Call the Engineer

After the hoo-ha about the booing of Sachin Tendulkar, the Wankhede crowd again came under scrutiny yesterday.

Midway through the afternoon, Farokh Engineer, the India and Lancashire wicket-keeper from the 60s and 70s, took it upon himself to make an announcement to the assembled media.

I figured he was about to indulge in a spot of self-promotion, perhaps for a charitable foundation or some such.

No, he was issuing an apology on behalf of the people of Mumbai, no less, for the verbal abuse meted out by the crowd to Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard.

This was an unconventional strategy for the simple reason that no one had much of a clue what he was talking about. I was vaguely aware, from minor anecdotal evidence, that young, brash Bombayites had been dishing out a few low-grade sledges to Flintoff. But it didn’t sound like anything Fred wouldn’t have heard before or indeed anything that the more raucous English crowds dish out themselves to opposition players.

Engineer explained that he had been out for dinner with Ian Botham “and some of the boys” the night before. And in the course of the evening’s revelry this had been brought to his attention.

Engineer’s actions would not happen in England. Most ground authorities will deny claims of disorder or rowdiness unless absolutely forced to fess up.

So you could say his was a noble gesture. You could also say that his comments simply highlighted the inadequacies of a stadium whose woeful public facilities are not commensurate with Mumbai’s status either as a major cricketing centre or as one of the flashest, brashest and wealthiest cities in the world.