The Sitar

FB is on a short assignment in India.  While he is away he has left a few posts in the bowling machine summarising some of the things India means to him.  

Ravi Shankar

Fantasy Bob's knowledge of Indian music is hugely limited.  He can recognise the sitar and the tablas.  He has heard of Ravi Shankar.  He has enjoyed the occasional snatch of Bollywood and Banghra.

But like many cricketers of his particular vintage, he became familiar with Indian sounds when western rock musicians discovered them and incorporated them into their tunes.  This influence also extended to muzak - FB also remembers how at one time background music in Indian restaurants which were based on sitar versions of such western classics as Yellow Bird or As Time Goes By.

So while FB wouldn't really know Raga from Ragtime, and in tribute to the 1960s, here are his 5 top tunes with Indian sounds in them.  Like Far Out, Man.

• Hole in My Shoe - Traffic
• Paint it Black - The Rolling Stones
• WithinYou Without You - The Beatles
• Norwegian Wood - The Beatles
• And one song that makes fine use of the tabla - Little Cloud by the Incredible String Band

And for those who yearn for the real thing, here  is an example of the real thing Ravi Shankar's Raga Miniature

Reading India

FB is on a short assignment in India.  While he is away he has left a few posts in the bowling machine summarising some of the things India means to him. 

India is known to Fantasy Bob only through books films and second hand accounts.  Here are his favourite books about India - a fairly conventional set, and overly focussed on the British and the Raj and all that, but that's FB fairly conventional.

A Passage to India - EM Forster - a classic presentation of the clash of the imperial and traditional cultures - prejudice and repression - what happened in the Mulibar Caves?

The Raj Quartet - Paul Scott - four novels describing a series of incidents at the end of Imperial India from several points of view.  Compelling reading.

Staying On - Paul Scott - a follow up depicting how teh end of Empire affects some of the colonial characters.  Nostalgic and sad.

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - a complex multi layered telling of aspects of the traumatic birth of modern India - this was a controversial and exciting debut by Rushdie but not as controversial as his subsequent Satanic Verses which led to a Fatwah being declared against him.

The Siege at Krishnapur - JG Farrell - a story about the impacts on the settler community of the Sepoy rebellion in 1857

Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - an Englishwoman finds the truth about her long dead aunt and her passionate relationship with an Indian prince

The Last Moghul - William Dalrymple - a history of the early colonialists and how they embraced Indian culture, until the Victorian State and the missionaries intervened

An Indian Summer - James Cameron - FB's favourite journalist of all time, who died in 1985, An Indian Summer, tells about his relationship with India; his marriage to Moni, an Indian; and his serious car accident and near death in Calcutta.


FB is aware of such titles as A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy but to his shame he has not read them. He will be reading White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, the Booker Prize winner in 2008, on the trip.

Five Indian Cricketers

FB is on a short assignment in India.  While he is away he has left a few posts in the bowling machine summarising some of the things India means to him.  

Fantasy Bob always found it a joy to watch the Indians when Test match cricket used to be available on the BBC.  He shared their joy at the first series victory in England in 1971and their first World Cup triumph in 1983.  Each touring side had special players who would go on to join the greats.  It is a hard choice, but here are Fantasy Bob's 5 all-time favourite Indian cricketers

Bishan Bedi -  67 Tests 266 wickets at 28.71.  He captained India on 22 occasions.  For FB Bedi is eternal, the epitome of the Indian spinner. A smooth effortless action that was a thing of beauty in itself and that kept the ball on a string. Bedi has referred to T20 cricket as 'the most vulgar expression of cricket' another factor that endears him to FB. He finished his career with 1560 in first-class wickets — more than any other Indian.

Kapil Dev - 131 tests 5248 runs @ 31.05; 434 wickets @ 29.64.  Kapil retired in 1994 as one of the great all rounders, holding the world record for the most number of wickets taken in Test cricket, a record subsequently broken by Courtney Walsh in 2000. At the time, he was also India's highest wicket taker in both major forms of cricket, Tests and ODIs).  He is the only player in the history of cricket to have taken more than 400 wickets and scored more than 5,000 runs in Tests. On 8 March 2010, Kapil Dev was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.  He captained India to their first World Cup vistory in 1983.

Farokh Engineer - 46 Tests 2611 runs @ 31.08; 82 dismissals  India's first-choicewicket-keeper during the 1970s and a Lancashire favourite.  An ebullient cricketer, a highly useful, stylish and very aggressive batsman.

Mohinder Armanath - 69 Tests 4,378 runs @ 42.50, with 11 hundreds and 24 fifties.  Rated by many of his oppnents as the greatest batsman they faced although he was in and out of the Indian side.  In 85 ODIs, he scored 1,924 runs at 30.53. Mohinder Amarnath is also the one and only Indian who has been dismissed on handling the ball and obstructing the field in One-Day Internationals.

Raul Dravid - 164 Tests, 13288 runs @ 52.31, 36 centuries, also slip supreme with 210 catches.  Of all the great talents in the recently passed and passing golden generation, it is Dravid that FB admires most.  Others may take the limelight but Dravid delivers for the team. And he played for Scotland.  On 14 December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to address at the Bradman Oration - his speech is well worth reading for his open and convincing analysis of the issues facing the modern game.

A Passage to India

For reasons that are more properly recorded as fiction and therefore are unfit for treatment in this fact driven blog, Fantasy Bob has been summoned to India for a few days.

It may surprise his world wide readership to know that this is not the response of the BCCI to the recent failures of Indian Test cricket and the dwindling crowds for the IPL. There would be evident sense in the BCCI seeking FB's insights into their problems. But, so far, they have declined his offer of a special consultation.

FB's purpose in visiting is far more mundane and not a subject of any interest to his readership.  Nevertheless he is sure that news of his arrival will travel quickly and there will be a vast crowd there to welcome his arrival at New Delhi airport.  That there is a large crowd there 24 hours a day every day should not be taken as evidence that the particular large crowd is there for the purpose of welcoming him.

FB has left a few small posts about various things Indian which will come out of the bowling machine while he is away.  All in all these simply reveal his ignorance about the great sub-continent.  Regrettably FB's trip will not allow him to do much by way of exploration outside hotels, offices and seminar room so this ignorance is likely to remain unimproved.

Indian crowd celebrates news that FB is coming

The Perfect Game

Time for some baseball.

Gehrig

Fantasy Bob has hugely enjoyed baseball on his visits to the USA. The gum-chewing, seed-spitting, crotch-hitching clamour of it is a cultural phenomenon.  FB is sure that as a game it is inferior game to cricket in every respect, except perhaps statistics or more correctly things to have statistics about.

On 3 June 1932 Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees hit 4 home runs. Gehrig is one of baseball's greats, he holds the record for consecutive games played (2130 - there were allegations that to extend the record management would cancel the game if he was injured). He also holds the record for the number of grand slams hit - 23.  If you don't know what a grand slam is, FB will elucidate further below. Gehrig's life however ended in tragedy as he died at the age of 38 from a form of what Europeans know as motor neurone disease, a condition which still bears his name in the US.

Lazzeri

In the same game Gehrig's team mate Tony Lazzeri hit for the natural cycle (hitting a single, double, triple and home run in sequence). Lazzeri is one of only 14 major league baseball players to hit for the natural cycle and the only player to complete a natural cycle with a grand slam, which he did in this game. The grand slam is when the batter not only hits a home run himself but does so when all the bases are loaded bringing 3 other runs to the team.

As baseball players go these guys were Test Match Quality.  With other legends Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel, they formed part of what was called Murderer's Row, the Yankees celebrated batting line up of the 1930s.  It was the Sehwag, Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman of its day and the name could equally have been applied to them in the recently passed golden years.

Natural cycle, grand slam - these are great terms. While grand slams are quite regular, natural cycles are statistically very rare. Another rare feat is that of the perfect game - a game in which a pitcher (or combination of pitchers) pitches a victory in which no opposing player reaches base. This feat has been achieved only 21 times in the history of major league baseball, most recently by Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox on April 21, 2012. To add to the gum chewing romance, a perfect game is, by necessity, both a no-hitter and a shutout.

FB found himself wondering what a natural cycle could be in cricket. A batsman could not score 1,2,3,4,5,6 off successive balls in an over, because after ball 1 he would find himself at the wrong end. 2 batsmen could do it. Or a batsman could score in sequence off balls he faced which if there was no other scoring would take him all or part of 4 overs. Has this ever been done? Who knows? Is it worth finding out? Probably not since such a feat would be unlikely to have any impact on the game's outcome. But cricket could have a new concept of the full natural cycle in which 1,2,3,4,5,6 were scored followed by the sequence in reverse. Put 0 at each end and there is something of real beauty.

But if the natural cycle is of limited interest in cricket, then the grand slam is not. The equivalent - scoring the maximum available by the rules of the game from any one hit is scoring a 6 - but that is too mundane and all too common. Scoring the maximum available off an over is however less common and deservedly could be called the Grand Slam. These are very rare:

• In  August 1968, Garfield Sobers playing for Notts against Glamorgan became the first player to hit six sixes off a single six-ball over in first-class cricket.
• In January 1985 Ravi Shastri did the same playing for Bombay against Baroda 
• In March 2007, Herschelle Gibbs became the first person to hit six sixes off an over in a One Day International match when South Africa played Netherlands at the 2007 Cricket World Cup, . 
• In September 2007 Yuvraj Singh hit six sixes for India against England during the inaugural ICC Twenty20 World Cup.  And for the record the bowler was Stuart Broad now England's T20 skipper.

Verity

Taking the definition straight from baseball, a perfect game in which a bowler ends up with 10 for 0 off 10 deliveries would require a wicketless maiden to be bowled at the other end.  No bowler has ever taken 10 for 0.  The best Test return is Jim Laker's 10-53 against Australia in 1956.  The best ever First Class return is 10-10 by Hedley Verity for Yorkshire against Notts at Leeds.  By some coincidence this was achieved in the same year that Gehrig and Lazzeri were doing their stuff above.  1932.  Some year.

Does this mean that the concept of the perfect game is impossible in cricket?  Not at all, says Fantasy Bob.  What these baseball fans do not realise is that cricket is by definition the perfect game.

Jubilee

Some will say that go ahead Edinburgh cricket club Carlton's Jubilee planning should have been more strategic.  Some will have said they could have seen this event coming for some time - 60 years in fact - and might have given themselves some time to consider how they should best mark it.  Some might suggest that for the club hastily to form a Jubilee Planning Committee the night before the event might smack of short termism. If not panic.  Others will observe that when the Committee's Chair and solitary member is Fantasy Bob, the Club is just taking the Michael.

However FB has grown into the role.  He has noted that when the Silver Jubilee happened in 1977, there was a special Jubilee Test between England and Australia at Lords.  This match, which ended in a draw and was graced by a fine century by Bob Woolmer and 7-78 by Bob Willis, produced record receipts for a cricket match in England.  There is no special Jubilee Test this year - have the marketeers missed something?  Or are all the Tests Jubilee Tests this year?

Nevertheless as newly appointed Chair and solitary member of the Carlton Jubilee Planning Committee Fantasy Bob promises that Grange Loan will be the epi-centre of the nation's Jubilee celebrations this weekend.

On Saturday, Grange Loan will see the Jubilee 2nd XI fixture against local rivals Grange.  Between innings there will be a Jubilee tea and after the match a Jubilee drink.

There will then be a Jubilee Concert with distinguished Club President and rap artist diZZee khaRTah will perform his tribute to the Queen's reign on the clubhouse roof.

Grange Loan will then be ringed in fire as Jubilee beacons are lit by teams of loyal pyromaniacs at various locations across Edinburgh.  FB has heard a rumour that Carlton's Doughty Groundsman has been stockpiling sticks and twigs behind the scorehut so he may well join in this part of the celebration.

Carlton's Jubilee Planning Committee is still waiting to hear from local traffic planners as to whether they will accept the Club's imaginative proposal that the Jubilee Boat Pageant should be redirected round the ground.  If for some reason this should fall through, FB has a CD of Handel's Water Music and a couple of model boats which will be the next best thing.

As if that is not enough Jubileeing, on Sunday Fantasy Bob will lead his All Stars Jubilee Fourth XI in their Jubilee fixture against Tranent.  FB texted Her Majesty asking whether she is available to turn out for the team - he thought she might fancy turning her arm over with a few overs from the bottom end.

She texted back

Hi Bob,
We are very sorry but we have to go to see the boats on Sunday so we can't make the match.  Let us know if you are short any other time - we fancy a game with Holy Cross cos they're just about in our age group.  Good luck and have a nice Jubilee tea.  We'll bake some empire biscuits and send them on.  Queenie.  PS we'll see what we can do about the Knighthood. LOL

However the Planning Committee has determined that all these tremendous celebrations will be distinct from all other celebrations of this great day.  They will be bunting free.

June

Fantasy Bob's tune to celebrate the arrival of June is Rodgers and Hammerstein's June is Bustin' Out All Over.  This is one of the big chorus and production numbers in the show Carousel.

The show derives from a Hungarian play but the action is relocated to the Maine coast. The story involves carousel barker Billy Bigelow, whose romance with millworker Julie Jordan comes at the price of both their jobs. He attempts a robbery to provide for Julie and their unborn child; it goes wrong and he dies but is given a chance for redemption by returning to support his daughter. A classic redemption tale.  Among the other big numbers from the show are If I Loved You and You'll Never Walk Alone.

Carousel was a hit on Broadway in 1945 running for 890 performances and came to London in 1950.  The show is in revival and is currently touring the UK.  In 1999 Time Magazine named it as the best musical of the 20th Century.  While FB is not sure he would agree with that judgement, he is a sucker for Rodgers and Hammerstein - literate, well crafted shows, immensely tuneful, sentimental and unceasingly optimistic.  They are full of great numbers.  It is disappointing they never found cricket as a subject - and the great cricket musical has yet to be written.

Jim Laker 1922-1986
46 Tests
193 wkts @ 21.24

The movie of Carousel was released in 1956, directed by Henry King and starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones. It was therefore in the cinemas during Laker's summer.  In the Ashes series Jim Laker took 46 wickets at 9.60 - this remains the record haul in a 5 Test series.  In the Fourth Test at Old Trafford he took 19 wickets including all 10 in the second innings - 9-37 and 10-53. England won the series 2-1.  He was the first bowler to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings and only Anil Kumble has since matched the feat.  Remarkably Laker had taken all 10 in Surrey's match against the Australians earlier in the season.

FB was too young to have seen Laker play but he remembers with great affection his commentary of many Sunday League matches with his distinctive voice with no gs ever voiced as in 'Pillin' is playin' a match winnin' innin's'.................and June is Bustin' Out All Over.............