A corner of the field will always be foreign to certain practitioners of the game! This is a shot of politico Lalu Yadav at a match played in the Moin-ul-Haq stadium in Patna yesterday. But then I notice the number of people standing behind the stumps, giving company to the wicketkeeper, and I begin to think that I have judged too quickly and wrongly. Look at the relaxed poses of the men behind the wicket. The brand new uniforms and gear. The jaunty cap. In ‘Trobriand Cricket’ we had learned of the islanders making the foreign sport a flamboyant part of their tribal life and even a part of the expression of their colonial history and freedom. Lalu’s cricket is no less complicated. A sporting foray by a man who has recently taken a beating on other fields; he has also found a wonderful way to introduce his cricketer son to the world; he once again assumes, maybe even mocks, the role of the sahib; and how can I even guess what the event must have been like on the field, with its festive air of a part-bureaucratic, part-feudal tamasha? (At one point in this particular match, there were fifty-plus players on the field. Like Lalu’s illusory democracy, this was about the feeling of participation–real representation, actual play, and the rules of the game be damned.) This too is a part of the larger story of the cricket being transformed in the subcontinent and other corners of the world. It is comical, of course, but no less significant for that reason. Here are more photos from the event forwarded to me by my friend TV.

A thousand miles away the test match between India-Pakistan is to begin in a few hours in Karachi. India Uncut reports on the atmosphere in that city.