Changing face of young England

India are pretty confident of winning the Under-19 Cricket World Cup to be staged in Sri Lanka between February 5 and 19. In all, 16 teams are due to play 44 matches at five different venues in Colombo.

However, if you happen to see Moeen Ali and Varun Chopra batting together, pleased be advised that Moeen, of Warwickshire, and Varun, of Essex, are England’s captain and vice-captain respectively. I hope they do well.

My guess is that the senior England side will do better in India than it did in Pakistan, where it was still winding down from being on a high after winning the Ashes against Australia.

I am sorry Vikram Solanki has been dropped from the England one-day side but unfortunately he failed to impress in Pakistan. Although there are now many players of Indian and Pakistani origin coming through the ranks, few, with the possible exception of Nasser Hussain, the former captain, have managed to dominate when selected for England.

There is now a body of opinion pressing for the 23-year-old left-arm spinner, Mudhsuden Singh (“Monty”) Panesar, of Northamptonshire to be picked for England. Among them is his county coach, Keppler Wessels, who says: “Towards the latter part of last season, he was definitely the best spinner in the country.”

In some ways, he reminds me of Harbhajan but there, for the moment, the comparison ends. Perhaps the way forward is to open up the Ranji Trophy to England players, including those of Indian origin. If Indian players can play for English counties, it’s only fair the compliment should be returned. It’s worth remembering that Prince Ranjitsinhji, after whom the domestic Indian trophy is named, played for Cambridge, Sussex and England ? never for India.

PLAY-ACT: Stills from Tamasha’s latest production, A Fine Balance

Fine Tamasha

Asian theatre in Britain has come a long way, which is apparent from the fact that Hampstead Theatre is currently hosting Tamasha’s latest production, A Fine Balance, an adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s novel set against the background of Indira Gandhi’s 1975 emergency.

Hampstead, still regarded as a village in north London, is said to contain more “luvvies” ? artists, actors, writers, directors and the like ? per square metre than anywhere else in the country.

Shortly before the double Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson was elected Labour MP for Hampstead, I went round the constituency, with its leafy lanes, elegant detached homes and nearby Hampstead Heath, interviewing many of the said luvvies.

One was the late James Roose-Evans who had set up the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1959. It has now dropped the “Club”, calls itself simply Hampstead Theatre and has moved to a modern, glass-fronted venue near Swiss Cottage underground station.

According to its official history, “the list of those working at Hampstead Theatre in its formative years could be a definitive list of the great and the good involved in the renaissance of British theatre in the 1960s: Harold Pinter, Ken Tynan, Harold Hobson, Peter Terson, Tennessee Williams, John Bowen, Alec McCowan, Jill Bennet, Roy Dotrice, David Hemmings, Edward Fox, and many more.”

I have a special affection for Hampstead, where the editor of a local newspaper, the Hampstead News, was indulgent enough to offer me my first job in journalism in Britain ? and the Hampstead Theatre Club was part of my beat.

Bringing Tamasha, a British Asian theatre company, to Hampstead is part of an exercise in broadening its audience. Mistry’s A Fine Balance is such a long novel (614 pages) but Tamasha has made a brave attempt in telling the story of the Parsee widow, Dina Dalal, who struggles to eke out a precarious existence from her tiny Bombay flat with a student lodger and a couple of tailors.

How Mrs Gandhi’s emergency changed India forever, for good and bad, will come as a revelation to most Britons, particularly young Indians. There is an especially chilling scene when the tailors return to their village and are hauled off to be sterilised under Sanjay Gandhi’s nasbandi campaign. In fact, one of them, who has angered the local thakur, is pulled back on to the operating table to be castrated on the eve of his wedding. No wonder Mrs Gandhi, whose portrait forms a permanent backdrop to the stage, lost the 1977 election.

It was good to see Shabana Azmi in the audience. “My nephew, Sagar (Arya), is in the cast,” said Shabana, who is in Britain to do a BBC film.

Sagar impresses as Nusswan, who is alternately cruel and kind to his sister, Dina, played by Sudha Bhuchar.

“We came across the book and loved it,” said Sudha, Tamasha’s artistic co-director, explaining how Mistry’s novel was selected for dramatisation.

Rest in peace

Perhaps the time has come to put the Bofors saga to rest, considering the freezing-unfreezing-freezing confusion last week over Ottavio Quattrocchi’s money. I have no idea whether he is guilty or not but after nearly 20 years, the main case against him seems to be that he is Italian, Sonia Gandhi is of Italian origin and, therefore, there must be something funny going on.

One thing I can disclose is that the Crown Prosecution Service has taken more calls from the Indian media on Quattrocchi than it has on any other Indian story.

“We are rather hoping it will die down,” says its overworked spokeswoman, who is now having to deal with something a little more pressing ? a report into how an innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead by British police last summer.

ACTION REPLAY: A still from the film, Kung Fu Hustle

Screen test

Paheli has, sadly, not been nominated for a BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscars. It was considered for nomination in the category, “Film not in the English language”, but was pipped by France’s De Battre Mon Coeur S’est Arrete (The Beat That My Heart Skipped); Morocco’s Le Grand Voyage; Kung Fu Hustle from Hong Kong; Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) from France and Germany; and Tsotsi from South Africa.

The trouble is that although Bollywood is big in Britain, most BAFTA members, who vote for the nominations, have probably never seen a Hindi film in their lives.

Tittle tattle

VOTED OUT: Faria Alam

To no one’s surprise, Faria Alam, the 39-year-old Bangladeshi secretary famous for her brief fling with the England coach, Sven-Goran Erikkson, has been unceremoniously ejected from the reality television show, Celebrity Big Brother.

Faria had little to say during the show, which despite being appalling ? or perhaps because of it ? is gripping the nation. When Faria did open her mouth, it was unwisely to accuse British viewers of being racist. They have voted her out.

“Do you think they’ll ever let a black or Asian girl or guy win this thing?” the cameras caught Faria telling two of the other housemates. “Are you out of your tree? Think about it, darling. Never. Remember that. This country? Oh please! Don’t even get me going on that. They would never, they’d be up in f... arms.”

Meanwhile, I understand plans are being developed to export the Big Brother idea to India, in the way Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was adapted into KBC.