Opinion Diary Item: Cricket and Benglish in Dhaka

Traffic is video-footage of a city. At one stage of the prolonged journey, our car lay adjacent to two large buses packed with schoolgirls who had discovered a most glorious answer to helpless monotony. They had music for company. It was music of their own choice rather than from the rulebook of a headmistress. The sound was as jerky as the bus, but the songs were from Bollywood’s contemporary charts, about pillars of modern civilisation, like selfies. The kids were dancing with shared abandon, their moves clearly perfected by hours of television. It was an exhilarating sight. No wonder fundamentalists hate music; it liberates the soul from those who would imprison life in petty minds.

I am pleased to announce a world scoop. It is very likely that the IPL will soon abandon its Luddite mindset, and adopt international norms in umpiring. It will permit reviews of disputed decisions by cameras, the third eye in the sky. It is entirely incidental that the IPL might also make, as a consequence, even more money than it already does by offering advertisers the chance to conduct an instant out-not out opinion poll during the couple of minutes it takes for the third umpire to make a final call. Nothing to complain of, then. Any love story that marries justice with opportunity at the altar of holy cash will always have a happy ending.

As a captain, M.S. Dhoni has matured into half-tailor, half-doctor. He measures the opponent for every sign of strategic or tactical weakness, inadequate planning or individual frailty: An overfed belly, a thickening thigh, or inconsistency in the bowling battery. He acknowledges merit, and punishes lapse. His own attitude is clinical. Ideally, he would like the team to share his cool; but the gathering grey on the stubble across his cheeks has also made him old enough to treat histrionics from younger colleagues with parental indulgence. One senses, however, that a hint of censure is never far away. Too much emotion drives ability into a counterproductive cul de sac. After Dhoni lofted the six that sealed victory against the hosts at Dhaka, he fiddled with his gloves with the mild panache of a batsman who had got one job done and was now awaiting his next turn at the crease. He likes the feel of more silver in the cupboard, and why not; but does not quite see the necessity of going bananas about it. As Neville Cardus might have put it: Savile Row, meet Harley Street.