The VW and Cricket

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

A Cricket Match in Srinagar

The Australian cricket team toured the subcontinent twice in the year we lived in Kashmir, and fortune or perhaps the cricket gods, arranged that the very first game of their Indian tour would be played in Srinagar itself. It was tabled for the 1st to 3rd September 1979, and the city hummed with anticipation.

The team had spent a week in Madras before travelling north, and some players were already suffering the unhappy consequences of subcontinent hospitality. Yet for all that, there was great excitement in Srinagar. A three-day match was a rare thing, and the tickets had sold well.

Threats had been made against the players by the Pakistan-based Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, and dozens of armed police had met the Australians at the airport. In spite of all this, the players themselves remained upbeat, the sort of cheerful stoicism that seems bred into the cricketing character.

The match was sold out, an examination of the pitch revealed a paddock suited to the spinners. They had scored well on the first day but eventually the match was a draw, perhaps fitting, given the charged atmosphere in which it was played.

1979 'CRICKET AUSTRALIANS MAKE 363',
The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995),
2 September, p. 23. 

1979 'Australians draw in India',
The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995),
 4 September, p. 18.

The VW moment

After the match came the moment I treasure most. We loaded a group of players into the VW Kombi, no seatbelts in the back section, which meant we managed quite a few, eight if I recall correctly. With one of the Australian observers driving, and Christine and I, the two young Australian wives, providing local commentary, we took them on a tour of the streets of Srinagar. 

Their comments were often hilarious, some rather less than complimentary about what they encountered. The more senior players tended towards measured enquiry. It was one of those remarkable afternoons, such fun.

AI generated in NotebookLM

A Second Encounter in Rawalpindi

A few months on, the Australian cricket team opened their 1980 tour of Pakistan in Rawalpindi on the 22nd of February, playing against the President's Eleven.

The usual health warnings had been dutifully issued: do not drink the local water; keep your mouth firmly closed in the shower; clean your teeth with bottled mineral water. These were all practices my husband and I had adopted from our very first day in Kashmir.

An Australian doctor travelled with the team, advising on which foods could be trusted not to cause distress. The players were also invited to a reception given by President Zia-ul-Haq. It was a dry affair and at least one member of the team confessed to us, with some amusement, that he had added a little something to his can of Coke before attending.

We were at the match itself, a small knot of Australians adrift in a sea of thousands of Pakistani supporters, who were in full voice. At one point during play, a decision clearly failed to meet with the crowd's approval, and chairs were flung from the stands onto the ground. It was, to put it mildly, a vivid afternoon.

The three-day match was played at the 'Pindi Club Ground. It ended, as the Srinagar match had, in a draw.

Different teams but some things, it seemed, remained constant across the borders.

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

The Unexpected

Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories

A Snowy Heart-Stopper

We did not expect to clasp hands and say goodbye to each other as the pilot of the HS748 hauled the plane out of its final approach to Srinagar Airport. 

It was mid-winter, and perhaps communications had been poor, or delayed, or simply overwhelmed by the particular chaos that descends upon mountain airports when snow falls. Perhaps it was just human error. My husband, a military pilot, had flown in the Antarctic just a couple of years earlier, and he understood what hazardous conditions looked like and what it truly meant to abort a landing on late finals. His hand tightened around mine. It was barely two months since an Air New Zealand flight had crashed into Mt Erebus in the Antarctic. 

Here, we were surrounded by snow covered mountains. The plane rallied and roared its way aloft.

The story we were eventually told was both extraordinary and, in its way, entirely of its place and time. The runway was blanketed in snow, and lacking any appropriate working machinery to clear it, the airport authorities had sent out dozens of workers with brooms to sweep it by hand. 

Dozens of men, sweeping a runway, whilst an aircraft circled above.

Needless to say, we landed safely, and we are here to tell the tale, though the memory of that flight has stayed with us.

Poverty

The scenes of poverty were expected, in the way that one prepares oneself intellectually for something one has read about and seen on television. That preparation was wholly insufficient when confronted with the reality.

No amount of foreknowledge softened the sight of a man whose limbs were so completely twisted that his hands and feet met the ground whilst his body faced the sky. He was a figure of such suffering that it cannot be forgotten.

The maimed children seated at the roadsides, small hands outstretched, were a sight that settled somewhere in my mind, and that sight has not left.

Alcohol and the Art of Concealment

Murree beer, served quite openly in the Intercontinental Hotel in Rawalpindi, was unexpected, and not a little incongruous, in a Muslim country.  In 1977, Prime Minister Bhutto  had imposed alcohol prohibition across Pakistan. The law was later amended under President Zia-ul-Haq to permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol. 

More memorable still was a small restaurant tucked somewhere in the winding streets of 'Pindi, where an empty teapot arrived at the table alongside the meal. We were quietly advised that this was the vessel of concealment, that any alcohol would be poured discreetly within it, so that to any passing eye, every table in the room appeared to hold nothing more suspicious than a pot of tea.

An elaborate, good-humoured method for finding a way, even under prohibition, to raise a quiet cup to life.

---

1. Murree Beer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murree_beer 

2. Murree brewery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murree_Brewery

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

Trucks, Trains and Taxis

Living in Kashmir 1979-80: People, Places and Memories

Trucks

These workhorses of the roads were dominating and colourful, dodging and weaving through the tightest of spaces. Their highly decorated bodies were covered in a wide variety of patterns and iconography. Their progress was noisy, horns blaring and loud music playing.

1979 - Hajira, Pakistan

The most alarming of all were the log-carriers, often perilously overloaded and sometimes seen with their front wheels bouncing clear of the road as the sheer weight of the cargo overcame the truck’s forward momentum.

Through Srinagar, the trucks would negotiate an ever-shifting obstacle course of bicycles, taxis, and sacred cows that wandered the streets quite unconstrained and entirely unbothered.

Navigating the streets

Trains

The Indian train network first established by the East India company, grew rapidly through colonial times. It is now one of the largest in the world, essential to the daily lives of millions. 

In 1979 we travelled by train from Delhi to Agra. The train journey nowadays is much quicker but our slower trip let us view the villages and activities in the fields at a more sedate pace. The Taj Express slower in those days, took about two and a half hours. 

As the train trundled past the track embankments, the absence of any public facilities for those living nearby was noted. Locals with their backs to the train, exposed rather more bare skin than one might ordinarily expect to encounter or indeed want to see!

Taxis

The small black and gold Morris Minor taxis were part and parcel of our everyday life. No matter where one wanted to go a taxi was always available. Many had no meters, or claimed theirs were broken. Negotiating a fare before setting off was always the sensible course. The larger Ambassador, based on the Morris Oxford, offered a rather more comfortable alternative for longer journeys.

Morris Minor in the bazaar

The Ambassador

The three-wheeled Lambros (tuk-tuks) were everywhere, their great virtue being an ability to squeeze through the narrowest of lanes where no four-wheeled vehicle could follow. We occasionally found this particular advantage somewhat alarming.

The 3 wheeler

The Tanga

These vehicles which had been popular in the past were fast disappearing amongst the motorised traffic.

The covered cart

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin