Cultural cricketers gather in Scotland

www.cricketscotland.com

9 August 2010

In Tales from Afghanistan on Sunday 15 August, Magnus Linklater is in discussion with James Fergusson, author of Taliban and former Sunday Times Foreign Correspondent, and Tim Albone, director of Out of the Ashes, a film that captures the uplifting story about the Afghan cricket’s team, and hears their views about what lies in store for Afghanistan, its people and the West’s presence in the country.

Later the same day, former Zimbabwe cricket captain Henry Olonga joins David Coltart, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Culture, and Andy Thompson, director of the film Mugabe, to discuss with Magnus Linklater the topic Where now for Zimbabwe?

Then, to round off the cricketing feast, you can watch the Out of the Ashes film itself, in the Film Gallery at Traquair House, preceded by a short film from Afghan Connection.

Meanwhile, to understand how the Zimbabwean media is treating the subject of cricket, you might also wish to read the report in last week’s Zimbabwe Independent about Scotland’s scheduled I-Cup match next month, and where it will be played: click HERE to read it.

And, since we are talking matters cultural, what about taking in Balamory‘s Archie the Inventor – aka comedian Miles Jupp – at the Edinburgh Festival? Here’s what Andrew Miller wrote about him on cricinfo recently:

Sitting in the Oval crowd on the final day of the Ashes in 2005, the comedian Miles Jupp experienced a “Damascene moment”. Down on his luck in his chosen career, and jealously observing the lucky few who were being paid to watch the sport he loved, he decided he would chance his arm at something completely different – and resolved to become a cricket journalist.

“Joining the press corps seemed like the perfect job,” said Jupp. “The more I thought about it, the more romantic my vision of life inside that world became: a clubby and convivial group of cricket lovers travelling the world together, watching the game and sharing stories about it, working and hunting as a pack.”

And so, with that idyllic vision in mind, he set his sights on England’s tour of India in February and March 2006, and even managed to extract vague promises of work via his contacts at the BBC and The Western Mail. However, upon arrival, he found himself completely out on a limb.

“I was left in India for a month with no pass, no work and the monumental task of looking busy,” he said. “It is incredibly hard to look busy when you have absolutely nothing to do. It is frowned upon to make excited, girly noises when a famous player is standing near you. And it is difficult to be taken seriously as a cricket journalist when more and more of your colleagues in the press box start noticing that you look a lot like one of the actors in the children’s television series Balamory.”

The net result, however, was to furnish Jupp with a stock of raw material which he has now taken back to his original career as a stand-up comic. “It was a month in which I was sometimes embarrassed, humiliated, self-conscious, bored, lonely or horribly sick,” he added. “But also at other times I was excited, accepted, joyful, got to mix with my heroes and learned to understand my relationship with the game.”