SPECTATOR SPORT
Bowels and boredom
Simon Barnes
A BOMB in Colombo and the Australians and the West Indians refuse to play a match there in the World Cup, happy to forfeit their points rather than dare to play cricket in Sri Lanka; they will only fulfil their commitments in India and Pakistan. A bomb in London, but Pakistan and New Zealand have not dropped out of their summer cricket tours of England; the 15 nations who will come to England for the European football championships in June show no sign of panic. One is forced to come to the conclusion that it is not bombs that inspire such fear and loathing in the sporting heart, it is the subcontinent.
I have stood in the check-in queue at Heathrow behind a team of cricketers just about to set off for India. They were about to visit the richest and most enthralling cul- ture on earth. As feted sportsmen they would taste aspects of the subcontinent's riches that are denied the normal visitor. What, then, did they talk of as they stood in line? The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Taj and the Konarak temple were not men- tioned, nor were the cricketing mythologies of Ranji and the Maharajah of Viziana- gram. All subcontinental life could be reduced to a lavatory joke.
All over the walls of the Konarak, the stone couples grapple in lovely copulation, bliss on bliss. A few miles away, the Eng- land cricket team on its day off lies around the hotel swimming-pool, sulking and mak- ing lavatory jokes. What better method of drinking India's heady cup to the lees? But they have been advised, if not ordered, never to stray from the hotel. Ignore the advice and you get mobbed.
Derek Pringle, a singular-looking fellow in the streets of London, let alone Bombay, has often ignored such advice and gone exploring. He was not mobbed. If you seek anonymity, you can find it on the subconti- nent. You can find anything you want. But most sportsmen dislike anonymity even more than the subcontinent.
The truly farcical side of subcontinental fear and loathing was demonstrated by the affair of Graham Gooch and the poisoned prawn. The night before a Test match Gooch dined at — where else? — his hotel, selecting the Chinese restaurant and prawns. He was pretty ill afterwards and had to miss the match, which England lost. Self-inflicted wounds, but Gooch was uni- versally more pitied than blamed. What can you expect from the fiendish subcontinent?
It is the place where dragons hide in every mouthful, demons lie in wait on every streetcorner, and the apocalyptic Beast lurks in the lay.
And so, for most of the England crick- eters at the World Cup, the main problem is bowels and boredom. Boredom, in India? Lonely, oppressed by bad form, missing home and family — yes, I can understand all that. But bored? You really have to work to be bored in India.
Jack Russell, the England wicket-keeper, changed his life in India. Amazed by the wonders of the street, he wanted to draw what he saw. His second career, in drawing and painting, is now well established. But Pring and Jack apart, the prevailing tone of all cricketers — certainly not just the English ones — who visit the subcontinent is snivelling resentment. Ian Botham said that Pakistan was 'the sort of place every man would send his mother-in-law to, all expenses paid'. Phil Tufnell summed up the cricketer's India for all time: 'Done the ele- phants, done the poverty.'
Sports psychologists go on about making friends with your sporting environment, making it part of the winning process. When it comes to the subcontinent, sports psychology goes out of the window. And by a rum coincidence the last time England toured India, they lost a three-Test series 3-0. I'm not saying the subcontinent is easy, but in a way, that's the point. And have you tried sulking in a hotel room for day after day? The only place worth doing that in is Los Angeles.
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