HOWZZAT: Art or mere cricket balls

Pakistan looking for Indian swing

A cricket ball is a thing of beauty. I have one, mellow with age, rolling around in the boot of my car for no other reason than it looks sort of comforting there. My excessively tolerant wife has never once questioned its presence. Most times I pass through Bombay, I buy a new cricket ball which joins others on the mantelpiece, as though they are works of art, which, to me, at least, they are.

That a ball should be deliberately scuffed goes against the grain — seam, even. “Keep it off the grass,” we used to say as kids for we grew up believing that the shine should be preserved as long as possible. Possibly because we were too poor to be able to afford the real thing and learnt cricket using a rubber ball, the reverence for a gleaming cricket ball has been, I guess, a part of the psychological make-up of me and my friends.

Reverse swing, which the British media has been trying to explain in the light of the Darrell Hair vs Pakistan “ball tampering” crisis at the Oval, was an utterly alien concept to us as children.

Whatever else, this row should be good for Indian manufacturers of cricket balls as children all over the world rough up one side to see if it makes “unchristian” movements through the air.

By and by, this controversy will be resolved but before that happens, India and Indians ought to declare their hand. Some of my Pakistani friends here have been expressing disappointment at lack of Indian support for Pakistan in its hour of need.

My instinct is that Hair got it wrong and was precipitous in donning the black cap before pronouncing his verdict. This is one occasion when India should unreservedly throw its full weight behind Pakistan and ensure the country is not bullied into submission.

I noticed that even Ian Botham is backing Pakistan. Perhaps he is seeking redemption for having once observed: “Pakistan is a place to send one’s mother-in-law, all expenses paid.”

In political exile

Benazir Bhutto has become increasingly bitter about president Pervez Musharraf and wants to know why America, which is apparently keen to usher in democracy into the dark corners of the world, is propping up an army dictator.

Wouldn’t it be so much better if she were back in power, she appears to be saying.

Benazir was a guest last week on Dinner with Portillo, a BBC4 television programme in which a number of celebrities sit around a dinner table debating the big issues of the day.

Last week, while other guests tucked into saddle of lamb and sipped wines, Benazir appeared to eat nothing. Although she has got used to wearing a headscarf in public, her body language suggested she would be much more relaxed without one.

The problem for her is that after years in political exile, hers is now a voice in the wilderness. Still, Benazir also had a go at Musharraf in a newspaper article.

“Why is it that the terrorist trail always seems to lead back to Pakistan?” she asked.

In case we didn’t know, Benazir provides the answer.

While the West believes that Musharraf is the man to control the fire, Benazir’s is that the general is the man stoking the flames: “The new Pakistani dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, has played the West like a fiddle.”

She has the solution: “A democratic Pakistan, free from the yoke of military dictatorship, would cease to be the Petri dish of the pandemic of international terrorism.”

The article is rather thrown away on page 29. And readers, in case they have forgotten, are reminded that “Benazir Bhutto is a former prime minister of Pakistan”.

Fair deal: Three volumes of Sherlock Holmes on sale

Best buy

Since I was picked up recently by a colleague for listing all the Sherlock Holmes stories shown over a weekend on British television, I will resist the temptation to discuss the entire contents of my latest acquisition.

But passing a British Red Cross shop near my home last week, I could hardly believe that for only £2 a volume, The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, in three volumes was on sale — and “with all the original Strand Magazine illustrations by Sydney Paget, Frank Wiles and others”.

Second hand bookshops, very much a part of the culture of a vanishing Britain, allow people to collect and possibly reread different editions of their favourite stories. Now that discounting on published prices is allowed (unlike the cheating Oberoi bookshop in Delhi which uses stickers to inflate published prices — it is worth going round to the shop and peeling off the stickers), it has become harder for second hand bookshops in Britain to survive.

But for visitors to London I can recommend a good one — by the Thames Embankment behind the National Film Theatre is spread a good part of contemporary English literature.

Way to go: Holly Colvin

Teen talk

Isa Guha, who has been among the wickets for the England women’s cricket team, is not the only one in the side to be academically gifted. The spinner, Holly Colvin, got her GCSE results last week — she took 10 subjects and got A* (A star), the highest possible grade, in all of them.

Holly, a pupil at Brighton College, a co-educational public school, will be 17 on September 7.

On August.9, 2005, Colvin made her debut at Hove against Australia, becoming, at 15 years 336 days, the youngest cricketer (of either sex) to play Test cricket for England.

Sachin, incidentally, was 16 years and 205 days when he first played for India against Pakistan in 1989.

It would be a breakthrough if Holly plays for Cambridge men but to secure admission, she will have to heed the advice given last week by the university to aspiring pupils.

They should avoid “soft subjects”, such as media or business studies or drama, and instead take core subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry for which — much to the worry of British industry — there is falling demand among school children.

HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER: Chila Kumari Burman

Tittle tattle

Indian daughters in Britain are a loyal lot. Take, for instance, Chila Kumari Burman, a talented artist who was last week dispensing cones from an ice-cream van.

This did not change a signal in career, however.

The colourful van is full of memories for Chila, a Punjabi girl who grew up in Liverpool. As a child, she and her younger brother, Ashok, helped clean the van and served ice-cream from it.

“It belonged to my dad who was a popular figure as he drove around Liverpool selling ice-cream,” explained Chila.

By way of tribute to her late father, Bachan Singh Burman, she has kept his original designs on the van, now a mobile exhibition, and added others of her own, inspired she confesses, by Bollywood.

Her father was a part-time magician. He must have been because “he could sell ice cream at Christmas”.