Why Indians fail the Tebbitt test

Birmingham's Edgbaston cricket ground on Saturday could have been a stadium in Bombay or Bangalore. England's second largest cricket stad...

Birmingham8217;s Edgbaston cricket ground on Saturday could have been a stadium in Bombay or Bangalore. England8217;s second largest cricket stadium was packed to the gills with a riotous assembly of Indians producing medley of deafening sounds 8212; bugles, drums, dholaks. Bhangra was the flavour of the day. Indians must have outnumbered Englishmen 3-1 in the 25,000 strong crowd. quot;They8217;d fail the Tebbitt Test en masse,quot; said Derek Pringle, former English fast bowler who now writes for The Independent, and whose writing and sense of humour is far superior to his bowling.

Tebbitt, a former Conservative hardliner, had raised a stink some years back by charging that most immigrants in Britain, despite living here for years and even acquiring citizenship, supported their country of origin. Oh, he should have been in Edgbaston today. He8217;d have wanted to deport them en masse.

Birmingham is also Britain8217;s second largest city and used to be a much-derided industrial hub, rather like Pittsburg in the United States. But likePittsburg, the city has pulled itself out of a morass and is now a rather pleasant place, especially its flashy downtown areas. The city has about equal numbers of Indians and Pakistanis but today it was the former who were out in strength.

So as play began this morning, there were some eyebrows raised when umpires Javed Akhtar of Pakistan and Darrell Hair walked out. One would have thought the organisers would have kept Akhtar out of the such a key game, without any reference to the current tensions between India and Pakistan.

Hair too does not have a great umpiring reputation after calling Sri Lanka8217;s Muralitharan for chucking. The Lankans have made it known that they rather not have Hair standing in their games, so would it have been out of order for Indians to demand Akhtar not stand in their game. As it turned out, Akhtar8217;s tenure in the middle was fairly non-controversial. In fact, in the first hour of play he turned down three leg before appeals against Indian batsmen, none of which lookedout.

Tiger Pataudi, India8217;s captain for many years, mused once about how difficult it was for one to lead a side where players spoke so many different languages, were from so many different faiths and cultures, and had such widely differing habits.

Watching Ganguly and Ramesh open the innings, one wondered what language they were speaking in incidentally, when was the last time India had a long term opening pair of two left-handers?.

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Neither speaks great Hindi and communicating in English even if it is Indlish before Englishmen, would have been a giveaway. One reasons why Tamils should learn Bengali and vice-versa? Or should everyone learn Hindi?