T09:05:39Z

Sharda Ugra The 'Martyr's Platform' where ceremonial functions take place whenever a soldier's body is brought to Nagpur © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
Nagpur gets a lot of bad press particularly when cricket comes to town – the stadium's too far, transport is over-priced, there aren't enough hotels around for an event the size of the World Cup, the restaurants are average, the bars are minimum. Where do you go? What's there to see? (okay, sales pitch: this is exactly what happens because you don't read this). Despite its Dominos and McDonalds, Nagpur just doesn't do globalisation very well. God bless its socks for that. It may be the geographical centre of India, 1190 kms south from the capital Delhi (the centre of the universe, of course) and is still a bit detached from the megalomania of the new, shining India. The outskirts of Nagpur now stretch towards its airport, all along the two-laned National Highway No. 7 where women in saris still ride a confident bicycle along it into town. For the outsider, the rural and the urban do not appear locked in mortal combat here, their edges kind of mingle. The cricket stadium that will host India v South Africa, the hotel that is running a non-stop room service for players, umpires, officials and the airport that brings them to Nagpur and takes them away are found all along NH7, Nagpur's World Cup bloodline. There will be many who will be in Nagpur but still not in Nagpur during the World Cup. Yet much happen in Nagpur off the main road, away from the visitor's gaze. A local newspaper here said the Indian team took an 'alternate' route on its way from airport to hotel, the cops say, due to the accidental stoning of the West Indian team bus in Dhaka. It may seem impossible to chart out an an alternate route from what is a 500m dead straight road from airport to hotel. Who knows the route India took, but there's a chance that it took them past a somewhat sad spot which, like much of Nagpur, is hidden. Tucked away near the cargo area at the airport, there rests what is called a “Martyr's Platform”. It is a series of two ascending platforms, four lamp posts around them, an empty flag pole on one side and at the top, a raised block of granite, the height of an average adult's knee. The granite block is meant for coffins. It is where ceremonial functions take place whenever a soldier's body is brought to Nagpur. The city has always been a British Raj cantonment town and now houses an Air Force Station (also off NH7) but the Platform is new. A short distance away from the airport is the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Group Centre, an operational central command for India's main para-military force that must deal with insurgency, riots or any political turmoil. The CRPF goes where the local police cannot handle the trouble and the army cannot wage civil war against its citizens. It is a miserable, brutal, and unrewarding duty, without the glamour or acclaim attached to the army. In 2010, estimates say the CRPF lost 190 men. For many of them the Last Post may have played over this Platform, a walking distance from the team hotel, 10kms away from Jamtha Stadium. Not all of Nagpur is about oranges. Or cricket. ]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22524 2011-03-10T13:17:47Z 2011-04-02T09:05:39Z

Firdose Moonda Lance Klusener lit up the 1999 World Cup with his power hitting © Getty Images
Lance Klusener always preferred doing his talking with the bat. It’s a horrible cliché, yes, but for this man, his bat was his mouthpiece. Find some archived footage of a post-match conference featuring Klusener as Man of the Match - and there are many - and you will see a few mumbles, eyes shifting nervously, fingers twiddling incessantly and feet tapping, waiting to make a hasty exit. It was nothing like his persona at the crease, particularly the Klusener we came to know in the 1999 World Cup, the best bludgeoner of them all. He was the only batsman in the top 15 to have a strike rate over 100; his bat didn’t just talk, it shouted every word with! an! exclamation! Twelve years and three World Cups later, Klusener does not have a bat to do the talking for him, and it seems to have helped. The words flow as the runs once did, maybe not as fluently, but with as much spark and zest. There’s even room for a joke or two. We caught up in Chennai, with the sun baking down at over 35 degrees. ]]> bowled England out for 172, and not knowing then that they could have done with a batsman of his intent to chase the total, Klusener spoke about how South Africa were doing fine without a big-hitting No. 7, and how they were able to rely on the top order to score the kind of runs that he used to. He meant the team no longer needs someone to accelerate madly at the end because they are top heavy when it comes to batting, and whether he is right or wrong is a debate for another day, but his point about the philosophy of South African batting having changed is spot on. When Klusener was still around, he was the finisher and what finishes he had. His favourite was one against Pakistan, in that 1999 World Cup, at Trent Bridge, for reasons that will boggle the mind of those who think they know how Klusener liked to bat. He came in with the score on 135 for 6, with 14 overs left to get 86 runs. Quick scoring was needed but also patience. “I enjoyed it because I was able to bide my time and plan an innings,” he said. I must have looked surprised. After smashing South Africa to victories over Sri Lanka and England and even going down in a blaze of boundaries against Zimbabwe, surely Klusener did not want to bide time. “It was nice because we had to catch up with the scoring rate and Mark Boucher and I were able to do that. Shoaib [Akhtar] and Wasim [Akram] and Saqlain [Mushtaq] were bowling well, so it was a real battle, not just a smash and grab.” It was interesting to hear that Klusener did not just want to be a daylight robber, but, like any batsman, wanted to craft any innings from ball one. So what fuelled so many bruising knocks at that World Cup? “It was a lot of luck actually, and some of it was circumstance. I was hitting the ball really well.” ]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22507 2011-03-09T09:27:09Z 2011-04-02T09:05:39Z

Sidharth Monga Binod Bihari Chowdhury, the last surviving revolutionary of 1930's Chittagong Armoury Raid © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
“We knew we were all going to die,” he says, casually. I have heard this line many times in films, read it in books, but to hear it face to face, from a man who knew he was going to die, is something else. This is not a line we, born in free countries, quite appreciate when it is played out in the movies. To feel the real meaning of the words, make a trip to Momin Road in Chittagong, and find Binod Bihari Chowdhury, who lives in one of the bylanes in a small non-descript house. He had a bullet pierce his neck, but he has survived to tell the not-often-told tale of the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930. Binod is 101 now, the last revolutionary alive among that group, mainly comprising students, who fought a battle that they knew would eventually claim their lives. He is as frail as can be imagined. Recently he has been to Kolkata for treatment. He struggles with high blood pressure, but still watches cricket, much to the chagrin of those who look after him. He struggles to talk, but likes to tell stories. Dadu we call him. Like a dadu, a grandfather, he has us sit around him and tells us of the people who fought for independence. He doesn’t blink at all when he is talking. There are four of us there, and he looks into the eye of each, one by one, alternating, as he admits his memory plays tricks at times. Once upon a time Binod was a student too. A student who, when moving to an English-medium school from the Bangla school, had to be demoted two standards to fit into the English school. “I didn’t understand all that then, I did what my father asked me to,” he says. From the age of 16, Binod’s life has been one full of revolution, the fight against injustice, prison, hibernation, having a prize on his head – 500 rupees – but the most inspirational part of it has been the Armoury Raid, led by the legendary Masterda Surjya Sen. The first thing he talks about when he realises we are from India is about the recent Bollywood film on the Chittagong Uprising, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se. “Why do they keep calling him Surjyo da, Surjyo da in the film? Don’t they know nobody ever called him Surjyo da? He was always Master da.” Just confirms how callous popular culture can be. How do you make a whole feature film on the revolution without consulting the only revolutionary alive?]]> At the age of 16, Binod joined Jugantor, the revolutionary organisation. A measure of how committed they were to the cause was how nobody got to know what he was up to. Not his father, not his mother, not his brother, not his sister, not the best of his friends. Such organisations had to be secret in those days, else they wouldn’t survive. “One day I was chatting with Master da,” Binod says. “And one of the revolutionaries saw us, and asked Master da, ‘Why do you let him sit next to you? I have asked him to join us many times, but he keeps abusing you.’ That’s when Master da laughed and told him, ‘He has been a member even before you.’ That’s how well we guarded our organisation. I still have secrets I have never told anybody, ever.” After meticulous planning, they put up their fight against imperialism, after which, albeit for a short duration, Indian Republican Army, Chittagong Branch, as they called themselves, tasted freedom. They took Auxiliary Forces armoury, and cut telephone and telegraph wires. Master da took a military salute, and the National Flag was hoisted. “We knew if we claim their armouries in Chattagram [Chittagong], the Britishers wouldn’t be able to do much. But we also knew we would be able to rule for only two-three-four days. We would soon be outnumbered… We knew we were all going to die.” We spent more than an hour with Binod, during which he told us about his and his friends’ ordeals when the stronger British forces finally caught up, about his time in prison, about how the independence they fought for didn’t turn out to be the independence they wanted, his role in the planning for the Liberation War of 1971. For about 10 minutes after we came out, nobody spoke a word. Films and books can never do that to you. tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22506 2011-03-09T05:32:49Z 2011-04-02T09:05:39Z

Nagraj Gollapudi Nagraj Gollapudi discovered Ryan ten Doeschate is an avid reader on a trip to a classroom in an Indian government school © Getty Images
A polite request arrived from the ICC a couple of days ago: would I like to join Ryan ten Doeschate and Atse Buurman, the Netherlands’ players, on a visit to one of the government-run schools as part of a drive to encourage education through reading? My first thought was, forget it. But I chewed on it for about an hour and then randomly gave my nod. I felt it was rare to meet a player in a private space and it could be worth it. A few hours later I found my way into the school in South Delhi. “Some cricketers have come ... but sadly not Indian,” I heard a few disappointed murmurs from the teenage kids standing in the courtyard. But moments later I was in a small classroom, barely the size of a double room in a hotel, but which now held 25 kids and five teachers surrounding the Dutchmen. ten Doeschate and Buurman, both dressed casually in the same colour denims and T-shirt, were completely open and relaxed in a packed environment. Both tried hard to understand the questions and came up with honest answers. Of course 10-year-olds don’t ask about life. “Can you a hit a six?” a toddler asked ten Doeschate. He could only laugh back. Buurman was asked his favourite stroke. But Buurman, the reserve wicket-keeper, was curious to know about something specific. Buurman had dyslexia as a child. Even now he stresses on every word and makes sure he is right about what he says. “I had remedial teaching which helped me. But I was curious about how dyslexic kids here deal with it. I tried asking the teachers how the dyslexic students in the school deal with the issue, but never got a clear answer.”]]> Shantaram twice. He says the book, written by Australian Gregory David Roberts, gives a “rough and true description of what India is, how busy everything is, how tough things can be, how informal everything is.” The book is an autobiography of Roberts, who escaped from an Australian jail and claims to have found redemption in the slums of Dharavi in Mumbai. ten Doeschate, a journey man himself, has been away from home in Chelmsford for four months now, is an avid book reader and counts Night Train to Lisbon, a psychological drama, as one of his favourite books. It is interesting to always see the other side of an athlete. As a journalist, I am normally interested in getting a better understanding of the player, and the best way is to talk about something outside cricket. Players are quite private most times, but there are exceptions like ten Doeschate. Perhaps reading has helped him get a finer understand of people and how to relate to them. Asked by one of the teachers to draw something for the kids, he readily took a sketch pen and drew a picture of him as a stick man and few other kids as stick men standing around him along with a book. The context of the event was not lost on him. I ask him what the one image is that he will take back with him from the visit. “There was this sight of a little boy who had just learned how to read. He was asked by one of the teachers to read. He proceeded to read by running through the page finger by finger, pointing at every word. He was such a tiny kid, but I could help smile. It was memorable.” The players visited a reading room at the MCD school in Govindpuri, Delhi as part of the ICC’s partnership with Room to Read. This partnership began with a pledge from ICC to support the development of similar reading rooms in all three host countries and has been given tremendous momentum through the launch of the ‘Boundaries for Books’ campaign by Reliance Life Insurance which donates Rs 25,000 for every six hit during the ICC CWC. Members of the public can find out more and donate themselves at www.roomtoread.org/worldcup]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22449 2011-03-05T16:39:19Z 2011-04-02T09:05:39Z

Sidharth Monga The fans have apologised, but it can't make up for what was a security breach © Getty Images
As promised last night, hundreds of Bangladeshis gathered outside the team hotel in Dhaka on Saturday to apologise to the cricketers for the actions of some “fans” – for want of a better word. Stones were thrown at the team buses last night, there were reports of rioting in the Dhaka University area and of an attack on the house of Shakib Al Hasan’s parents. This morning the other side of the Bangladesh cricket fan emerged, a side I still believe to be more representative of the average fan. I was not there to see it – I had an early-morning bus to Chittagong – but the reports are reassuring. People arrived there early in the morning with flowers, with placards apologising not only to the West Indies cricketers but the Bangladeshis too. I never doubted this side of the Bangladeshis. Often at the end of rickshaw rides or CNG [auto-rickshaw] rides in Dhaka, I have seen people try to overhear how much money I, their “guest”, am paying, to make sure I am not being ripped off. I can only imagine they have been just as hospitable to other travellers. However, no amount of good behaviour, no amount of apologising can make up for what happened last night. For the most important issue right now is not the image of the Bangladeshi fan. It’s that there was a security breach last night and no authority right now is ready to acknowledge it. It’s that last night Chris Gayle felt unsafe in the country. That he wondered how, if those responsible for security couldn’t keep stones away, they would keep bullets away. When your house is robbed, you don’t debate the robbers’ moral make-up, you think of how you could have protected your house better. The incident has evoked reactions from the three main parties: the police, BCB and ICC. All three reactions have been shoddy. The police, for some reason, thought that they needed to stress that the people were attacking their own countrymen, not the visitors, and that it was a case of mistaken identity. Not only is that version not accurate – ESPNcricinfo learned later in the night that both buses were hit and there wasn’t much to tell one bus from the other – but it beggared belief how attacking Bangladesh players can be seen as a smaller security failure than attacking the West Indians. Mustafa Kamal, the BCB president, issued an apology but did not concede to the incident being a security failure. His version was that the stones came from “far away from the main road”. How reassuring to the players who genuinely felt they were in danger. How reassuring that only troublemakers on the main road can be taken care of, not those immediately beyond. Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, seems to have gone a step further. “It was a few individuals who threw pebbles at the bus, and they were pebbles,” he said. Pebbles don’t crack bulletproof glasses – something the West Indies media manager confirmed to ESPNcricinfo - do they? It is understandable that the establishment doesn’t want to create panic, and wants to play down the whole thing. It is also hoped that their actual reaction to all this will be different from the statements they are making in public. For the moment, how about not making it sound like nothing happened? ]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22448 2011-03-05T16:11:51Z 2011-04-02T09:05:41Z

Firdose Moonda Wide roads and open spaces, a feature of Chandigarh © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
This week was the first time that I travelled on a train. I’d been on those little novelty choo-choos that whip kiddies around the zoo or the amusement park but I had never actually journeyed, from one city to another, on a train. Johannesburg’s Gautrain, which goes from the heart of the CBD in Sandton to the airport in 16 minutes doesn’t count. The Jan Shatabdi Express, part of one of the largest railway networks in the world, now that’s a train. It was far more elaborate than any of the ones I had seen in old Bollywood films. Nothing nearly as exciting as what happens in the movies happened to me, but I was still thrilled to be on it. It was bumpy and bustling. It left Delhi to pass through kilometres of fields and approached Chandigarh with the sight of rolling hills, although only their shadows were discernible as darkness descended. It was the ideal, surreal start to three days in Chandigarh, where the roads are wide, the streets are quiet and the big-city edge is non-existent. In anyone’s book, it would pass for a small town. Perhaps not in its entirety, but certainly when looked at one or two sectors at a time. Sector 63, where the PCA is, reminded me of where my grandmother stays, 80 kilometers North West of Johannesburg in a town called Brits. It’s the kind of place I would go to a few weeks before exam time to make sure I could study with no distractions. It’s the kind of place where a woman of almost 90 can live by herself in big, bad South Africa and feel only a little insecure. In Chandigarh, even that little would be erased. There’s something different about it, not a feeling of greater freedom, although it can be interpreted that way, but of greater space. I was able to go running on the road the morning before the match, without wrestling with autos or ambassadors. I was able to walk right up to the Sikh Temple, just a few hundred metres from the stadium, where the Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab was attending prayers (so I was told by the police officer) and was let through by every member of the security force and only stopped before entering and advised to cover my hair. I was able to see what looked like miles of open space. It was totally different to the big smoke that Delhi had been and quite similar to the small towns that are so precious in South Africa. Move to Sector 35, and it becomes a little closer to Bloemfontein . The strip, where the restaurants and shops lie, is apparently the busiest in the city. Two other sectors fit the bill but I didn’t have the time to visit them. It was missing the student feel that Bloemfontein’s rowdy bars have, but it retained the small-town feel. The kind that celebrates families going out for dinner in big bunches and thriving communities where everyone is an acquaintance. The manager was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger designer rugby shirt – quaint, I thought, quaint like Bloemfontein.]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22425 2011-03-04T08:19:10Z 2011-04-02T09:05:44Z

Nagraj Gollapudi Back to reality © Getty Images
Think Allan Donald. What are the images that come to mind? The animated duels with Michael Atherton in the mid-to-late 1990s stands out most prominently but on the fringes is another: Sultan Zarawani of the United Arab Emirates, broad-shouldered, standing with a dense mop of black hair tucked under a broad-brimmed floppy hat, taking guard to face Donald – in his pomp - on his first ball in his maiden World Cup. It was a ludicrous sight, prompting many to wonder whether Zarawani thought he was a Viv Richards or a Richie Richardson or a Carl Hooper. And it was a sight that angered the South Africans, already bothered by the 40-degree heat in Rawalpindi, who wanted to wrap up the match as soon as possible after Gary Kirsten had hit what was then the second-highest one-day score to set up a total of 321. So, back to Donald – did he get angry? Was it a slight to the fast man’s ego to watch an Associate player showing no respect by walking out helmetless? Did he just want to flatten Zarawani and teach him a lesson? With Donald returning to his second World Cup in the subcontinent, this time as New Zealand’s bowling coach, he agreed to revisit the incident. “When he walked in to bat he wore just a normal floppy hat. I didn’t know who he was. The game was going nowhere. I had just got a wicket. A furious Pat Symcox came to me and said ‘Listen, who does this guy think he is?’ During the huddle Jonty Rhodes took up the fight, saying the batsman had no idea about cricket. He had come into this game without any cricketing pedigree, and had apparently promised his players that if UAE won one game in the World Cup, he would buy each a Mercedes Benz or something like that. But Jonty didn’t want me to bowl Zarawani a bouncer as he thought he couldn’t bat and I might hurt him. Someone else blurted out, ‘Just knock his head off.’ I said I’d bowl a bouncer, but make sure it went way over. “The next ball was a perfect on-the-money bouncer: he could not really duck, he sort of stood up and just flinched. It really hit flush on his head. The ball almost came back to me, that’s how hard it hit him. His hat fell off. Everyone rushed to him to check if he was ok. He said he was fine, picked up his bat and said he was ready to bat. Steve Bucknor, one of the on-field umpires on the day, came up to me and told me whether I knew he could not bat. ‘There’s no way I’m bowling him another bouncer,’ I assured him. Symcox was fuming, he wanted another bouncer. I told him the game was dead, they had lost, and I was not going to bowl another bouncer.” Zarwani lasted seven balls but later admitted to Donald he was “stupid” not to wear a helmet. ]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22422 2011-03-03T20:06:46Z 2011-04-02T09:05:47Z

Sharda Ugra It's not everyday an Ireland cricketer gets hounded for autographs © ESPNcricinfo Ltd
They didn't mean it. Really, the lovely staff at the ITC Royal Gardenia didn't mean to be mean. They were just going about their hospitality routines the way they are planned. When teams arrive there, they get a traditional welcome: garlands, flowers, the thunderous ghatam - a traditional south Indian percussion instrument made of a clay pot. When a team leaves, a live band (featuring a violin, saxophone and guitar) plays tunes as they walk through a guard of honour, with the staff holding up bats on either side of their red carpet. As England left Bangalore on Thursday, the band began to play ‘Moondance’. The song belongs to Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. Now he may be from Belfast, in Northern Ireland, but as Andrew Strauss' team walked past, in a shower of rose petals and bad memories, it was always going to be an Irish song. The morning after what Van the Man would be happy to call ‘a marvellous night for a moondance’, the Irish bid England goodbye, not like the hotel staff had done, but by elbowing them off centre-stage. The players were being woken up by phone calls and messages, hauled out of swimming pools and bracing themselves for a barrage of predictable questions. But like Trent Johnston told his not-out partner John (“Mooners”) Mooney as they walked off the Chinnaswamy ground in riotous celebration, this was what they played for. Johnston said: “This is what we train for, this is what it is all about – to be in that moment.” He was referring to the victory over England, but at some point of the morning, as Ireland’s cricketers sat around tables, drinking beer and coffee, all its other consequences also came into play.]]> Kevin O'Brien wandered around wearing a freedom and an accessibility that can only belong to a player from a team finding its feet and happy to show off its new set of shoes. It wasn't merely about O'Brien's pink-streaked blond hair or the lack of self-consciousness with which he wore an unbranded T-shirt and marvellouslly patterned bermuda shorts with large grey, blue and fuschia flowers. It was about how the man of the morning shared himself with everyone, and the simplicity with which he told his story. Chasing 328 on Wednesday, Ireland, O'Brien said with a little poetry, “didn't want to die wondering.” After O’Brien was out, Johnson took a slow, measured, deep-breath of a walk onto the crease, all the time speaking to himself. “I was telling myself, what you need to do is not to try and hit a ball for six. Just try and get us over the line.” Ireland did go over the line and must now find a way to maximise the distance it has made them cover. They do believe they are benevolently being watched over by someone on their side. Two days after their main sponsor RSA (Royal & Sun Alliance, an insurance company) had first signed the contract with Irish cricket, the Barings bank collapse led to economic meltdown in Britain and Ireland. But as the contract had been signed, it had held up. Now the sponsors must look at Wednesday's result and contemplate the next step. Just over 12 hours after the victory, there was a brainstorming session in the hotel coffee shop among the sponsors and senior management of the Irish Cricket Union. The board officials, the sponsors, the players mingled with each other, some sitting at a table and talking. Older men made phone calls and shook hands to publicise the case for younger ones. It was corporate vocabulary's most overused word, 'stakeholder', come to life in a way it may really have meant to be, before being seized by spin meisters. The day after they beat England, Ireland didn't need spin meisters, because its cricketers had a story to tell and could do so without minders minding bloopers. The most team manager Barry Chambers did, in the name of vigilance, was to carry two T-shirts over his arm, in case there were any TV interviews to be done and the players shirts were found too inappropriate. O'Brien talked about the team's involvement in the Irish Cancer Society's 'shave & dye' campaign – the reason for his pink hair and the captain William Porterfield’s purple streaks – and said with pride that the cricketers had raised 2000 Euros for the charity last year. He didn't think of the size of the number, just at what cricket had managed to do in Ireland. Not one of Ireland's top four sports, its players far from high earners, cricket had somehow managed to reach out to an audience willing to donate to charity at their request. Wednesday's match did more than manically shuffle Group B in which six out of seven teams will have to scrap for a place in the last eight. Cricket is now full of far too much spin, far too much 'imaging' and far too many Twittering millionaires who wouldn't colour their coiffure for fear of denting their “branding”. What cricket's la-di-dah community have just received at the hands of the Irish, even if for a short while, is a real shakedown. ]]> tag:blogs.espncricinfo.com,2011:/wc_tourdiaries//124.22388 2011-03-02T05:41:58Z 2011-04-02T09:05:47Z

John Mooney Bangladesh fans packed the Shere Bangla and the area around it during the game against Ireland © Getty Images
The opening game against Bangladesh last Friday was my 100th for Ireland in all competitions, and I should really have been celebrating a win. I suppose if we don’t qualify for the quarter-finals it will never get out of our system. That said, it’s gone and now my complete focus is on the England game this afternoon. It’s disappointing, but it’s a game of cricket, and unless it’s a tie like the other day, someone has to lose. Although I didn’t have a happy time with the bat, I was pleased with the way I bowled. It wasn’t easy coming on after they had got off to such a quick start, but I had a game plan to bowl tight on leg and middle stump to deny them room, and it worked. It was a great bonus to get the wicket of Imrul Kayes thanks to a brilliant piece of work from Nobby (Niall O’Brien) standing up. He’s as good as anyone in the business, and I think he showed just what he’s capable of. If you’re a batsman and you make the slightest mistake, then you’re gone, as we’ve all seen over the last coupe of years with him. I can’t leave the Bangladesh game without a word about their supporters and the atmosphere they created, not just at the game, but also in the surrounding environs of the stadium. It’s hard to convey the passion they have for cricket to fans back in Ireland. I suppose a good analogy would be the reception that the Ireland soccer team received in Dublin in the hey days of the European Championships in 1988 or the World Cup in 1990. That’s the sort of adulation that Bangladesh supporters have for their cricketers, and they were hanging off buildings and telegraph poles in their thousands to pay tribute to their players. They are so fanatical about their cricket and they definitely got Bangladesh over the finish line in what was a vital game for both of us.]]> We’ve moved onto Bangalore and are staying in the ITC Royal Gardenia hotel with the England and Indian teams. I have to say that it’s a decent little spot! We’ve travelled around as a cricket team a fair bit over the past few years, so when you get to a hotel like this, you really appreciate it. We’ve stayed in some less than salubrious establishments in that time, but this one certainly doesn’t fit into that category. A lot of the players’ friends and families have arrived here, and my fiancée Helena and my mother Frances arrive this weekend for the India game. It’ll be great to have them in town and it’s a great morale boost to the squad after being away for nearly a month now. We’re proud of ourselves as international cricketers, but that’s nothing compared to the pride our families feel for us. It makes you doubly determined to do well, knowing how much it means to them and friends back home. We take on England today in what is a huge game for us. They have been in good form, with the bat especially. The opening pairing of Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen is as good as any in the competition, while Ian Bell has looked in supreme touch. We’ve given them a few close run games in recent times, but haven’t beaten them yet. We’ve a lot of respect for England, but no fear of them. It’s a help having so many county players in our ranks, and they have been great assets in preparing for the game. We’re going to be positive, and take the game to England, and hopefully the next time we catch up, I’ll be talking about a famous Ireland win.