India – Pakistan ODI: Notes From Days When Cricket
Wasn’t War
Saeed Naqvi
This Sunday, 16
June, I look forward to being seated with friends in an arc around the TV set,
ready to exult at the outcome of the Indo-Pak ODI at the Old Trafford in
Manchester. But two friends who have surprised me with their adoption of
saffron, will not just rejoice but clench their fists and grind their teeth in
an expression which is a little more visceral. Their’s will not be the slow
hand clap. In victory I am with them, sometimes ahead of them, it is when I see
triumphalism that I feel weak in the pit of my stomach.
Much water has
flown down the Irwell, in Manchester and the Gomti, in Lucknow where as an
eager schoolboy, armed with an autograph book, I found myself in the player’s
pavilion, thanks to a cousin who introduced me to Habul Mukherjee, the famous
hockey coach, who supervised the construction of the cricket stadium. I was
rewarded with “access” to the players’ pavilion for having accomplished the
most challenging of tasks. I had to produce a wooden plank, painted white, with
a legend in thick black: “Ladies Urinal”. Really, to what lengths an autograph
hungry schoolboy will not go?
Difficult to
believe, in today’s atmosphere, but the Pakistan team were a bigger draw, among
Hindus and Muslims alike, largely because of a 16 year old batting prodigy,
Hanif Mohammad. Students from Islamia College, not far from the Royal hotel
where the team stayed, invaded the hotel’s lobby. They found to their horror
that the Pakistanis they saw, were very different from the ones they expected.
There, on the bar stool, was “Maxi” abbreviation for Maqsood Ahmad, holding a
mug frothing over with beer.
On the cricket
ground, I shall never forget the two bearded Maulanas, wearing caps of the same
cloth as their respective Sherwanis, monitoring every ball through their antiquated
army binoculars. Polly Umrigar missed a ball from Fazal Mahmood and wicket
keeper Imtiaz Ahmad snapped it. The slip cordon appealed. “No” said the umpire
emphatically. One agitated Maulana, turned to the other looking distinctly unhappy.
“Kilick to hua
tha.” (I heard the click), he said to his friend. Safdar, one of the wits who were
part of Lucknow’s elegant decadence, leaned over, touched the Maulana’s
binoculars and asked loudly enough to send all those in the vicinity into peals
of laughter.
“Maulana,
ismein sunayii bhi deta hai?” (Maulana you can also hear through that
binocular?)
Beer drinking
Pakistanis registered with Islamia College students as something of a disappointment.
The college catered to the lower end of the Muslim middle class. It dawned on
me much later that defining the Muslim middle class in the twilight of the
feudal order was not easy: elegant speech and manners went hand in hand with abject
penury. With penury came religiosity.
As centres of
culture, most people use a faulty balance to compare Lucknow and Lahore.
Lucknow had begun to die as early as 1857 for their affront to the British. The
great centre of culture paid a heavy price. The state’s High Court was set up
in Allahabad as was UP’s premier university. Industry was dispatched to what
the British called Cawnpore. Lucknow was left with Taluqdars who had made peace
with the British. The population was gifted with the art of conversation which
seemed quaint and out of place, given their impecunious living. The declining
aristocracy held their libraries to their bosom but refrained from polo, tennis
or cricket, almost in cultural defiance of the Raj.
Lahore derived
its vigour upto 1947 from its “Punjabiat” (though a great centre of Urdu) and its
high comfort level with the British. There was even a sartorial difference
between the Sherwani clad Urdu poets of Awadh (Lucknow) and those of Lahore.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was the only prominent Urdu poet on the subcontinent who wore a
jacket and tie. Unlike Lucknow, where poets and scribes drank furtively in the
cubicles of China Bar and Restaurant, Lahore was more open with its bars which
cricketers like “Maxi” frequented. That is why “Maxi” and one or two of his
team mates were comfortable walking around Lucknow’s Royal hotel bar lounge
with their beer mugs full to the brim.
Saffron spread
in India very slowly; Islamization of Pakistan was more rapid. By the time the
team with Imran Khan turned up in the 80s, the players were drinking whiskey
with their glasses draped in white napkins to avoid detection. These days,
ofcourse, they would probably be treated as alleged beef eaters are in the Indian
cow belt.
Maqsood’s
cameo knock in Lucknow, in October 1952 was one of three great ones etched on
my mind, all played between Lucknow and Kanpur, circumscribed itinerary for a cricket
crazy schoolboy in the 50s. Two batsmen were out when Maqsood walked to the
middle and stroked the very first ball for four, bisecting point and cover,
next between cover and extra cover. In his cameo of 40 odd runs he made a
precise arc, bisecting fielders from point to square leg. The next knock was
Rohan Kanhai’s in Kanpur in 1958. India and the West Indies had scored 222 each
in the first inning. In the second innings, Polly Umrigar, in his unlikely avatar
as opening bowler, caused an eerie silence to descend on Green Park. He removed
Hunte and Holt for a duck. This is when Kanhai strode in: first ball driven for
four, second cut past gully. In about 30 minutes he scored a pretty 44 and left,
bringing Gary Sobers in, who proceeded to score 198. But it is Kanhai’s knock
that I have kept as a gem.
The last brief
knock on my nostalgia for cricket was a masterly 51 because of the circumstances.
Off spinner Jasu Patel had taken 9 wickets on a pitch which Australian captain
Richie Benaud described as a “mud heap” much to the annoyance of “vizzy”,
Maharaj Kumar of Vizianagram, commentator and patron of cricket. The great left
handed batsman, Neil Harvey, provided an object lesson on how to jump out and
hit at half volley before the ball turns.
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