Central Plains – Ian Louis Harris

India and Sri Lanka, 29 January to 26 February 2011, placeholder and links

We needed a long and complete break after the loss of Phillie, Janie’s twin, in December. But this holiday was a long and ambitious one by any measure.

We were planning it at very short notice, by our standards, of course, but fortune smiled upon us in that planning. The Central Plains of India; Chhattisgarh and Orissa (Odisha) can be quite politically volatile, Foreign Office advice yo-yos between “no problem” and “only go if need be”, due to Naxalite/Maoist activity. But what a fascinating tribal part of India it is.

Anyway, it was a safe time to go at that time and the plan, through Steppes East who were excellent on this one, was to use the family of the Maharajah of Kanker as our guides in that region. This was a great idea; Jolly Deo, the Maharajkumar, was the perfect host and guide. We learnt lots and had fun along the way.

I long ago posted the weirdest story from that trip; the day I was press-ganged into being a live cricket commentator, which was published on King Cricket a few months after the event.

We were also fortunate in the Sri Lanka leg of the trip; an opportunity to have a large villa in Galle Old Town all to ourselves for the price of a hotel room came up, by virtue of the villa only recently coming back onto the holiday market following a long-term family stay. I suppose our experience there was a bit like a cross between AirBnB (except without making life hell for the neighbours) and Lastminute.com.

In short, there were loads of adventures to write up from this holiday – pages and pages and pages of the stuff….

…and they are all up there now – pretty much one posting per day. The posting for the first day of the holiday can be seen by clicking here or below:

Journey From London To Hyderabad, 29 & 30 January 2011

Here are links to the photo albums, which I divided up into six short albums, one for each “leg” of the trip:

If you are really keen to explore my hand-written notes, just to make sure I have written them up properly, here they are in pdf form and good luck to you:

Here is the Steppes East itinerary, also available for download – at least you’ll be able to read this one: Itinerary-Wormleighton.

Finally, there are photo albums on flickr of the pictures that didn’t make the cut for the main albums – there are some gems in there nonetheless for picture lovers:

The Day I Was Press-ganged Into Becoming A Live Cricket Commentator, Jagdalpur, 6 February 2011

Strange things can happen when you travel in India but this event, from Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, in the central plains of India, must qualify as one of the strangest things that has happened to me in my entire life.

I reported this story at length on the King Cricket website, under my nom de plume, Ged Ladd. Janie and I have nicknamed each other Ged and Daisy for as long as anyone can remember. Click here or below for the story and further links.

Interstate competition, Bhawaripatnam v Konta at Jagdalpur – match report

If by any chance something goes awry with King Cricket site, the piece is scraped to Ogblog here.

Frankly, some of the comments are better than my report – it is worth reading for them. King Cricket can be like that.

Below are the two newspaper articles that appeared at the time. First up, the front page of New India:

Ameya from the King Cricket site has kindly translated the substance of the above article as follows:

The New India headline says ‘Bastar weather is great for cricket’. The article mentions you saying that Bastar has conducive weather for cricket. I’m assuming you were simply commenting on the weather that day.
Article goes on to say that you and Jenny (they get your names right for the most part, except you are Iaan) are foreign tourists, that you are cricket fans, that you encouraged players, and that you did commentary on the game ‘in English’.

Next up, the back page of the Bastar Sun, which got a great many of the material facts about the event wrong. I recall us having quite a laugh with Jolly about that article at the time. I shouted out to the King Cricket community, “perhaps someone now would care to translate it for us in full”…

…and Ameya kindly obliged with the following:

The Bastar Sun is where things get more interesting. The bold black font headline says ‘London’s John Harik does commentary’. The smaller red blurb says ‘Foreign player does commentary’.
You are John Harik and your ‘associate’ is Revis Harik. No mention of marriage or professional commentary anywhere. [apologies – that was my inaccurate recollection]
The article says you (cricket lover from London) and your associate were enjoying the match when the organisers spotted you and requested you to do commentary. You proceeded to ‘enjoy the responsibility’ for about an hour, and also chatted with and encouraged some senior players.
As for the match itself, Konta Chhattisgarh won the toss and chose to bat. After making 172/8 in their 25 overs, their seam bowlers were taken to the cleaners by Bhavanipatanam Orissa’s openers. While the spinners did apply some brakes, the match was over within 22.2 overs. Rinku top scored with 77(71). The writer was puzzled as to why Konta chose to bat first, to which one of their officials said that they didn’t want the pressure of a chase and wanted to set a high score.

Many thanks to Ameya for the translations.

If you want to see the pictures from our several days in the Bastar region of Chhattiisgarh, including the events described in this story, click here.

Middlesex Ged Ladds v Bastar Jolly Rogers, Garden Cricket At the Bastar Jungle Resort, 5 February 2011

At the Bastar Jungle Resort, in Chhattisgarh, central plains of India, we had great fun playing garden cricket after our touring on a couple of evenings; especially 5 February.

I described the background and the matches at length on the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) web site when we returned from India. Read all about it by clicking the photo above or clicking here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD and/or Sportnetwork, I have also scraped the report to Ogblog – here.

The match report doesn’t mention the mess I made of one of my arms by trying to hit the cover off the ball in the final match of the “series”. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose when it comes to Ged Ladd and playing sport. Ironically, earlier that same day I had my 15 minutes of fame as a live cricket commentator and thus soon to be minor celebrity in those parts – see here.

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