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| Sunday, 14 July 2002 |
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"Superb! He's simply superb! No one can touch him. He's gold-plated!.' These wild exclamations pierced the dusk in the forest and made everyone prick up their ears. 'What's that?'asked Ob, surveying the scene from the treetops and pulling his silver robe a little closer around him because a sudden chilly breeze had started up and the forest can get very cool indeed as night falls. 'Just look at that stroke! Absolutely superb!' "What on earth is that? Or, rather, who is that?' Again Oberon, this time not a little annoyed. 'That's Bottom,sire,' said Quince. 'Sire, you know poor old Bot has this way of looking at things in retrospect. Somehow the number of times Mr. Sidhu used the word 'Superb' has stuck in his gizzard.' 'It's superb this and superb that. A superb stroke...a superb ball. No one, no no one can play like that. Just look at that stroke. Swept it down towards the bowler at the other end. Superb stuff!' That was Quince imitating Bottom imitating Sidhu doing his commentray stuff. Everyone had been watching the England-India day-nighter last Thursday and getting right into it.What struck me was the part about the old castle in which the Indian team had apparently spent the night before the match in Durham. Lumley Castle, I think I heard it as. Seven hundred years old, and no one had a wink of sleep because the medieval sleeping and bathroom arrangements hadn't been alright. Of course, the organisers had wanted to give the Indians a bit of English culture up front, so their intentions were good. But there was a ghost stalking around and poor Sidhu had only 45 minutes sleep, one commentator said. The beds at Lumley Castle were so high that you had to climb a few steps to get into them. Someone wondered how Tendulkar, a pint-sized man, would have managed. And some of the bathrooms were right in the middle of the bedrooms, while some were inside the wardrobe and someone had a terrible shock when he went to hang up his suit because he found himself inside a bathroom after hanging up the suit! 'Superb! Just superb!' That was Bottom, going on about the 'superb Sidhu.' 'Now, if only the organizers had given us a call, we could have given the Indian cricketers a real slice of English culture right here in our own forest abode,' said Oberon, quite seriously, adding, 'and we wouldnt have charged them a penny, just for the honour and pleasure of having them stay with us just one night.' 'Oh, what a chance we missed! What a chance we missed!' lamented Bottom. 'With all our castles in the trees and forest pools to bathe in and our own bacon and eggs for breakfast!' 'I think we ought to get our name registered in the tourist guidebooks with special reference to cricket tours by visiting teams,' was Ob's very businesslike idea. Everyone chorussed that it was a superb idea, and all agreed that Quince was to be put on the job immediately as he was the best PR man. 'How boring. How terribly boring,' said Thisbe and Pyramus in chorus. 'Those cricketers are so very boring. And also we might have found ourselves having to put up with all those Indian fans with their horns and what not.' 'Just like the two of you to wet blanket an enthusiastic idea,' said Quince. 'There are a few more matches to go,' said Ob. 'How fast can we get things going?' he asked Quince who was delighted at the whole idea. 'Give me tomorrow and for the next match who knows, we might be having the Sri Lankans booking in for the night,' said Quince. 'I've heard it said that they have beautiful forests in Sri Lanka, full of leopard and sambhur and slithering, bright snakes,' chipped in Puck who knows all about such things because he lives in the forest fastnesses most of the time and goes meandering and investigating all the item and is very familiar with lovely, bright-eyed serpents that do not bite, and fireflies that burn your fingers if you catch them. 'What shall we call our Visiting Cricketers' stopover?' asked Mustard Seed, keen as mustard all the time. It was This be and Pyramus who had a nose for news although they likes to play wet blankets just to take the opposite view. 'Has someone got an idea?' asked Oberon. 'Oh dear! I wish I could think of a name to name our forest castle,' said Quince who was usually also a good ideas person. 'Let's just call it Superb Castle,' said Bottom, languidly from his corner of a tree where he had been laughing and crying to himself the whole evening. 'Superb name! Superb idea! Superb Bottom! ' everyone chorussed. And Oberon ordered champagne all round. His best pink champagne. |
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