November 12, 2001

Agonising uncertainty!

- Jonathan Dyson

I have been in India for twelve days now, and I have been thoroughly enjoying myself. As I said in my first column, after the initial culture shock, I actually came to love Delhi - largely, I think because it was my first taste of India, and was just so different from England.

I have since been touring through Rajasthan, a quite, beautiful place. The great majority of Indian people I have met have been extremely friendly towards me, and the two days I spent at the Ranji Trophy match between Services and Delhi (see my piece on Bishan Bedi) were quite extraordinary.

I really could not have been made more welcome. Thank you to those who have e-mailed me with your comments, your thoughts on Indian and English cricket and your memories of previous English tours to India. Keep them coming! Anything like this that can help maintain a healthy relationship between these two great cricketing countries has to be a good thing.

On this theme, alongside the story of my time in India, now and again I will be discussing issues that are close to the heart of both English and Indian cricket followers. And with England's first warm-up match now less than a week away, it seems worth reflecting on how us, the fans, have been affected by the continuous uncertainties that have surrounded this tour.

I have discovered from speaking to several Indian fans that you are on the whole quite baffled as to why England should have ever had second thoughts about coming here. I must say that I share your feelings completely. I have quickly come to realise that India is by nature a peaceful country, with peaceful people.

And as an Englishman who loves his cricket, I have been at times treated like an icon. Admittedly, the reasons that some of the England players have had doubts about coming to India have not been based on India itself, but rather the fear of what either Bin Laden and his gang, or extremist Muslims in India, might do to them.

Yet even these fears are of course largely groundless. I find it hard to believe that anybody seriously believes that Bin Laden doesn't have far more pressing matters on his mind than organising an attack on the English cricket team. And there has been very little sign of troublesome protests by Muslims against Britain's involvement in the attacks on Afghanistan.

As a certain Mrs Ramprakash so astutely observed, India is a safer place to be than England at the moment. It is times like these when sports fans realise that the passion for their team goes beyond merely watching them in action, and following their scores on the television and in the newspapers.

In many ways, following a sports team is a 24-hour occupation. At any time of the day, a key player can get a serious injury, a coach can be sacked, and worst of all a match or tour can be cancelled. Watching England abroad is something I have looked forward to doing for several months now.

It involves a lot of money, and a lot of careful planning. It is difficult enough to arrange without living through constant doubt over whether the tour will actually go ahead. In fact, I would go as far as to say that experiencing this continuous uncertainty has proved more agonising than any of the infamous batting collapses that I have witnessed from England in recent years.

It is worth remembering that relatively speaking, a batting collapse is a gradual process, compared with, say, the announcement of a strange selection, the news that a player is injured, or a statement that a tour is off, all of which take no more than a minute.

As I'm sure many Indian fans will also feel, it is this knowledge that at any moment, the dream of a lifetime can disappear almost as quickly as a ball met by a Tendulkar off-drive, that leaves the fan in constant, agonising uncertainty. It isn't pleasant.

And it is all made worse by a horrible feeling of powerlessness, as there really is little the fan can do in situations like this. Too many times to remember, over the past weeks, I have found myself screaming at Ceefax (the English TV text service), newspapers and the internet, as the possibility of the tour being needlessly cancelled seemed ever more real.

What has made it even more frustrating is finding that you know more about the world affairs in question than some of the players. Yet, of course, it is they say who exercise greater power.

The day before the meeting between the English players, the ECB and the New Delhi High Commissioner at Lord's on 23rd October, I decided to e-mail the ECB. I asked for the players to be made aware at the meeting that there was still a group of fans fully intending on going to India, and that they should not forget that it us after all who keep them in the profession they love.

I asked the ECB to let me know if my thoughts were mentioned at the meeting, and if so the players' reaction to them. I got no response. It is all a strange echo from the build-up to England's last tour to India, when the quizzical omssions of David Gower and Jack Russell caused outrage even amongst that most conservative of groups, the MCC.

I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the result of that Test series. But one thing's for sure: even if England are to lose 3-0 once again, as an England fan it will be not be as painful an experience as the extraordinary build-up to this tour.

GE Features

Earlier Diaries:
A Backpacker's Diary
Bowled over by the great Bedi

Mail Jonathan Dyson

Illustration: Bijoy Venugopal