Dances With Chazzwazzers

Made a note in my diary on the way back from the Sardar Patel Gujurat Stadium. Simply says: “Bugger.”*

*With the fondest of acknowledgments to Messrs Curtis, Elton & McInnerny.

As I while away the time waiting for Peter & Toni to finish their Amdavad Sunset Tuk-tuk Tour, sitting in my room swilling Masala Chai and listening to an old Weller album; here’s some reflections from today in Motera. In no particular order….

Chocobars, while not the most nutritious or filling, are probably the most value for money lunches in the world cricket. Two for thirty rupees, anyone?

Met the ghostwriter for Ian Bell’s newspaper column earlier. A nice chap with a great line in fedoras. He’s going to earn his money tonight….

The Sports Personality of the Year list should be re-jiggled to include the England skipper. As if today’s Herculean knock isn’t enough to justify his inclusion on the list, I bet Andy Murray doesn’t have to put up with “strong personalities in the dressing room” in his conquest to be the world’s best.

For the uninitiated, Ahmedabad is called the ‘Manchester of India’. In a surreal twist, I sat next to a bloke who sounds like he’s spent all his years living in Eccles. He hasn’t. He just loves The Beatles and Oasis and his mum’s from London originally. Mad fer it!

I haven’t given Matt Prior any credit yet. His innings was also superb. Keep going stout yeoman.

My cricket club, the mighty Elstow C.C., would absolutely destroy the Indian national team in a fielding competition. And that’s just our Under 14s.

Indian fans, for all their enthusiasm, can surely come up with some songs for their team or players rather than just shouting Sachin, Sachin, Yuvi, Yuvi, Zaheer, Zaheer etc etc. They’re almost as uninventive as The Fanatics.

Aleem Dar got another decision wrong today. Sadly. Despite this, he still has the best hair in world cricket.

Test Cricket is a funny ol’ game. I came away from the ground today almost skipping. Tomorrow I may traipse out forlornly like I did after Day Two. It is the hope that kills you, damn that hope. Still, at least……

I absolutely do not have to go on the Amdavad City Sights tour now!

Like the balloon in The Prisoner or the rubbish car lying ominously in wait for the losing competitor in a Top Gear three car challenge, something in my hotel room steadfastly refuses to go away. A tomato soup-red tourist leaflet advertising Amdavad City Sights.
I’ve told myself I’ll sign up for this when I run out of things to do in Gujurat’s second city.

Ahmedabad is a nice enough city. I like its people, its restaurants, its traffic jams, its endearingly shambolic fusion of old and new world architecture. Its tuk-tuk drivers are probably the most obliging and least argumentative I’ve come across anywhere in Asia.
I just don’t have the urge to immerse myself in it like I do other cities in this marvellous nation.

At lunch on the third day of the Test Match, there was a good chance I was going to be taking in the BRTS Bus Route, the Nirma University and the Rani Sipri (Didn’t he do the original version of It Must Be Love?*) Mosque among the other highlights of the aforementioned city tour. At tea, I was going to be doing this twice. Plus revisiting the National Utensil Museum of India for good measure.

I have come to India to watch cricket. Thanks to the tenacity and temperament of Messrs Cook and Compton, there’s a good chance I’ll get my wish of five days cricket at the Sardar Patel Gujurati Stadium rather than taking part in the Indian equivalent of The Stevenage Experience.

My attitude is probably appalling. The Rough Guide writers will be lining up to chastise me for my cynical viewpoint. Thing is, and all due to respect to The Gurjar Tourism Development Society and the upstanding citizens of this upstanding city, I’m quite happy to go through life having never had a dip in the Kankaria Lake or found out what the Adalaj Step Well is.

So bat on, my brave lads, bat on. I want to be sharing my thoughts with you all on the first game of A. N. Cook’s glorious England reign come blog-time Monday evening rather than giving you an inexhaustible account of the IIM, whatever one of those is.

England need a day’s worth of what they produced in the last session today. Two day’s worth really. We know the pitch is going to break up, that India’s spinners will want to have this sewn up tomorrow having completely dominated for the first half of this encounter. We know England have played very poorly for most of this Test, but they have two days to sort this mess out.
They have the ability and the players to do this, plus a new captain desperate to lay down a positive marker in his first match in charge.

There’s about two hundred people here, plus several million back home who hope they can achieve this. Otherwise your correspondent will have to change his name to Number Six….

Or Blakey.

*Hello Will! Hello Sian! X

It was at my Leaving Do last week (Well, one of them. The one at the Jalori. “How nice. Acclimatisation?”said I. “Sphincter Conditioning” came the retort.) when conversation turned to the nature of my travels. The real raison d’être, the sitting on my arse watching cricket bit.

“But surely, you can just sit at home watching it on the sofa instead. What’s the point going all that way?” At stumps on Day Two of the first England v India Test Match, I found myself wholly concurring with that statement.

But then after a soothing pot of Masala Chai (Hello Ravi! Hello Kamal!) I came to my senses. You don’t follow your team anywhere and expect to do well, well, I don’t. It’s everything that goes with it.

One of my most chastening moments as a Hatters fan, and this as an impressionable, gawky teenager, was a 7-1 drubbing at the hands of Grimsby. We were terrible. Really bad. And it was cold. Bitter. And on certain days, when the wind is in the wrong direction, I swear I can still smell the disused haddock.
Yet on the way home, the detour to the fish & chip shop proved inspirational. Those fish & chips were probably the best I’ve ever tasted. It didn’t take away the bitter taste of defeat (that seems to be inbuilt in my taste buds ever since coming second in the egg & spoon race at lower school) but it certainly took the edge off it.

My fish and chips moment today came courtesy of my companions Peter & Toni. Peter’s mindless optimism and Toni’s deferential cheer. From RTW Tony and In The Know Toby (He’s found beer in Ahmedabad….) and their accompanying me in the Swanny chant. From Paul & Hannah, a delightful young couple who escape this morass of a match to head to Kerala. From hotel-mate Andy and his Northern stoicism. From Rohan, the helpful tuk-tuk co-driver and cricket student (Tonight’s homework; Which international team does Geraint Jones currently play for?).

To be here. The bigger picture.

Yes, England have made a right ol’ mess of this so far. Yes, I’ve come a long ol’ way to see this right ol’ mess.
However…. It’s not quite 7-1 at Grimsby yet.

Probably ‘4-1 at home to Portsmouth, despite leading, on my birthday, I was violently sick the next day after eating dodgy prawns’ territory but there is still hope.*

So, absolutely. I’m loving this. I’d much rather be here at the sharp end than on my sofa. And I’m definitely looking forward to tomorrow and The Miracle of Motera…..

*Yes, yes. I know, it’s the hope that kills us. Hello Welsh Andy!

1st Day, 1st Test, Motera, Ahmedabad, India vs England

Tuk-tuking to the ground, two signs resonated as we chugged along the Ahmedabad backstreets. Firstly a melancholic daub on a decaying wall, The Youth Alliance vs Corruption, then further on a tired, more official exhibit marking the headquarters of The Gujurati Board of Pollution Control.
I wondered who had the more insurmountable task ahead of them.
Then I saw Virender Sehwag help give his team a massive lead at lunch on the first day and a more intimidating challenge than the two statements from my journey earlier confronted England’s new skipper Alastair Cook.
Sehwag’s innings, a mighty run a ball 117, was an innings typical of the man. It gives me great pleasure to write that because it’s been too long since we saw an innings of bullying brilliance from him. Sadly for England’s bowlers they were on the receiving end of this potentially match defining knock. Yet they did not help themselves. The bowling was too short, too wide. The fielding indolent. If ever a side need a route back into winning ways it is the home team and first Sehwag, then Cheteshwar Pujara benefitted from England’s malaise.
If Sehwag was the shot gun wielding hit man then Pujara proved to be India’s silent assassin. He stealthily compiled his runs, turning England’s attack over and delighting the locals with some delightful stroke play. The heir apparent to the recently retired Dravid, the young Gujurati looks to have the temperament and touch to be The Wall’s long term replacement, he ended the day two short of what promises to be an special century on his return to Test cricket.
Also making his return to the longer format of the game was Yuvraj Singh, the cheers that greeted his arrival eclipsed those even of Sachin Tendulkar, for a change. This popular cricketer finished on 24 and his every run was enthusiastically heralded by the swelling crowd. Singh’s recovery from cancer is one of the game’s more uplifting stories and surely no one could begrudge him a century on comeback….
Doing his best to stop him, and someone sadly and pertinently all too familiar with the workings of a hospital recently is Graeme Swann. Swann’s efforts with the ball was the only real high point for England and but for some sluggish catching from Jonathan Trott, who’s ill considered appeal compounded his error, the Notts bowler would have ended the first day with five wickets. Swann will have to contend himself with the title of being his country’s leading off spinner, his haul today taking him past Jim Laker’s tally of 193, for now.
England ended the day better than they started it, credit to Cook for finding some much needed fight among his team, and will look to the new ball and the fired-up Swann as a way of getting back into the match. Something they’ll need to do quickly if they are to get back in this match and ahead in the series. Otherwise, there’s a job going sorting out pollution or corruption in Gujurat to anyone who feels brave enough.

The BCCI are doing their damnedest to appear the most loathsome and odious governing board in world sport* and their clampdown on photography in the ground is the latest example of this. However, exclusively for DWC readers, here are some pictures of today’s action from inside the Sardar Patel Stadium, session-by-session. Enjoy.

Does anyone have a number for Jocelyn Goldsworthy? Or that bloke who does those natty sketches from the High Court? Or Leonardo Acropolis? They could make a fortune out here….

*Five days before I can start slamming certain hierarchies in other walks of life. You know who you are.

I meet my buddies Pete & Toni when picking up the match tickets from our source (Thank you unreservedly big fella.) late afternoon and we immediately hit upon the plan of going for dinner.

“The lady at our hotel recommended this place…. Vishalla.” Pete and I both concurred and the Sinfield’s driver Vijay took us on a tour of Ahmadebad by dusk, Divali illuminations stoically shining through the enveloping smog and spent firecrackers as we made our way through the city.
Our destination is on the cusp of an area of town Vijay cheerfully nicknames “Little Pakistan” and to the only dwelling in the city almost entirely uncontaminated by light. We’re greeted by a variation on the theme of fog; great swathes of asphyxiating incense that add to the mystical theme. It’s no surprise to find Ravi Shankar is one of the many notables to have dined here down the years.
So too has Sachin. And an old bloke with shoulder length hair who’s in lot of adverts out here.

Tonight we’re joining the great and good of Indian public life to have dined here, but as with such a lot of things in this wonderful country, not as quickly as we’d like.

“No food till half seven, but for an extra hundred rupees, you can see our museum till then, please pay here, now, thank you.”

So off we went. And not to just any museum. No dear reader, for an extra £1.40, we’d scooped the museum lottery jackpot….. The National Utensil Museum of India.

What followed was a combination of an Anglo-Indian game of Going For A Song with that Spanish Inquisition bit in Blackadder II; “Oh, it’s a scythe/ knee rest/ back scratch/ front fastening camel flask….” And an almost endless selection of receptacles- jugs, pots, colanders, pans. All that was missing was Didier Deschamps. Having spent more time there than was probably sensible we headed for some much needed tucker.

“No food yet, watch magic show, enjoy music, look at puppets.”

The latest hors d’ouvres was some chap with a limp, balancing bell-topped bamboo canes on his top lip, before attempting to simultaneously hit these bells through a pea shooter. I feared for him, I really did but our co-diners seemed to lap it up. Which, presumably, is how the poor ol’ boy got his limp in the first place.
It reminded me of the post credits sequence at the end of Phoenix Nights. I imagined it was the one-legged Preity Zinta tribute act’s night off.

Finally food and a feast of raw chillies, spices, dals, traditional Gujurati fayre, rotis, pickles, dumplings and sweets. Infact, all the other stuff they tell you to avoid in the guide books till at least six weeks into your Indian adventure. All that sat cross legged (“so that’s what those knee rests are for….”) and fastidiously waited on. The ever present incense and the fact that we could have been filming one of the night scenes in Bridge on the River Kwai added to a unique dining experience and a truly original taste sensation. Yes, really. ( See http://www.vishalla.com for details.)

I thanked Vijay for his driving (I know tuk-tuks are the real way to see Asia, but you never turn your nose up at a lift in an A/C Tata MPV) and thanked Peter & Toni for their generosity and bid them farewell until the morning and my raison d’être, the first day of the Test Match….

Postscript. I’m merrily tapping away now, but there is no way I’m going to be match fit after all that lot. So near yet so far. You’ll have to go on without me chaps.

Hello hotel telly. Hello plain roti and bottled water. Hello toilet.

Great food by the way. The batada vada that is.

Not the donkey.

Dryer than Gandhi’s flip flop goes the well worn expression. So fittingly Mohandas K’s home state, as well as being predictably arid, is alcohol free as well.

It’s what the great man would’ve wanted.

Not ideal if you’re an English cricket fan though.

Does anyone know where I can get a beer from in Ahmedabad?

I’d even take Lion Strong at room temperature*, the Sri Lankan pisshead’s drink of choice, at this stage.

Pull yourself together Wiss, things aren’t that bad. Maybe I can learn something about myself during this spontaneously enforced spell of prohibition.

Fresh water melon juice could be the future……

Happy Diwali everyone!

* Hello Phil, China, Tom, Pat & Ben!

“Air India?”The raised eyebrow was Roger Moore, the frown all Jeremy Paxman. “Seriously? Ha, ha. Good luck mate! My company stopped flying us with them years ago, they’re hopeless. And you actually chose them…..”

That’s how Dances With Chazzwazzers works ladies and gentlemen (for ease of use, let’s go with DWC from now on, shall we?); keeping tourism real so you can just read about it, hopefully laugh about it then make your own informed decision. So I was pumped. Ready for it. Bring it on. This half arsed approach to customer service and safety wasn’t going to flour any chapatis with me. I was going to delight you, first post up, with a withering critique of the aforementioned airline and their cackhandedness.

The truth, rather disappointingly, is nowhere as entertaining as fiction. The food was good, (well, for airline standards….), the choice of entertainment was ok, the attention to safety and security was every bit as complicit as it should be. I ended up with quite a lot more legroom than shut-eye as it happens, as my immediate co-passengers turned out to be an obliging young family with a teething newborn (those sleepless nights aren’t overrated are they brother?) and the very manifestation of a charming English rose who had come to India to get away from it all. While the complaisant, jolly stewardesses could have come straight from the second verse of a Neil Hannon song. So from expecting to damn, instead I have a modicum of praise for this seemingly embattled venerable elder statesman of the aviation world.

They were bloody late though. Or, if you go by the phenomenon that is India Time, perfectly punctual….