On the Road with Zaltzman
Impromptu cricket matches and an elephant
I arrived in Colombo yesterday to be greeted by (a) my wife and children; (b) more heat than a pasty-skinned Englishman is genetically designed to withstand; and (c) the confirmation that England had definitely lost to Ireland the day before
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
I arrived in Colombo yesterday to be greeted by (a) my wife and children; (b) more heat than a pasty-skinned Englishman is genetically designed to withstand; and (c) the confirmation that England had definitely lost to Ireland the day before. Just in case I had not heard the news, immigration officials, taxi drivers and hotel staff were only too willing to inform me that England had definitely lost to Ireland the day before. They conveyed the sad tidings with admirable enthusiasm.
Colombo is a very different place to London. At home, few advertising billboards feature Thilan Samaraweera. Yet. Nor are there multiple impromptu cricket matches taking place in any available space – I saw at least six on the journey in from the airport to the city, which is around 5.99 more than you will see on the average journey into London from Heathrow. Nor is it common in the capital of England to see an elephant in a temple by the side of the road casually munching his afternoon snack and watching the traffic whizz by. As first impressions of a country go, it was an impressive effort by the Tear Drop Island. (Although I acknowledge that, if you absolutely hate cricket and think elephants are a living skewer in the eye for Charles Darwin, you might not have been so impressed.
Aside from the deep feelings of name-jealousy that all British people feel here – is there a single Sri Lankan with a name as dull as Andy? or a single Brit will a moniker as spectacular as Asoka de Silva’s first-name masterpiece, Ellawalakankanamge ‒ an English cricket fan might feel a tweak of envy at the pre-eminence of the sport in this country. Today, I will see Sri Lanka take on Australia at the Premadasa. I have seen Bangladesh in Dhaka (on a better-behaved and rather chirpier day than yesterday), and India in Bangalore (veering between adulation, resignation, exultation and relief), so after tomorrow’s game I will be able to give you definitive verdicts on which country’s supporters, and stadium PA systems, are the noisiest.
Full postThe finest innings of all time by a man with pink hair
Kevin O’Brien narrowly beats Wally Hammond to the title
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
I admire a country that shows cricket highlights in airport departure lounges. It shows an appreciation that there is no part of modern life that cannot be improved by the showing of cricket highlights. However, why the authorities at Bangalore airport felt it necessary this morning to show highlights of yesterday’s England against Ireland clash remains a mystery. I would have thought that showing highlights of the recent Melbourne Test Match, or England’s 1987 World Cup semi-final win over India, or a film about Bodyline, would have been more appropriate.
For whatever reason, England v Ireland it was. Despite it being a rather mundane, predictable match. For the first 75 overs. Admittedly, the last 25 overs perked up a bit. Even so, there was not much to savour for the hardcore Michael Yardy fans in the airport, an audience that is too little catered for by the cricketing highlights industry. They can watch a few glimpses on the internet of Garfield Sobers, Yardy’s spiritual predecessor and cricketalike as a useful left-hand batsman and tidy purveyor of seam and spin, but it is not the same as watching the man himself.
I digress. It is a rare privilege to see a cricketer propel himself from relative anonymity into immortality in the annals of the game. Kevin O’Brien did so yesterday, in what was, without any question, the finest innings I have seen by someone with pink hair (and it possibly even surpassed Wally Hammond’s 240 at Lord’s in 1938, after the great English batsman fell asleep in a bowl of beetroot soup at dinner the night before the game – he was eternally thankful that his great innings was recorded only in black and white).
Full postBoomtown Bangalore and the Bat Bash Bonanza
Andy Zaltzman's second World Cup podcast features reports from the crucial Bangalore Brave Hearts v Hyderabad Nawabs game, and a slightly less diverting international held in the same city, featuring one Peter Suchin Tendulkar
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
For those of you unable to stream or download the audio of the World Cup Cricket podcast, below is a transcript of the scripted parts of the show. But it is supposed to be listened to, not read.
This week’s podcast features some thoughts about and sounds from the Bangalore clash between India and England, plus some outright lies.
The music in the podcast is by Kevin MacLeod.
Full postWhen MS met WG
We have a picture too
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
Another day, another book launch. Stumped, a book of caricatures of the Indian World Cup squad, for which young Malayali artist Shijo Varghese drew the pictures and I wrote the text, was unveiled for the world yesterday by MS Dhoni, aided by Harbhajan Singh, Virat Kohli and Piyush Chawla, who very generously gave their time to attend the launch at a Bangalore hotel.
As you can imagine, there was considerable excitement. Dhoni has wanted to meet me ever since hearing about my match-winning innings of 29 not out for Penshurst Park against Leigh in the titanic West Kent Village League local derby showdown of 1998 (“surely one of the finest knocks by a balding lapsed-Jewish redhead lefthander batting at No. 9 in the history of the West Kent Village League” - EW Swanton, Daily Telegraph). Harbhajan cannot sleep without someone first reading him my latest blog as a bedtime story. Chawla kept asking me for tips on legbreak bowling – in my experience, I told him, the slow, looping full-toss, landing full-pitch on top of middle stump is a very difficult ball to play, particularly if you are bowling down a slope with the sun behind the bowler’s arm. Kohli, meanwhile, took copious notes as I gave him detailed technical advice from my own illustrious batting career on how to score all of your runs behind square on the off side whilst still managing to maintain a steady 20 runs per 100 balls strike-rate against bowlers aged either more than 55 or less than 14.
This was my second book launch. The global unveiling of my first book, a hastily-written effort about the credit crunch in late 2008, involved me sitting at home, opening a package with a couple of copies in it, saying, “Oh good. That looks nice,” and telephoning my mother. There were rather more photographers at this one - when will the paparazzi let me live my own life? - as the local media snapped away feverishly. I stood next to the Indian skipper, feeling distinctly un-photogenic.
Full postWhy Tendulkar is bigger than Woods or Federer
I am going to go out on a journalistic limb and say that yesterday’s game in Bangalore was, without question, a decent cricket match
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
I am going to go out on a journalistic limb and say that yesterday’s game in Bangalore was, without question, a decent cricket match. I am sorry if any readers take offence at that, but I am sticking with it. Even my grandfather enjoyed it, and not only has he never really been much of a cricket fan, and as a South African had no emotional affiliation to either side, but he has been dead for 30 years. That is a measure of how exciting this game was – adorned with cricketing brilliance from the start, and topped off with an exploding glacé cherry of a culmination eight hours later.
Even some of the more battle-hardened hacks in the press box seemed to quite enjoy it ‒ I even spotted a couple of half-smiles creeping onto journalistic faces, before the responsibilities of office returned ‒ and there can be no higher compliment for a game of cricket than that.
For me, this was a first experience of seeing India play at home, and of Sachin Tendulkar playing in front of his own people. I chose a good game with which to start. I can think of few, if any, experiences in sport to match watching Tendulkar succeed in a home game. Roger Federer may occupy a similar status of universally-acknowledged greatness within tennis, but I think it is fair to say that Switzerland is not quite as passionate about tennis as India is about cricket. If Federer were to simultaneously play tennis whilst hoarding gold and providing banking facilities for dubious dictators, perhaps the fervour of his support would match that for Sachin. But the Swiss population is unlikely ever to top the one billion mark.
Full postWhy stand-up comedy is like the first day of a Test
Had someone told me as a child that, at some point in my life, I would jump out of a chair in an office in Bangalore when watching a Bangladesh bowler take an Irish wicket on the television, I would probably not have believed them
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
Had someone told me as a child that, at some point in my life, I would jump out of a chair in an office in Bangalore when watching a Bangladesh bowler take an Irish wicket on the television, I would probably not have believed them. Certainly, I had an unquestioning love for cricket from shortly after birth. Possibly, subconsciously, from shortly before birth. I was womb-bound throughout the English Test summer of 1974, which involved a 3-0 drubbing of India and a wet 0-0 against Pakistan. Perhaps my mother, who tragically does not have cricket in her life (may cricket have mercy on her soul), had inadvertently left a radio on whilst Chris Old and Geoff Arnold were skittling Ajit Wadekar’s Indians for 42, leaving me with a lifelong innate respect for nagging English seam bowling. I will have to consult a shrink to be sure.
But leap out of my chair I did. Whilst maintaining strict and irreproachable journalistic objectivity, of course. I must state that I have nothing against Ireland as a team – they were superior for most of the match ‒ or as a nation. Other than one particularly harrowing stand-up gig in Killarney in 2002. But I am prepared to accept that none of the current Ireland squad or management were responsible for booing me off stage on that occasion.
(I have often thought that a stand-up gig can be analysed in terms of the opening session of a Test match. On occasions I have come off stage after a show that went quite well thinking, “92 for 2, not bad, bit of a slow start, and a careless run-out with that ill-advised joke about global warming, but I gradually took control and was stroking it around nicely by the end.” A tough gig might be 76 for 4 – an early clatter of wickets in the face of some hostile heckling, followed by a grim struggle for dignity. A great gig can feel as if Virender Sehwag and Sanath Jayasuriya have cut loose in tandem. At Killarney, I was 42 for 8, with my star routine retired hurt with a badly fractured punchline. It was a tough wicket, the bowling was merciless, and the umpires were biased.)
Full postNo rogue snacks please, this is Delhi
A vastly impressive South African performance yesterday was overshadowed by an even more impressive effort by the various security forces in operation at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
A vastly impressive South African performance yesterday was overshadowed by an even more impressive effort by the various security forces in operation at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi. Their indefatigable determination to ensure that no rogue snacks entered the ground was reminiscent of Albert Einstein’s quest to unlock the secrets of the universe.
Those lorryloads of contraband nibbles missed out on being chomped on to the backdrop of a fairly routine match, but one illuminated by two innings of extreme class and an outstanding international debut by much-travelled legspinner Imran Tahir, who gave every impression of being the missing piece in South Africa’s team jigsaw.
This is not to say that, as in previous World Cups, when the pressure cranks into hyperdrive, South Africa will not find a way of dousing that jigsaw in coffee, or letting the Australians tear it up and throw it into a bin, or reading the instructions wrong and feeding it to a dog. But this was an imposing opening by the 1999 and 2003 Sporting-Blooper-Of-The-Year award winners.
Full postEngland get poor performance out of the way early
Nagpur saw a much more entertaining game than most were expecting
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
Nagpur saw a much more entertaining game than most were expecting. England cannily elected to get their worst possible bowling and fielding performance out of the way early on in the tournament to avoid it befalling them in a more important game later, and the Netherlands batted with verve, fielded tenaciously and bowled with discipline to prove that dressing head-to-toe in orange can lead you to the brink of a famous World Cup victory, as well as to the dock in an American court case. If only Allen Stanford had known.
No-one could claim this match represented a marketing triumph for the World Cup. I suppose when you have built a stadium as impressive as the splendid VCA, the last thing you want is people sitting in it and spoiling the aesthetic. Admittedly, England playing the Netherlands in the first week of a marathon tournament in a stadium in the middle of nowhere with minimal-to-zilch transport links would be a hard sell even for the most persuasive of salesmen.
The small crowd that did attend were jaunty and voluble throughout, with a defiantly vocal stadium announcer not merely egging them on, but omeletting them on with an unstoppably loud cocktail of decibels and persistence. He announced bowling changes and score updates as if they were rock legends. He announced that the bowling was not being changed with equal gusto. He announced announcements that no-one had previously thought needed announcing. And then he announced some more. It was a sterling performance.
Full postWhy we need three games a day
The first of Andy Zaltzman’s epic audio despatches from the World Cup
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
Here is the script of episode one of Andy Zaltzman’s World Cup podcast, featuring an interview with a Bangladesh fan in Fatullah, and some fantastic audio footage of the crowd at the World Cup opening match, plus some of Andy’s usual cricketous garbage.
The music in the podcast is by Kevin MacLeod.
For those of you unable to stream or download the audio, below is a transcript of the scripted parts of the show. (But it is supposed to be listened to.)
Full postTwo breathtaking days in Dhaka
Day two of my Asian cricket watching career
Andy Zaltzman
25-Feb-2013
Day two of my Asian cricket watching career. A stunning and joyous occasion for fans of cricket, Bangladesh, and the sound of 35,000 people hitting major decibel levels like Glenn McGrath used to hit a good length. But a slightly disappointing match. Bangladesh never looked likely to win from the moment that Virender Sehwag’s eyes fell deeply in love with a loosener by Shafiul Islam, and instructed Sehwag’s bat to tell the loosener the full extent of their affections by obliterating it for four.
Despite the long-inevitable Indian victory, the crowd treated cricket to an almost unbroken eight-hour noise marathon. In the early stages, they were cheering rudimentary pieces of ground fielding as if Nelson Mandela had just ridden into the ground on a unicorn, discovered a cure for all known diseases live on stage, and then breakdanced on his head to the tune of a Beethoven’s piano sonata.
The early fever was quelled by India’s two great openers, who were given the chance to dictate the match by Shakib Al Hasan’s decision to bowl first. It looked like it would take something special to remove Tendulkar, and it did. Unfortunately, that something special was not a devastating piece of bowling, but a piece of sub-schoolboy running between the wickets. Sehwag appeared to be preoccupied – maybe he was checking his emails on his Blackberry, or trying to remember a recipe for Crepes Suzette, or thinking about whether table tennis has any rules. Whatever it was, he was not paying attention, the TV replay showed Sachin Tendulkar narrowly short of his ground by approximately 19.8 yards, and the dismissal uncorked a Jeroboam of bedlam in the stands.
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