Pakistan-West Indies series too one-sided: SWINGING DRIVES

THE two Test series between Pakistan and West Indies was too one-sided to test the nerves of cricket fans but it served a useful purpose for both teams. Pakistan is beginning to shape up as a well-knit outfit and the killer-instinct has returned.

The West Indies learnt the hard way that there is a lot of work to be done before they can climb their way up. It is not so much a matter of talent as it is about motivation. And when a team drops as many catches as the West Indies did, some my five year old grandson would have snapped up, then one has to look beyond cricket skills to find out what ails West Indian cricket.

There is no doubt that the presence of Brian Lara would have made a difference but I don’t think it would have altered the result. The difference was that one team played as a combination and the other didn’t.

Both Clive Lloyd and Michael Holding are in Sharjah and both of them must have remembered the years when the West Indies ruled the cricket world and one could only imagine their torment at seeing a team that had fallen apart. I have always been an ardent fan of West Indian and though delighted to see Pakistan win was saddened by how the mighty had fallen.

Pakistan has now the best balanced team in the world. It has the fast bowlers with a few to spare, it has the spinners and Abdur Razaq a quality all-rounder. The batting came good apart from Inzamamul Haq but his father is ailing and there must have been other things on his mind. But Yousuf Youhana is going through a purple patch and has learnt to play a long innings. He has also matured as a batsman and is able to take control of an innings, to pace it as the situation demands. Younis Khan did full justice to the one-down spot and made that position his own.

Rashid Latif is not only keeping wickets splendidly but making runs and is in the same batting league as Adam Gilchrist and Mark Boucher.

I think there is a problem with the openers. I would play Shahid Afridi in both Test and the one-dayers as an opener and stick with Taufiq Umer though he seems vulnerable outside the off stump and needs to tighten his game. I was happily surprised to see that the fielding has improved. One doesn’t need talent to be a good fielder. One needs hard work and this is the department that will need to be sharpened for the World Cup 2003.

I am happy that Wasim Akram is now fit though I have reservations about him being sent to Sharjah for the one-day games. We need Wasim at his peak-fitness and there should be no fears about him breaking down. Wasim is going to be one of our key players in the World Cup squad. In any case, I doubt that he will play all three matches and will be used sparingly. Why take the risk? Shoaib Akhtar bowled really fast but apart from that, he bowled with his head. He was accurate and has developed a slower ball. All in all, a fine performance and with Wasim and Waqar will make up an opening attack that will be fearsome. All good augurs for the World Cup.

Sharjah did well to hold what were virtually back to back test matches and our fears about the wicket were unfounded. Though it was disappointing to see the crowd attendance and to that extent, the atmosphere of a Test match was missing. Perhaps, had it been an India-Pakistan Test series, we might have got bigger crowds and it seems strange to say that the West Indies are no longer crowd pullers.

I also felt that the umpiring standards were not of the highest class and Darrell Hair made as many mistakes as did his counterpart. But to the extent that both sides suffered, it can be said that the umpiring was fair. There was much speculation whether Shoaib Akhtar would pass the scrutiny of Hair, one of the umpires who had reported his bowling action. But so far, all seems to be well.

But the one-day games, I am sure, will be different and the West Indies will strive to restore some pride. They are a pretty useful one-day team but fielding is crucial in this version of cricket and if they field the way they did in the Test matches, they needn’t turn up for the one-day series.

A brief word about the triangular in Australia. New Zealand simply lost their way and were thrashed by South Africa who looked very charged up and organised. New Zealand seem to reserve their best for matches against Australia but against South Africa, they seem to choke up.

But all in all, it was high class tournament and the quality of cricket, particularly fielding was of the highest standard, particularly Jonty Rhodes. Every team should have a Jonty Rhodes, not just for his fielding but for the way he lifts his team and makes runs when needed. He’s a champion.

Remembering Yagana’s blues

MIRZA Yaas Yagana Changezi (1884-1956) is undoubtedly a poet of poets. Patna-born Yagana chose Lucknow as his second abode soon after his marriage in Lucknow. Lucknow is also a city which inflicted on him the worst possible humiliation.

The last two years of his life passed in a conscious effort to forget a cruel joke. With a garland of old shoes round his neck, he was paraded on a donkey through the Lucknow streets and booed by a mad, screeching crowd. He couldn’t bear the shock and died about three years after it.

I am recalling the sad event because Mushfiq Khwaja, a well-known researcher-poet, has completed his much awaited work on Yagana. The first instalment of this work was published in Takhleeqi Adab’s second volume in 1980. Now this work would make many an important poet of Urdu envy the poet of poets — that Yagana is in his own right — and that the sad incident which ‘killed’ Yagana is likely to go down as a big shame on all those who provoked the Lucknow mob to go after Yagana. Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi’s Sidq-i-Jadeed and weekly Sarfaraz — the organs of Sunni and Shia viewpoints — complemented each other in this condemnable show of madness. They even forgot that the poet had got a Tauba Nama published in Sidq-i-Jadeed.

The couplets which occasioned this treatment were considered blasphemous and Yagana’s tormentors didn’t wait for his accountability before God. They chose to assume God’s functions and Yagana suffered in this world what could be deferred to the next.

Maybe one of the reasons inviting this trouble could be as simple as the fact that Yagana, like Mir Anis, didn’t regard the language of Lucknow as a model for him. He always thought that he was following a better variety of poetic language and some Lucknow highbrows couldn’t reconcile with this contention. It was almost sacrilegious for them. They had not forgiven Mushafi and Mir Taqi Mir on this ground. Yagana knew that something was brewing up against him and the lid could go off anytime.

It is good that Mushfiq Khwaja thought it necessary to vindicate Yagana in a big way and having gone through a good part of his work, I believe that Yagana was going to have the last laugh on his detractors. The dance of madness was perpetrated in March 1953 and, perhaps, it will be by March this year that Yagana will be fully vindicated.

Yagana has four collections of poems to his credit: Nishtar-i- Yaas (1914), Tarana (1933), Aayat-i-Wijdani (1927) and Ganjina (1948), besides his works in prose, including Ghalib-Shikan. The last book could be considered a serious attempt to study Ghalib in perspective. Yagana didn’t like the usual rhetoric which had become the warp and woof in Ghalibean criticism.

Yagana took it too seriously and Ghalib Shikan became, in fact, a crusade against the blind worshippers of Ghalib. He committed some excesses on Ghalib in the process. However, the greatness of Ghalib made Yagana to feel unduly pricked. He tried to trim some of the rhetoric and brought Ghalib to a level of height he thought it to be appropriate. What is to be appreciated is that the pedestal which Yagana gave Ghalib to enthrone himself was, in itself, a compliment to Ghalib’s greatness.

It is true that Yagana got the first vindication of his high status by Dr Taseer. The appreciations of Mujtaba Husain, Dr Fakhir Husain and Mumtaz Husain were a bit late in coming. He died unsung, unwept and unlamented with the scars of the March 1953 jeers and beatings.

Yagana was an important poet. His expression was too authentic. He thought that many poets didn’t write what they really experienced. In fact they only wrote poetry as if they were writing a debate only to impress upon their contemporaries that the poetic expression could be so wide off the mark that the poet had nothing to do with the poetry. Yagana thought that a poet should live in his poetry — honestly and effectively.

Yagana’s grip over the rozmarah and mahavara (unalterable common expressions and idiomatic expressions) was so strong that the late Qudrat Naqvi’s paper on this aspect of Yagana presents him as a poet whose mastery of the language could not be challenged. Some critics have faulted Mir Anis with some lapses as in the line: Kha kha ke aus aur bhi sabza hara hua: on the premise that Parna or Girna should have been used instead of Khana. This is only one example.

There are many more but the scholars of Urdu rozmarah and mahavara are prepared to bet that Yagana doesn’t make the mistakes which some important poets have made. The Delhi poets thought that the rural population of Lucknow spoke Awadhi and, hence, the urban population lapsed into Awadhi characteristic, particularly in using the proper gender besides Awadhi-accented pronunciations. Yagana was above these lapses.

What befell Yagana, in March 1953, is a very sad event. Yagana sent some quatrains to daily Milap, daily Tej and Partap, Delhi. A Muslim journalist, associated with one of these papers, sent back those quatrains to Yagana, suggesting that those quatrains could be deemed blasphemous. Yagana sent them to Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi. He published them under the headline ‘Poetry of the Blasphemy.’ Weekly Sarfraz — otherwise hostile to Sidq-i-Jadeed — also published the same quatrains. The Muslim Lucknow, regardless of sectarian differences, was inflamed beyond measure.

Correction: In my previous column’s (Make-believe Ghalib) second paragraph the name should be read as Maulana Abdul Bari Aasi instead of Abdul Hai Aasi. The error is regretted.

The story of the Grand Trunk Road

WHEN the British annexed the Punjab in 1849, the Shalimar Gardens and the GT Road were not the same as they are now. There was no thoroughfare running in front of the present main entrance to the Shalimar. This area was part of a vast garden and related structures spread to where now the Angoori Bagh scheme is located.

The most authentic evidence of these structures was the 30-foot high three-tier hydraulic system which was a landmark of the engineering skill of the Mughals. This system was damaged beyond repair by the Shahbaz Sharif government to widen the road in front of the Shalimar. Only a podium has survived and is being protected. In addition, there are a few turrets in the middle of the locality.

As for the GT Road, some historians believe it ran in Lahore beyond the Shalimar Gardens’ third terrace through the passage which is now known as the Ghoray Shah Road. There is evidence to establish that the two higher terraces were reserved for royalty and the common people had no access to them.

That a road passes north-south just outside the gate (now closed permanently by a wall) in the parapets of the third terrace, gives credence to the general belief that the people travelling between Kashmir and Lahore had access to the Shalimar Gardens and were usually treated as royal guests.

Some evidence regarding which is the original GT Road, may be found in the location of the Mughal period Naqqar Khana on the southern periphery of the Shalimar Gardens. Some historians are of the view that this place was meant for the announcement of the arriving of caravans for which drum beaters and buglists were appointed on the turrets above the gates in the northern and the southern parapets.

The present GT Road outside the Shalimar Gardens was built around AD 1854. There is evidence to suggest that the garden had been damaged and its irrigation system had developed a major fault.

Since the parapet was there, the British found it easy to give us the new GT Road. Some historians understand that the condition of the original track had deteriorated so much that laying a new path was thought to be an easier job.

But the new path could not be given finishing touches before 1868. Lt-Col McGragor supervised the job as the city’s top functionary in the administration (on a par with deputy commissioners of later years).

Interestingly, the main gate of the Shalimar Gardens was the same as was used for the office-cum-residence of Mr McGragor inside the Mughal monument.

No monument was open to the public till the British set up the Department of Archaeology in 1913. All the monuments were used by the British primarily for military purposes and served as cantonments between 1849 and 1913.

The GT Road predates Emperor Sher Shah Suri who later restored it. Sher Shah and the Mughals added to the road’s importance by setting up inns (serais) and hostelries, digging wells, raising minarets at regular intervals, planting trees and establishing posts (chaukis) for the maintenance of law and order.

There have always been changes by successive rulers to provide loop roads en-route. Some of these roads constructed during the Suri and the Mughal period still survive. The triangular loop which connects Wazirabad to Sialkot and then to Gujranwala was built during the early days of the British rule in the Punjab during which a new cantonment was opened at Sialkot.

Sher Shah Suri diverted the road to connect it to the Rohtas Fort. The embankments in the Margalla Pass were built by the Mughals.

By the time the British annexed the Punjab in 1849, GT Road and other communication networks were a shambles. The Sikh rulers not only paid almost no attention to the upkeep of roads, but Mahraja Ranjit Singh had also levied heavy transit tolls and custom duties which, together with insecurity, more or less paralysed communication.

The construction and repair of GT Road became the British government’ primary concern for political reasons. According to a 1935 report, the Raj feared a consistent uprising of Sikhs whom it had ousted from the Lahore Darbar. As such, it was purely out of military considerations that the construction of GT Road was undertaken at top priority by the Punjab’s Board of Administration, which ran the administration of the newly annexed province before the appointment of lieutenant governors.

What strategic importance the road had for India’s British government may be assessed from the fact that a military board was set up to take up the construction. The board was answerable to governor-general Dalhousie who “took keen interest in this work of principal importance.”

Col Napier, a civil engineer in the service of the East India Company, was appointed the first chief engineer for the Punjab. He was selected for the job because he had served the Council of Regency of young Maharaja Dilip Singh for two years since 1847 and had a fairly good idea of the premier road in the Punjab.

Napier had under him about 250 engineers and sub-engineers. This staff, according to an administrative report, “constitutes perhaps the most extensive and certainly the most varied and arduous engineering charge in India.” Napier’s engineers were to build 563 miles of metalled road from Peshawar to Delhi which then was part of the Punjab.

The road was to be 40 feet wide and was to be built in three phases. The first section between Peshawar and Lahore was 265 miles in length. “This portion of the road was considered by Lord Dalhousie to be the most important.”

Lt Taylor surveyed the section and decided to follow generally the direction of the already existing road and deviated from it only in places where a more favourable course could be selected. The scheme approved for the work said that “numerous small rivers and nullahs were to be crossed by timber bridges while across the four great rivers — the Ravi, the Chenab, the Jhelum and the Indus — bridges of boats were to be thrown.”

The section was more or less completed by October, 1854, but work on the “difficult” Peshawar-Rawalpindi track continued till May 1856 when the Lahore-Peshawar road was opened for traffic.

This part of the road was excavated at six “cardinal points” — Kharian Pass, the Sohawa-Hatti ranges on the banks of the Bakrala river, the Margalla Pass near Kala Serai, Haro, Geedar Gali and the embankments of the Chenbab and Jhelum.

Two tracks were laid between Lahore and Ludhiana in the second section. The first ran from Lahore to Amritsar, Waziraghat, Jullunder, Phagwara, Phillour and Ludhiana and the second touched Kasur and Ferozepur en route.

The third section ran between Ludhiana and Delhi via Sirhind Sharif, Rajpur, Ambala, Shahabad, Karnal and Panipat. The GT Road passed through the princely state of Patiala whose Raja was paid no money despite his demand.

The cost per mile came to be Rs23,076. Nearly half of it was spent on the construction of bridges.

The GT Road was not fully completed when the mutiny broke out in 1857, yet it served the British rulers greatly in capturing Delhi. Its importance during the tumultuous period cannot be over-estimated when the “British statesmanship was strained in every timber to the last degree of tension.”

The British government always thought of the GT Road as an important means of military communication. During the mutiny all cantonments were connected to this road and rapid movement of troops, stores and ammunition was possible. This gave the British immense advantage over mutineers. “Along with telegraph, this road saved India for the British,” says a Punjab government report of the time.

The mutiny was put down and the British gained militarily from this road during the first and second world wars and expeditions against the Sikhs.

Rudyard Kipling has explained the importance this road had for the British:

Were marchin’ on relief over India’s coral strand,

Eight ‘undred fightin’ Englishmen, the Colonel and the Band.

Ho! get away you bullock-man, you’ve ‘eard the bugle blowed,

There’s a regiment a comin’ down the Grand Truck Road.