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From Tehelka Archives
December 1, 2000

The Great Game

Hindi films since he’d been an orphan child of India, or India versus Pakistan (whichever way
Amit Chaudhuri the Bombay streets. you decided to think of it), and Pakistan versus
The team practised nimbly, without ex- England. After that England would take the
hausting themselves. Now and then a re- first flight out to Heathrow, leaving the battle-
t was inhuman to play cricket at this porter or a television crew came and asked ground open to the warring cousins.
time of the year, in this heat, but that them questions. When Azharuddin answered The next day Mita Reddy, former Miss India
was precisely what they were doing the questions, you could see the others in the and runner-up, Miss Universe, who had only
these days. Moreover, the team was background, throwing their arms about, Ten- last year surprised everyone by saying to a
I being sent out into that cauldron to dulkar doing exercises, his glasses so dark they panel of judges that her favourite person was
pick up something called the Pepsi Cup. You bore no reflection. When he spoke, you had to Mrs Gandhi — ‘Indira Gandhi?’ ‘No, Kasturba-
had to feel for them, though they looked like look at his mouth, because of the challenge his bai Gandhi’, embarrassing all by invoking
young braves. While others might shop at the dark glasses threw you. the Mahatma’s small, self-effacing, long dead
airport in Dubai, one would expect them not The English were the first to wilt. Ganguly wife — was seen in the stands, sitting next to
to glance at the watches and shapely state-of- hit the winning shot, a six that saw the ball Marshneill Gavaskar, grinning because she
the-art CD-players, to have nothing but a glass take flight in a way unlike any bird in these could see herself on television. She smiled;
of orange juice at the hotel before going into surroundings. Then, the desert sun long set, and waved — at whom, no one, among the
the nets. he got the first Man of the Match award of the millions watching, knew.
Among them was Tendulkar, whose name, tour. During the 35th over, by which time 7
everyone agreed, sounded like an ancient Watching him ascend the crowded po- wickets had fallen for 126 runs, and an Indian
weapon of destruction, and who carried a dium on a small Sony television, and talk with medium-pacer and an all-rounder were put-
one-and-a-half ton bat. He disembarked from some assurance, Khatau, who’d just returned ting up an obdurate partnership, there was a
the plane with a singleness of purpose, and a from a hard day in the tenements in South spell of inactivity that sometimes occurs in
sealed, expressionless face. He and the ‘boys’ Bombay, commented to his colleague Mo- the middle of an over, when members of both
(though you wouldn’t ordinarily call Azharud- hammed Yusuf that Ummar Aziz didn’t seem teams suddenly forget the thousands in the
din a ‘boy’) were here to deal with the English to have come to watch the game. stadium and the TV cameras, and behave like
and the vigorous Pakistanis, mainly the Pa- ‘He certainly wasn’t in the crowd; other- a family inside a house, unaware they’re being
kistanis, who came from a country that had wise they would have shown him.’ Khatau watched. Tony Greig and a minor English ex-
sprung troublingly from a gash in the side of and Mohammed Yusuf were policemen who bowler were sitting in the commentator’s box
their own about fifty years ago. regretted the way Aziz had, one day, slipped and discussing plans and strategies, while the
Among the spectators was to be Ummar like sand through their fingers. All those ex- little microphone in one of the stumps, placed
Aziz, who had no place to hide in India and plosions; they hadn’t been able to do anything there to detect the sound of a nick, eaves-
who, rumour had it, had been living around about it. Here they were, four years later, dropped on two players conversing:
here in a mansion with a swimming-pool for on their sofas, watching Ganguly under the ‘Lagta hai woh Aziz kal ayegaa.’
the last three years. He had expertly orches- floodlights. Greig was too busy composing a litany about
trated a series of explosions in Bombay in ‘Arrey he won’t go to these small-fry Aussie spin-bowling, even if he’d known any
1993, bombs that had gone off in the Air India games,’ Yusuf said, shaking his head slowly Hindi, to register anything; but Khatau, on
Building and in Prabhadevi, not to speak of and with great conviction, while looking at his sofa, heard the comment, though at first
11 other places. He strenuously denied it, but an English player waiting tentatively in the he wasn’t quite sure he had. Yusuf confirmed
from this safe haven; and indeed the charge background. Ganguly was shaking hands with with a nod that he’d heard it too. They hadn’t
might be a fiction dreamed up by the police. Ravi Shastri. Yusuf wasn’t looking at them but realised that they had an informant in the
It was heard that he was coming, not so much staring at the screen and thinking. ‘He’ll come middle-stump microphone on the pitch; but
because of his love of cricket, which was con- to the big one,’ he concluded; or words to that then the game started again. Someone had
siderable, or of the Indian or Pakistani teams effect. said Aziz would come tomorrow; they couldn’t
(the Pakistani side was a depleted one, with its The ‘big one’ was still a few days away, be sure if it was one of the Indians, or a Paki-
main bowlers discredited and removed), but however, days and nights away that is, be- stani, or one of the Indians passing on the in-
his fascination with Urmila Deshpande, the cause they were all ‘day and night’ games, in- formation to a Pakistani, or vice-versa. Any of
star of Ishq and Jaadu, who was also going to ducing a degree of sleeplessness in the spec- these alternatives might be the right one.
be present. Ummar Aziz had been watching tator. Before then there was Pakistan versus ‘Fantastic shot,’ said Yusuf, as Srinath belted

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