Much praise has been righteously showered on Out Of The Ashes, Tim Albone and Lucy Martens’ film about the Afghan national cricket team, screened as part of BBC Four’s Storyville this week (Catch up with it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ydj1r).
All of the big and obvious themes are there, but what makes it glorious and human are the small moments that catch those essential truths about all sides, amateur or pro, wherever they’re from. The wider question it asks is, ‘how different can we be?’
The team go to the Channel Islands in an ICC competition to begin a long slog up the rankings of cricket playing nations; and when they make it through a tense semi-final against Japan despite never having seen a grass pitch before, the coach, Taj Malik, is shown making a call home that every player in every land is familiar with – to the wife or girlfriend or partner of kids explaining that yes, the game has only just finished, and no, you won’t be back for a bit yet. In Taj’s case, it’s longer than normal, him being in Jersey and having a big final still to play, nonetheless, it’s all there in his face as he speaks, the tenderness and angst and guilt.
Taj is one of the stars of the film, a man at the other end of the human spectrum from England’s almost wordless team director Andy Flower – if Flower is a closed book, Taj, a man with an even bigger job on his plate, is palpably readable, walking around the boundary chaining ciggies, head often in his hands, hostage to all that is uncontrollable out on the pitch. Every club has a guy like Taj as its heart and soul. Later, back in Afghanistan, we find him in his personal nirvana, on what looks like rutted scrubland with a ramshackle wooden hut beside it, but which is unmistakably oval – and it’s easy to see what Taj is thinking once again. He learned about the game as a refugee in Pakistan, his parents having fled the Russian invasion, and he yearns to bring it home.
Back in the dressing room in Jersey, the standard arguments rage amongst the usual collection of drama queens and prima donnas that make up the Afghanistan XI, and indeed all teams across the globe. ‘I wasn’t out,’ one batsman claims, ‘he got that wrong’. ‘Don’t give me your bullshit’ comes the immediate and angry reply from a man who’s heard it all before.
As the final, against Jersey, unfolds and Afghanistan find themselves needing just 86 for an unlikely win, the same batsman is pointlessly run out and walks off shouting the immortal lines: ‘Why do you make me play with a bisexual? He is a bisexual,’ a sentiment that’s illogical, inappropriate and yet which frames almost perfectly the mental turmoil, the sheer roiling frustration, of his fate.
Afghanistan somehow edge over the line, and all of the tension and the fear melts away as Taj dissolves into tears, only to find himself almost immediately confronted with the booming tones and capsized smile of a jaunty Geoffrey Boycott, on hand to present the trophy – a wonderfully unlikely scene.
Afghanistan go on to Argentina and ultimately, staggeringly, to the World T20 finals, but they go without Taj, who brutally sacked after the Channel Islands trip in favour of a former Pakistan Test player, Kabir Khan. ‘This is the Afghan,’ says a cab-driver in response. ‘He doesn’t like what the Afghan says. If Pakistani, Indian, English say it, they like it…’
A glance at the list of current international coaches will show you that it’s not just an Afghani sentiment: England are coached by a Zimbabwean, India by a South African, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka by Australians, Ireland by a West Indian, and so on.
Taj can be proud though, and not just of his huge heart. The game is the game, wherever and whoever you are, and I hope he’s there now, at the side of his pitch, watching it grow.
Right, I’m going to watch this one tonight. (Isn’t the BBC iplayer great?)
I don’t want to be frivolous, but “a jaunty Geoffrey Boycott” seems even more unlikely than an Afghan cricket team…
Brit, I don’t share your surprise at the reference to a “jaunty Geoff Boycott”, unless you’re referring to his batting, which had all the jauntiness of an Avram Grant interview. “With that single, Geoffrey Boycott, with a constipated flourish, moves relentlessly to18, having commenced this long day’s journey into night at 11.00 this morning, and now, as the light fades and the gasometer takes on a disturbing eeriness, we sense that we are in the presence of something unique” (John Arlott c1965).
A wonderful film. How long before an England team tours there as underdogs and plays a full Test seres, with the Barmy Army at full throttle, and the Afghans wondering whether it was worth it after all?
No you’re right there, John, I was going for an easy laugh by trading on an inaccurate caricature of Boycs. In fact, he is often jaunty, especially when talking about how great he was and how his “moother could’ve scored a hoondred aginst this lot.”
God bless John Arlott, and the Boil, too. A sad day.
A very sad day, Jon. I never saw him play as he was a about ten years older than my boyhood heroes: May, Cowdrey, Trueman and Statham, but he played a very important role in the teams that won and retained the Ashes in the 1950s. He was apparently a fine swing bowler as well as a batsman with Boycott-like tenaciousness. I believe his approach to batting, especially against the Aussies, made Boycott look like Viv Richards. So sad he died in such awful circumstances.
Yes for me growing up he was one of voices on TMS, where he was subject to constant references to his scoring rate, which he’d deflect as stoically as he defended. We’ve lost something now that commentary has essentially been handed over to former players – vintage days when the commentators were distinct from the expert summarisers. As a tyro in the 80s I played a lot of cricket on the sacred May’s Bounty in Basingstoke, where Arlott grew up. What a man he was… Have got his biog of Jack Hobbs on the shelf – it opens with a poem. You don’t get that in KP’s autobiog…
I haven’t read it, but wouldn’t be surprised if the opening of KP’s autobiography is headed ‘Tweeting – Gateway to my Soul’: “Just got up, eyed myself up and down, round and about, decided 140 characters totally inadequate to reflect my magnificence. Must push for a min of 1000”
I have John Arlott’s biography of Trueman: ‘Fred – Portrait of a Fast Bowler’. It is a wonderful read, as much for John’s use of language as Trueman’s life and career. I love the way he brings the book to an end with this final para……….’Asked if he had a title to suggest for this book, he rolled it off the tongue, pat as if rehearsed – ‘T’ Definitive Volume of t’ Finest Bloody Fast Bowler that Ever Drew Breath’ – and where is the batsman who would have dared to challenge that description when Fred was in his pomp ?’………….
Ah yes.. here’s the opening verse of ‘To John Berry Hobbs on his Seventieth Birthday’
There falls across this one December day
The light remembered from those suns of June
That you reflected, in the summer play
Of perfect strokes across the afternoon
Blimey, Jon, that has brought me over all misty-eyed. Wonderful.
John –
Jon I know is too modest to blow his own trumpet, but in case you don’t know, he curates the finest cricket blog on the web: http://theoldbatsman.blogspot.com/
I didn’t know, Brit, but thanks to you it’s now right at the top of my ‘Favourites’ list.
Cheers Brit – John, be good to see you there!