311. Cricket In India: Beating The Brits At Their Own Game (Part 2)

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durimple. Now, this is our second in our little mini series about empire and cricket. And we've been looking at the way in which imperial politics sort of weaves in and out of the world of international test cricket. We had an absolute corker last time talking about the ashes, which is in full swing at the moment. But now we're going to be talking about pre-partition India. So when we talk about India, we know, we know, we know that Pakistan and Bangladesh are test playing nations. But when we talk about this, we're going to talk in the context of India for this.

1:04And once again, we are in the company of the brilliant Tim Wigmore, who has a, show us the book. It's a lovely book, History of Test Cricket. It's called Test Cricket. So it does what it says on the tin. And it's, I mean, it's a brilliant, brilliant read, wonderful read. And it's also augmented so well with your entire encyclopedia of knowledge, Tim. So thanks very much for being with us. What we're here to talk about is India and cricket. And if you want to gauge the passion that the subcontinent has for cricket, you need look no further than Bollywood's treatment of this period of history when India takes on England.

1:39It's a film called Lagan. A film called Lagan? It is the legend, the blockbuster called Lagan. You've been living in London too long. Listen, even in London, this was an absolute fever pitch moment. So Lagan, for those of you who may not have seen it, it's set in 1893 during the height of British colonial rule. And it's a little village called Champanir in central India. The villagers are struggling under the heavy taxation land tax burden of Lagan. And they are being ground down by the British authorities. There's a particularly sadistic captain called Andrew Russell, and he keeps putting up the taxes and the villagers keep begging him, stop doing this.

2:18you know you're killing us and the leader of the villages is Bhuvan played by the marvellous Amir Khan who's absolute Bollywood royalty let me tell you anyone who watches Indian films will know that Amir Khan is right at you know the Mount Olympus of actors and we're getting him on the podcast can you believe it we're getting him on the podcast only for our club members so if you want to listen to that exclusively on our club it's empirepoduk.com that's empirepoduk.com just click into that and you will get to see Amir Khan. You'll get our newsletter. You'll get quick access and early access to miniseries.

2:53If you loved him, who doesn't? You get to hear all of his three episodes in one go. Amir Khan's Bhuvan challenges the British to a cricket match, which they don't know how to play, by the way. The villagers have no idea how to play it. And says, if we beat you, you're going to cancel the taxation for three years. But the British say, if you lose, you have to play three times as much. Now, this was an absolutely bonkers moment in cinema. Where did you watch it, Willie? I guess you watched it in India, didn't you? I actually watched it near Piccadilly Circus, bizarrely. Unexpected answer. There was a cinema that had it on for about seven years after it had sort of come out and played nothing like The Mousetrap.

3:35I watched it in Hounslow with a completely Asian audience and the popcorn throwing. Honestly, every time a six was scored It was like it was being scored in a match Taking place in front of you And people would stand up and go Chaka! Which is what people say in the crowds for a six Tim, did you watch it? I mean, was it a similar experience for you? Yeah, I watched it with a few friends And a curry, appropriately enough And it was obviously very, very long In the best of our traditions But completely worth the length It's four hours Four hours, but gripping every minute And there's nothing wrong with that Nothing wrong with it at all.

4:10It was a compliment. Let's talk about the origin story then of Indian cricket. I guess you have to take us all the way back to the 1700s. It was sort of more a beach game in the 1700s, wasn't it? And it's the first game thought to have been played in Gujarat. Am I right in saying that? Yeah. So the first game that we know about was played by British merchant sailors along the beachfront in Cambay. What do we know about this Cambay match? Because it's the port area and it's near Andabath. I mean, that's such a strategic location. a british sailor talks about so basically the boat was lying for a fortnight in a channel there he writes in his diary we every day diverge ourselves with playing cricket so that was as far as we know the first cricket played in india and actually in 1792 in calcutta the calcutta cricket club is formed and this is the oldest cricket club in the world outside england so even older than any in australia which was on our previous episode the history is iraulcibly long before we talked about cricket as a kind of window into empire and how things worked and i think the first formal cricket match shows that really well.

5:10So this is played in Calcutta again in 1804. And the two teams are Old Etonian civil servants versus other civil servants. Okay. So the Toffs, and they're not so common, but commoner team playing against each other. There's a fabulous image from 1859 from the Calcutta Cricket Club. It could be an Oxford or Cambridge picture of, you know, sort of people sort of lounging by a people tree. it looks like all mustachioed and pith helmeted in the best clothes it looks like. This was a game for Europeans. I mean, it wasn't anything involving the locals at all in any way, was it? So that was initially the case.

5:48The first Indian community that get on board with cricket is the Parsi community. Who are the most anglicised and anglophile of all the Indian communities. And very much concentrated in coastal areas. Yeah, between Gujarat and Bombay, exactly. So the Parsis become hugely important in the development of Indian cricket. And the first Parsis club is formed in Bombay in 1848. And this is, again, thought to be the first club for Indian people in India. And actually what happens in 1877, the Parsis challenge the Bombay Gymkhana, which is the premier British only club, to a match. And this becomes a regular affair where the Parsis will play the British.

6:25It represents the start of Europeans playing Indians in cricket. The Parsis club was called the Oriental Cricket Club. Were they any good? They are good. And so obviously the Bombay Gymkhana, they assume we'll just pulverise them win easily. In fact, the first game is a draw and the game has become really evenly contested. And this game is played regularly until 1906. The Parsis win 11 and the Europeans only 10. So in fact, the Parsis are more than holding their own. This leads to really the formative early competition in Indian cricket, which is trying the tournament initially, but it expands and expands.

7:00So this is played in Bombay between different communities. The first two teams are the Europeans and the Parsis. And then from 1907, you have a Hindu team invited. Then from 1912, you have a Muslim team invited. And then eventually in 1937, you have the rest, which includes Sikhs and Indian Christians. Let's just sort of hang back with the Parsis just a little while longer because as Willie said, you know, sort of the most westernized of all Indians and they did business. They went to school and learned English. They understood about English manners. The community that produced Freddie Mercury, among others.

7:33Indeed. When they arrive in England in 1877 and they open their first matches at Sheffield Park and then they have a game at Lords, the home of the Maryland Cricket Club, the MCC. The Parsis are almost reverential about even being there. So there's a dinner. I love this story. There's a dinner on the eve of their departure and Sir Feroz Charmetta, who is a noted political leader and is part of this Parsi contingent that is playing cricket in England, he says, I'll read the quote, as artists go to Italy to do homage to the great masters, as pilgrims go to Jerusalem to worship at a shrine, so now the Parsis are going to England to do homage to the English cricketers, to learn something at that noble and manly pastime in the very country which is its chosen home.

8:19Such a Parsi quote that is brilliant. But the British press liked them. They said these were the best of all Indians, didn't they? I mean, there was a lot of positive feedback that came back with these Parsi tours. Absolutely. There's not a sense of communities being in opposition to each other. It's very much a sense of being united through cricket. For most people in England, it's the first experience they would have ever had of Indian people, those Parsi tours. But how interesting that the rest of Indian cricket is on communal lines. It's anywhere else in the world where games are played only between religious communities.

8:51It's a weird thing. You don't get sort of Christian football matches and Muslim teams and Hindu teams. But are you doing the cricket at this period? That's right. The amazing amount of these tournaments, and they're actually mirrored. You get some in Karachi as well. But Bombay very much remains the premier place. You get cricketers who travel from all around the subcontinent to go and play in these matches. And they're incredibly well supported and prestigious. And the lack of kind of communalism is really striking. So there's a famous game in 1944, and the Muslims beat the Hindus in a very close final in Mumbai.

9:23It said that everybody, including all the Hindu crowd, they're all cheering the Muslims at the end. People attach a huge importance to these matches. So with Jinnah and Gandhi, they are very aware of these matches, and they attach their importance to them. So with Jinnah, he's very happy about relations he sees in these communal matches. Pentangular is it by then, because it's got five teams by then. It's called the Pentangular game, just to stress that. Is that right? It develops as you get more teams, it becomes a triangular, then a quadrangular, then a pentangular when you get the rest who include the seats and the Christians from 1937.

9:53One thing that strikes me, though, is that, again, sort of the othering of the Parsis that goes on, you know, they're not real Indians. They're not really like the rest. There's a quote in one cricket publication that talks about the Parsis saying, the Parsi fraternity is the most intelligent as well as the most loyal of the races scattered over our possessions, it says. So there's still very much sort of like a respect for the Parsi teams, but the rest are still regarded as somewhat, you know, less than. Yeah, that's right. And we see, so the first all India tour, as opposed to distinct Parsi tours in 1911, and that is dominated by Parsi.

10:29You have seven Parsis, five Hindus and three Muslims. But within that, there is an amazing diversity of players in the team. So Pawanka Balu is the star player and he is a Dalit. Those are the former untouchables. Yeah, he's an incredible player and he's the absolute star of the tour. It sort of is accessible to players from a wide range, but really the vast majority are from the more privileged groups for sure. Well, I want to talk about Baloo more in a second, but I also want to talk about Gandhi because you mentioned Nero and Jinnah being great fans of when the pentangular happened and talking about no communal tensions.

11:07But Gandhi was opposed to them from the very beginning because he thought actually dividing these cricket teams along communal lines or according to their religion was just harmful and it was another way of dividing up the country. And Baloo was a really interesting character because although he, as you say, was born of the untouchable Chamar caste as it was then known, his father was a sepoy in the 112th Infantry Regiment of the British Indian Army. And I love the story about how his life was transformed and how cricket came into his life because this wasn't a time cricket still sort of quite young people might play but not the way they do if you go to India now where every street or every gully you'll see some really quite you know tasty bowling and batting going on amongst young people at a scale that I've seen very little in in other countries everybody plays it but there is a man called JG Gregg who comes into Baloo's life now do you know much about JG Gregg because he's the one who sort of notices that Baloo isn't just one of these kids who's just playing for fun, but he's playing with real talent.

12:13Tell us a bit about that relationship. Yeah, so he begins as a kind of bowler in the nets and he notices that this guy has an amazing amount of talent. He sponsors him because he's a groundsman in a club in Pune. Baloo is. He's looking after the Parsi grounds. That's right. He's sort of cleaning up, right? Then out of that, Greg supports him and actually helps to get him to play and not just be a net bowler. Isn't there an even more cute story where he sees Baloo playing in the nets and he thinks that he's pretty good. And he says, you know what, I'll give you eight honors every time you can dismiss me in the nets.

12:52If you can get the better of me, I'll give you eight honors. And that's where he sort of starts him on almost sort of an unofficial training regime in the nets that eight honors will mean a lot to someone like Baloo. And so then he sees that he's very, very talented and decides then to take him on. Yeah. So then everyone actually starts to take him seriously. So in 1896, when he would have been 20, he moves to Bombay and plays for the Hindu Gymkhana Club. And then he gets in system in Bombay. Bombay is basically where you go to make your fortune as a cricketer. As happens today, you know, in a whole variety of ways still.

13:29It's the setting for Slumdog Millionaire. all these kids arriving in the big city and finding their way. But poor old Baloo is not treated well, despite being the star of the team. He's made to eat apart and drink apart and be apart, isn't he? Yeah, because as a Dalit, he suffers all those prejudices and his cricketing ability is relevant when he's on the pitch, but not off it. And actually, even on the pitch, being Dalit is still very relevant. So for this tour to India in 1911, based on cricketing merit, he should have been the captain. but of course he's not picked as the captain because he's not the sort of person that india wants to be captain and we talked about how england on the previous episode they want the right sort of person as they see it to be captain the same is true of india as well and so instead india pick their captain is a prince who travels with five servants um so that is that is the the range of the indian team then in 1911 i mean is is the prince with the the servants any good at cricket or is he you know like you were talking about with the the england team sometimes where the cricketer didn't even deserve a place on the team.

14:30Is that the same case with the Indian team? Yeah, he's not great at cricket, but India do later pick some much worse people to be captain, which we can talk about later if we like. Got a picture of Baloo and he's quite a dressy character. It's not like he's some sort of cowering figure. Well, he looks like a movie star. And his cricket ability is the catalyst for his amazing kind of post-playing career. He becomes prominent in politics as a campaigner for Dalit rights. So cricket actually gives him of visibility which he then uses for other purposes and in a way he hadn't been good at cricket he wouldn't have had his political career at all yeah i mean just just a little in a nutshell and we can maybe do this in in greater detail in a future podcast he's first of all very very good friends with babasar bambedka who is sort of the leader of dalit rights in india and they are very close and and you know ambedka sees a great poster boy in in babanka balu and thinks you know this is going to be the thing that changes everything that this is the best man on the side even when the side does tragically badly as it did in 1911.

15:28He's the one who shines out. They go along together, but then they fall out with each other. And it's a dramatic falling out, which is only kind of resolved during the funeral of one. But tell us about another name. When you talk about Indian cricket, you cannot not talk about Ranji Singh. And Ranji Singh, I mean, there's a trophy in his name. If you look at pictures, just Google him. This is like every inch a royal, an Indian royal in the pearl-bedecked headdress and blazoned silk turban and costume. He looks royal. He is royal. And he's another Trinity man. He also went to Trinity College, Cambridge.

16:06Very important. He is. Ranji, he is the son of a village farmer, but he's adopted as an heir by the Jam Sab of an Indian statelet. So he's kind of not official royalty, but effectively he is royalty. And Jam Sab, Willie, I mean, how would you define a Jam Sab? It's like a noble or a sort of a noble in the kingdom, isn't it? Exactly. Not exactly the prince or the Maharaja, but somebody who's right up there as a Jam Sab. It's still pretty bosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay. So the Jam Sab adopts him. So he's got now, you know, sort of a better lineage. And then what happens to him? He moves to England.

16:43He goes to Trinity College in Cambridge to study. And there he plays cricket obsessively. And he is seen as this very kind of mythical figure. I think, you know, from the East, he's seen as, he's given some exoticism. He adds to this through the way he plays. So he's a revolutionary. He kind of invents or he's popularized as the leg glance, which is basically a flick you play to the leg side and it's a very elegant shot. What does that mean for us non-cricketers? Normally, if the ball was outside your off stump, you'd hit it to the offside in the direction of the ball and he's hitting it in the other direction.

17:21So he basically kind of reimagines the geometry of the field. He opens up these new corners the way he plays. Do you want to translate that for me? Well, yes. He flicks it in a way you wouldn't expect, Willie. That's all you need to know. Okay, got that. Flicks it in a very beautiful, elegant way where you wouldn't expect it to go. But that's just his reinvention and elegance. and people talk about the elegance of his play. I think it's the Guardian journalist, Neville Cardus, calls him the Midsummer Night's Dream of Cricket. And I'm not even sure I know what that means, but I think it's a good thing.

17:51I think it's a compliment, right? Sort of like Tatiana and Oberon, the royals in this kind of dreamy world. He's pipped for England in 1896. He makes his debut and he does very, very well for England in the Atters and stuff. He is, in Baton Rouge, maybe the best player, the best batsman in the whole world. but he basically has to end up you know retiring early to become the maharaj as a full-time gig but he he gives his name to the ranji trophy which which is launched in 1934 and is actually the first kind of major non-communal competition in india even though the pentangular is still seems more prestigious you said he was picked for the side we should give a date to that that's 1896 and and he and he plays at old trafford he hadn't been picked to play at lords is there politics involved in that that you know you can't have a brown fella playing at lords or am i just imagining that no that's absolutely right i mean there's politics throughout his career so he's yeah there's the home ground has a say in who is picked uh and people at lords they do not seem to want ranji to be picked and actually you get this reoccurring figure which you'll know a lot about lord harris oh tell us about lord harris now that's a good character to discuss tell us all about Lord Harris who is he so Lord Harris yeah he's born in Trinidad he's uh the fourth Baron Harris uh he goes on to play test cricket for England in in the in the ashes as an amateur of course his father is governor of Trinidad he goes to Eton himself um he then you know becomes this sort of incredibly senior figure in the running of English English cricket including selection and despite being born in Trinidad himself he opposed what he calls uh are birds of a different feather um to to play to play for England he then of course becomes god of Bombay um and he makes a famous prediction in 1921 just talking about the prospects for Indian cricket and he's very dismissive and he says notwithstanding their multitudes I doubt if they're going to turn out a team of all india as good the best of our county clubs so there are tours of south africa aren't there and south africa even at this stage pre-apartheid is famously racially divided yeah and the basis the south african board uh they basically put pressure on england not not to select ranji so even though on merit ranji should easily be in in the team he's not selected to tour in 1998 or 1902 to south africa south africa make make it clear by you know unofficial channels that they only want to play against white players and england adhered to that england very close links with africa at this time and and they yeah they basically adhered to that this is the same period that mahatma gandhi's being thrown off his train at pete maricksburg and this sort of thing isn't it things are very tense at that time absolutely um and and so ranji is yeah he's just he's not selected he plays 15 times for england as an average of 45 which is really exceptional for that era um but he would have played a lot more but for the racial politics and I suppose for his own princely duties as well, also a factor in that.

20:52When you have India playing England, politics is going to creep into this, isn't it? And I just wonder when the nationalist movement starts to gain momentum, so we're talking particularly in the 1930s where a lot of nationalist leaders are being pulled in and put in prison, how does that impact cricket and the way people are attending matches or being selected for matches or indeed turning up to watch matches? Yeah, so of course, the first big question, will India be allowed to become a test nation and gain test status? Because before you have England, Australia, South Africa, all white nations.

21:27But in fact, 1928, India do become a test nation. Their first tour, their first series is planned for 1930-31 against England. But in fact, the tour is cancelled because of the civil disobedience campaign in India. So politics, again, is encroaching from the very start. and then India they do tour England in 1932 which is there will be their first ever series of test matches but three of their players withdraw from the tour in protest at the imprisonment of Gandhi at the time several Indian players are very I think they're very conscious that to be sharing a pitch with England in a way could be to kind of give Tassic consent to to British rule and so this dynamic really it plays out right from the start of Indian test cricket This sort of, you know, the fact that so many are withdrawing and not cooperating with cricket because they see it as a political statement leads to the era.

22:20Shall we call it the era of the Nepo Baby? Yeah, I think it is a Nepo Baby era. We can call it that. I mean, describe why it's the era of the Nepo Babies. It's cringe, but who gets to play instead? So we talked about with England the sort of social kudos that's attached to the captaincy. Well, that is even more so the case in India. So it's almost like you have a conversation about who you pick in your squad and then you have a separate parallel conversation about who should be. captain that's not even related to cricket ability at all so the first tour during the 1932 um and you're obsessed with the question of who will be captain um and so you have the the maharaj of pattyala is initially he's initially appointed as captain basically because he offers to underwrite and pay for the whole tour and organize all these trials he pulls out because of ill health well he was quite he was quite a fat man i mean this is a bit of a theme as well at this time of captains yeah then you have the maharaj kumar of vizina gram who had donated 50 000 rupees for the tour he had pulled out before already uh which leaves you know a kind of vacancy for a third candidate and this is the maharaj of paul panda who is very enthusiastic at cricket as we all are he's also very bad at playing cricket as most of us are as most of us are as well so he plays four matches on this this is the most incredible kind of fact that is actually true it sounds made up but he plays four matches on this tour and he scores only two runs in these four matches but he buys three rolls royces on this tour and it's so therefore it's famously said he leaves with more rolls royces than he does runs um so he is an as a kind of embodiment of the kind of amateur captain he is perfect the only thing in his credit is he has a little bit of self-awareness and by that i mean he played he's the kind of ceremonial captain he's the guy at all the cocktail parties and he plays against the county teams but he doesn't play in the actual test matches because he recognizes that he is he is so inept that he shouldn't bit rubbish yeah but he has those rolls royces he could probably drive them during the test matches rather than play i think he'll drive his own rolls royce yeah that's true yeah and then in 36 england's ear India's next door to England, they again have the same question.

24:29And this time they go for Maharaj Kumar, Vizinho Graham, who had been in the running in 32. He brings two servants and 36 items of personal luggage to England. And this time, unlike Paul Bander, he does insist on actually playing. So basically in cricket, your specialist bats and bat in the top six positions and your bowls bat below that. But Vizinho Graham, because he can't bowl and he can't really bat. So he becomes a specialist number nine, which is a new position, really. It's kind of you might get that as the last player who you pick in the village team. And he averages eight, which is pretty, pretty appalling.

25:04And he plays all three matches. So you have this kind of perverse situation where India are quite a weak team anyway. And then they are weakening themselves by being nowhere near at full strength by picking these people who are completely ill suited to be the captain. It doesn't sort of shore up the image of, you know, these birds of a different feather being able to play cricket. It sort of proves Lord Harris right in many ways. So that is the embarrassing golden age of cricket when gold mattered. We're going to take a break here. Join us after the break when we come back with one of the most seismic episodes in politics in the Indian subcontinent and we talk about how that affected cricket.

25:42Join us then.

25:50welcome back so we're now in 1947 and india is about to be split in two and britain is about to divide and quit how does this affect uh cricket tim and how does it affect cricketers particularly fazil mahmood and kothari naudu so the the fazil mahmood story is really yeah incredible so he's a was in fastball from lahul context there's an india tour of australia coming up in in that winter india haven't toured australia before it's a huge huge deal for them he's desperate to be on that tour and he's so sort of single-mindedly focused on this he's oblivious to the the politics that's actually happening at the same time there's basically a touring camp uh is is uh planned for pune on 15th of august um of course this is the same date as partition but people don't know that's the thing because people don't know about the date so we've talked about this with partition before you know that people did not know which side they would be on their new partition was coming they didn't know the date it would be happening they didn't know which side they would be on they didn't know the full boundaries yet they knew nothing of these things so of course you know if in the cricketing calendar they've got this camp training camp uh that's scheduled nobody knows that that's actually going to be one of the bloodiest days in history that's what's planned it's going to be tim and all india side because you know why not yeah and we should actually say India in the 30s, they have Muslim players.

27:13It's a team that's picked on merit, really. Yeah, absolutely. Non-segregated. So Hindu, Sikhs and Muslims, all in one team. So this is a team, 16-member cricket squad that selected months in advance. Yeah, which was the norm because you have to plan your arrangements and everything. So Faisal on 14th of August, 1947. Well, millions are passing through the border. Bullet carts are rumbling. Muslim's going the other direction to Lahore, but he undertakes this incredible 1 ,000-mile journey where he basically goes through Punjab, Karachi, then he flies to Bombay, and then he gets a train to Pune.

27:47He's going kind of against the grain into history. And is he somebody who is an instantly familiar figure like an Indian cricketer today? Is he someone who will arrive at the station and the whole station will stop the massacre and go and get his autograph or not? He's not at this point He's not No, he's not a thing that everyone would know And people can tell he's Muslim I mean they can tell if he says his name But what you have at this point in time Is that you have people being stopped appallingly on trains And being asked what their name is And sometimes being asked to prove That they haven't been circumcised Or they have been circumcised To prove what nationality they are Or what faith they are rather And he's caught up in that Violent thugs who are out for blood set upon him when they believe that he's a Muslim.

28:34Just a bit of background on that. And then who steps in to save him, Tim? Because it's gorgeous. So we should say he gets to this training camp and there's a monsoon. And so the practice is cancelled kind of regardless of the political situation. But actually it's on the way back that he almost dies. He's getting the train, but he's from Pune to Bombay. But he gets the train with Qatari Naidu the Indian cricketer and a Hindu and Faisal people find out he's Muslim and he's being attacked and Nairdhu literally defends and keeps Faisal alive with his cricket bat He just swings at them with a bat I mean it's amazing It's incredible and obviously cricket bat you can do a lot of damage but yeah it's incredible Is there a movie about this?

29:18No but there should be It's such a gorgeous story There's another moment when a station master gives him a Sikh symbol the kudder to try and show that he's a Sikh because he's obviously a North Indian if he's in Pune. People can tell by how tall he is and how fair he is that he's North Indian. But they don't know whether he's Punjabi, Sikh or Hindu. So he's given this Sikh symbol. And the two things between Qatari and Aidu and the Sikh symbol, he survives. He survives and he's safe. After partition, what will happen is that you will have people who played cricket on the same side, who were teammates, who battled together, shoulder to shoulder who will find themselves on opposing teams.

29:58And there's also going to be a lot of speculation about which team will be stronger as a result of this. There was a lot of stuff said about diet and who could do what because of what they ate after partition. Just talk us through a little bit of that because I find that fascinating. So in the 1930s, when India are starting out in test cricket, they have some very good fast bowlers. They're Muslim fast bowlers from very soon after partition. So the first, I can find, in 1952, Vijay Murch and one of India's funnest players but a batsman he says he he says you know that the tragedy of partition is it's to deprive india of their fast bowling stocks um he says you know india often relied for fast on the north indian people because of their height and physique are better equipped for this kind of bowling than the cricketers of central or south india now the supply the source of supply has ceased so it becomes almost a self-perpetuating thing that india without access to people who are now in Pakistan, they can't get the fast bowlers.