Column

Tales from the locker room

It’s not the nuclear arms race. It’s not the caste or communal clashes. It is not instability and murder that is most foul in Pakistan. It’s not Nicholas Sarkozy’s girlfriend, it’s not even my anniversary. The thing that’s spoiling the New Year for everybody is Steve Bucknor.

For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Steve Bucknor is Jamacian, he’s six feet two inches tall, andhas less friends in India than the late General Yahya Khan. He’s also the ‘Man of the Match’ in the Sydney test match that wound up in a pulsating finish on Sunday.

On the flip side Steve, for his five wrong decisions against Indian batsmen, and his two get-out-of-jail tickets to a couple of Australian batsmen, (no pun intended). He has been given the highest order an Australian can receive, a free round of beer at O’Riley pub on Sydney’s fashionable South side.

But what ails the man? Why the angst against India? And most importantly is he prejudiced or just visually challenged? Or even more disturbing, a combination of both? And if he has watched ‘Taare Zamaan Par’, who does he identify with?

To answer these and more questions the BCCI allegedly hired a Jamacian detective to dig up the dirt on Steve. This is what he unearthed. Steve was born many years ago. He loves the colour yellow. He much prefers football to cricket. (this explains why he once gave Harbhajan Singh a red card during Diwali, instead of his sweater).

He likes to paint. However when he does paint he mostly paints his nails. He turned down an opportunity to appear in ‘Nach Baliye’. He loves to feed dolphins but almost always forgets to bring the fish. As important as all these facts are, the one that really hits the mark, is that at the age of 17, he fell in love with a Jamacian girl of Indian descent. However, her father refused to let them marry.

Some say it was a race issue, but others say her father was famous for keeping his money in his pocket and didn’t want to fork out for a great fat Indian cum West-Indian wedding with Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan performing and Will Smith as the emcee. (Years later she did marry. Shankar Ehsan and Loy performed and Shaan was the emcee.)

This information may lead us to understand the troubled mind of Steve—the destroyer and why every time he passes an Indian on the street he raises his finger.