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| LOOKING BACK: Poster for Fire in Babylon |
Lighting the Fire in Babylon
The just released documentary film everyone is talking about is Fire in Babylon, which shows how black pride was restored when the West Indies dominated world cricket for 15 years in the 70s and 80s.
They deployed a battery of fast bowlers — Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft.
Perhaps there will be a documentary in 20 years about the resentment caused by the rise of India to the status of World Cup champions and the number one Test playing nation. England are determined to beat India this summer.
Of Fire in Babylon, directed by Stevan Riley, a young English director, Screen Daily says: “A cricket documentary may seem like a tough sell, but this one’s a belter.”
If shown in India, I am sure the 83-minute documentary would pack the cinema halls, making me wonder why we haven’t tried something similar with the altogether richer material available from Indian cricket.
“Fire in Babylon kicks off with the West Indies’ humiliating tour of Australia in 1975 under the new leadership of Clive Lloyd,” says Screen Daily. “Within a year, they were back in England listening to that team’s South African-born captain Tony Greig taunt how he’d make them ‘grovel’ — his Afrikaans accent a raw wound for a team sensitive to its nations’ slave ancestry.”
The Observer applauds “this riveting film” on how under the captaincy of Clive Lloyd, then Viv Richards, the West Indies abandoned the cheerful losing mode known as “calypso cricket” and became formidably aggressive winners. “It’s a rousing film about ex-colonials uniting to assert their pride and to recover a dignity that continued to be denied them by the English and Australians. Nothing gave them a greater desire to fight back than hearing Tony Greig, the deeply unpleasant South African-born English captain, say that he intended to make the Caribbean cricketers grovel. It’s great to see Greig get his comeuppance.”
Once playing a charity cricket match while I was still at school, I was inside the dressing room padding up, when there was a yell from the field — and I knew I was the next boy in.
Worryingly, the returning batsman asked: “Are you wearing a (protective) box?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Weren’t you?”
“Yes, but he’s just smashed mine.”
The “he” referred to the former West Indian fast bowler, Wesley Hall, way past his prime but still terrifying. I live to tell the tale because the rain came down just then and the game was abandoned.
Murali mauls
Michael Atherton, the former England captain-turned-cricket correspondent of The Times, is a clever man but was he being perhaps too clever when he interviewed former Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan for BBC Radio?
He did not want to bring up a painful question, gloated Atherton, but what did Murali think of Sri Lanka’s performance in the first Test in Cardiff which the visitors lost by an innings and 14 runs after being skittled out for 82 in the second innings?
Murali replied sweetly that “it’s one of those things” — “why I can remember England getting out for 41 in the West Indies in Antigua” (actually it was 51, in Jamaica in 2009, when England lost the first Test by an innings and 23 runs).
Atherton hurriedly moved on to his next question: had Sri Lanka’s batsmen “caught a little bit of a cold in Test cricket” as a result of playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL)?
Not really, Eoin Morgan played in the IPL but scored 193 for the England Lions against Sri Lanka, Murali pointed out — “you can’t blame Twenty20 cricket”.
Atherton moved on hurriedly to his next question: there was “so much talk about England trying to become number one”, so “who do you think is currently the best Test side in Test cricket?” he asked Murali.
If Atherton thought Murali was going to say England, he was disappointed.
“Definitely India is the best side because India has done well in Australia, they have done well everywhere,” Murali replied. “I think England has done well in Australia. But they have to go and beat sides in the subcontinent. That’s the most important place to beat people, especially in India. When they do that they will be number one.”
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| LOST YOUTH: Dodi Fayed with Princess Diana |
Moving Dodi
Brookwood Cemetery, M.F. Husain’s resting place, is where Dodi Fayed was also buried in 1997 when he was killed, along with Princess Diana, in a car crash in a Paris tunnel.
In accordance with Muslim tradition, 42-year-old Dodi was buried within 24 hours of his death in the Isna Ashani Muslim plot in Brookwood.
His father, Mohammed Al Fayed, whose 500-acre country estate in Oxted, Surrey, is 25 miles away, visited his son’s grave most nights.
But after 40 days, Dodi’s grave was opened in the middle of the night, the coffin exhumed by undertakers and reburied in his father’s estate.
Many notable people are buried in Brookwood, among them the Indian industrialist and philanthropist Sir Dorabji Tata (1859-1932); the author and Sufi master Idries Shah (1924-1996); and Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), an MP who was “unofficially known as the MP for India due to his sympathetic support for Indian self-government”.
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Alice’s dad
Lord Chris Patten, the affable Chancellor of Oxford University, does not mind that when he goes to India — he was in Calcutta in February — he is better known as “Alice Patten’s dad”.
Alice is the one who played “Sue”, alongside Soha Ali Khan, in Rang De Basanti.
Patten remembers Soha’s father, the cricketing Nawab of Pataudi — “he was two years older than me” — from their days at Balliol College (which Soha also attended, as did Pataudi’s father).
Alice, Patten tells me, has been involved in her second big production — actually, it’s her third. Her first son Sam has just been followed by another boy, Billy.
I rely on Patten to keep me informed on the latest in Indian fiction. Some years year ago he tipped me off about Vikram Chandra’s immensely readable Sacred Games.
Patten, who admired Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, is now reviewing the author’s new novel, River of Smoke.
I read a Tweet from someone at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford: “Chris Patten was in the shop last night absolutely raving about River of Smoke.”
How does Patten find the time — now that he has also taken on the chairmanship of the BBC Trust? On his quiet days, the chancellor distributes honorary degrees to the deserving — as he did in 2005 to one M. Singh, currently serving as Prime Minister of India.
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Tittle tattle
Britain has its own version of Baba Ramdev: the bearded Archbishop of Canterbury who is proving to be an equally troublesome priest. The latter has annoyed David Cameron by rubbishing his policies, alleging “no one voted” for the coalition’s “radical” welfare, health and education plans.
Incidentally, Baba Ramdev shouldn’t forget he has responsibilities in Scotland where he is raising an army — of yoga followers.
The last time I crossed the chilly Firth of Clyde with him to the Scottish island of Little Cumbrae, the guru was dropping broad hints to the assembled multitude that his yoga could help cure cancer.