Cricket Talk

We have seen a decent number of bollywood movies here, and one of the better ones is Lagaan. The IMDB synopsis is this: Sometime during latter half of the 19th century, a small village in North India is facing drought conditions. Captain Andrew Russell, the British captain of the nearby cantonment, demands double of the usual land tax (lagaan) from the villagers. When the villagers' representatives go to meet Captain Russell to discuss the situation, Capt. Russell challenges them to a game of cricket with his team after three months. A young villager Bhuvan accepts the challenge and starts to build his team of villagers for the showdown with their colonial rulers. The movie is fair, but as the villagers learn cricket, so does the movie audience. If anybody needs a not-so-quick primer, it's available from Netflix. And it's about 3 1/2 hours long. I'll have to check with Anwar, our driver, about cricket smack-talk. We'll see who HE thinks is the best cricketer of all time (though I can already guarantee he'll play for an Indian team). Mook