TIES THAT BIND: Flintoff with wife

All for the sake of baby love

In old black and white English movies, you often find nervous fathers pacing hospital corridors, puffing away at cigarettes, while their wives are in the labour room giving birth. These days, however, fathers are positively encouraged to be present at birth to begin the bonding process with the baby. No wonder the England cricketer, Andrew Strauss, interrupted his Pakistan tour before Christmas to fly home for the birth of his first child.

Now, Andrew Flintoff, the key player in the England side shortly to tour India, also wants to be home when his wife, Rachel, has their second baby. This is due on March 20, two days after the start of the third Test in Mumbai.

Half a century back, I read somewhere, the late Pankaj Roy’s wife could follow proceedings only via radio and the odd telephone call when her husband scored 173 and Vinoo Mankad 231 against New Zealand in Madras in what still (happily) remains the record 413 for the first wicket.

I wondered if I was reading a recent report right ? the bit about Rahul Dravid loading a pram for the flight to Pakistan (I bet this is a first).

Until a decade ago, England players were encouraged to bond more with their team mates, especially on long tours, than with their own families.

“The strain took an inevitable toll as the marriages of Darren Gough, Graham Thorpe, Dominic Cork and Mark Butcher all ended in divorce while they were on active service,” one commentator has pointed out.

It seems utterly civilised that the Australian authorities now actually pay for partners to travel with their men. However, during India’s unhappy 1996 England tour, many Indian dignitaries who dropped in to see Mohammed Azharuddin told me that the presence of the skipper’s model girlfriend, Sangeeta Bijlani, was proving disruptive.

Flintoff, who last week became an Honorary Freeman of Preston, his home city ? the ceremony was presided over by its Indian-born mayor, Bhikhu Patel ? faces a conflict of loyalties.

“I’d like to be at the birth but I’ll be talking to Rachel before we make a decision,” says Flintoff. “I (also) need to talk to the coach (Duncan Fletcher) and the captain (Michael Vaughan).”

But Mayor Patel tells me Flintoff has privately made up his mind. “Over dinner he told me, he will come back for the birth. If I were him, I’d come back. There’s so much responsibility on his shoulders but family comes first.”

CRITIC’S CHOICE: A still from the film, Pyaasa

Hot shots

Legendary film critic Derek Malcolm, who named Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah at number 55 among his “100 Greatest Films to Build Your DVD Library” has now put in Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa at 82.

Derek, formerly of the Guardian and now of the Evening Standard in London, says: “The Hindi film industry, though frequently aimed at the lowest common denominator, did make some masterpieces and this is one of them.”

Derek’s own life story, which really ought to be optioned, would out-Bollywood Bollywood any day. In his autobiography, Family Secrets, the Eton-educated Derek reveals how his father shot dead his mother’s lover ? and got off scot free. When his mother died seven years ago, 22 years after his father, Derek’s maternal aunt called him and remarked casually: “By the way, your mother asked to tell you your father wasn’t your father.”

War and peace

Following American ambassador David Mulford’s characteristically subtle “vote with us against Iran or else” message, the Indian government should closely study how backing George Bush’s Iraq war has ruined Tony Blair politically.

Blair has done what no other Labour leader has done ? win three consecutive general elections. But whatever happens between now and when he hands over to Gordon Brown, he will be remembered only for taking Britain into an “illegal” war. These days it is difficult to find anyone who even bothers to defend the war. It was a terrible mistake, according to even those who initially supported military action.

Some will argue that pressed by Bush, Blair had no real choice. Others point out that Harold Wilson kept Britain out of Vietnam. Blair ? and Britain ? certainly have paid a heavy price for not opposing Bush.

What Indians do need to understand, however, is that the Americans have a real phobia about Iran, stemming from the capture of the US embassy in Teheran (I know because I was outside the embassy as it happened ? and stayed in Teheran for 444 days of the siege, which was my “punishment” for telling my paper the whole affair would end within a couple of hours). It might seem a trifle ironic that the United States is threatening to retaliate against India over Iran, which has had illegal nuclear help from Pakistan, which remains Washington’s “close ally in the war against terror”.

India certainly shouldn’t capitulate to America but a knee jerk reaction ? “we are the biggest democracy in the world, how dare they talk to us like that?” ? is inadvisable. The late Ayatollah Khomeini and his fellow mullahs went out of their way to humiliate the Americans during the long hostage crisis. That wound is still raw. It’s not a good idea to rub red chilli into it.

Learning from Blair’s fatal error, India’s role, as psychiatrist-cum-elder brother, should be to bridge the gap between America and Iran.

“Christians cannot demand for themselves freedoms in other parts of the world if other people do not have freedoms here (in Britain). So just as I struggled in Pakistan, so I struggle for minorities in this country,” Nazir-Ali told me. Some people may not like it but he would be a good man to speak out, not only against persecution of Christians in Pakistan, which forced him to seek shelter in Britain in the first place, but also against persecution of Christians in India.

MATTERS OS THE HEART: Simon Hughes

A gay life

Most days I drive to work through Bermondsey, a once working class area of south London but now upwardly mobile with many converted studio flats for the socially ambitious. It’s a constituency which has been represented in parliament since 1983 by its MP, Simon Hughes, 54, president of the Liberal Democratic party ? he took over from the Indian, Lord Navnit Dholakia.

Hughes is now contesting the leadership of his party, following the ousting of Charles Kennedy because of the latter’s drinking problems. After denying he was homosexual, Hughes has now “accepted publicly that I have had homosexual relationships in the past as well as heterosexual ones”. Another leadership aspirant, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, 41, married with two young children, had to drop out after he was exposed as having had homosexual relationships with “rent boys”. Back in the 1970s, Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberals, was accused in court of hiring a hitman to bump off a troublesome male model with whom he had allegedly had an affair. The model was not killed but his dog, sadly, was.

I predict that by and by, bi-sexuality will come to be accepted as perfectly “normal”, just as homosexuality is today.

Wise move

Westminster council has promised to waive ?300 worth of parking tickets issued to members of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue trying to rescue the whale (in the Thames).

Tittle tattle

Last week’s special report on India in the Financial Times quotes the commerce minister, Kamal Nath, as saying that back in the bad old days, Indian delegates travelling abroad would return home with various desirable items on a “List” ? things like Toblerone, Vat 69, Old Spice, and, oddly, Brut.

Brut? Really?

I don’t wish to offend Brut users in India but back in Britain, the deodorant is associated with boxers and night time security guards, worthy though they are.