How to Engineer a win?

“I’m still heart-broken,’’ says Farokh Engineer when we drive up to his house, The Far Pavilions, on Friday morning. “How could we lose such a match?’’ It’s a question that has vexed everybody who saw Thursday’s match at Old Trafford. How indeed?

Engineer lives a short drive out of Manchester city in a quaint, leafy lane which obviously only those with a healthy income can afford. It has a smart drive-in and a lovely back garden which has been host to many parties and famous footfalls.

Engineer has just finished giving an interview to a TV channel from back home, and is clearly continuing in the same chain of thought when we arrive. “This is a bunch of wonderful guys, but something is going wrong,’’ he says, the diagnosis however as vague perhaps as that of the team management, which now appears clueless on how to stop the free fall to disaster.

The one clearly identifiable problem is the fielding, which Engineer agrees has been abysmal. “I was speaking to Chandu (Borde) the other day, and we agreed that this is one area where the game has improved tremendously since our playing days, but this team seems to have regressed.”

Engineer believes, as I suppose everyone else in England, that India’s task is uphill from here. “The only advice I can give Dravid and the boys is that to win, not only do they have to take the chances which come their way, but make those chances.”

Considering the quality of India’s fielding this series, that’s leaving a lot to chance, if you get what I mean.

From the Far Pavilions

A man loves his den most, and Engineer’s chest swells up when he takes us on recce of his ‘snooker room’ which is actually is the largest in the house and stores, apart from a full-sized pool table that Geet Sethi would be proud to play on, all his memorabilia and paraphernalia, and a work station on which is kept a carton full of his biography, appropriately called From the Far Pavilions.

There are scrap-books listing Engineer’s many achievements with Lancs and India, trophies of all kinds and sizes, and pictures of him with a host of celebrities from Clive Lloyd, Gavaskar, Alex Ferguson, George Best, John Major, Pele, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi. And a young beauty queen who suddenly looked familiar. “She’s Julie,’’ says Engineer, “who became my wife.’’

But his ‘hottest’ friend nowadays is Andrew Flintoff. “Freddie’s as wonderful a guy as he is a cricketer,’’ says. “Big hearted in every which way.’’

Incidentally, Engineer helped Flintoff get four million pounds as his benefit last year.

“He’s given one million pounds to charity, and wants to raise some more next year by crossing the Channel on a pedallo, the kind he used controversially during the World Cup. Shows his character,’’ says Engineer.

Also shows that Flintoff has the sterling, but rare quality to laugh at himself.

Rich dinner with Freddie

Now Freddie’s Flintoff’s form this season may not be as impressive as the historic 2005 season when he helped England regain the Ashes, but his star value remains undiminished. Indeed, from this story related by Engineer, it seems to have acquired an extraordinary dimension.

It seems that businessman Dharmesh Jain from Mumbai paid 25000 pounds for an exclusive dinner with Flintoff (and Engineer) on the eve of the match, and some eight tickets for Thursday’s game. Since the tickets could not have cost more than 500 pounds, that’s still 24,500 pounds to sit on the same dining table with the all-rounder.

Is that a new benchmark in paying for celebrity-company? India’s superstars would surely like to test the waters. On second thoughts, given current form, maybe not just now.

Night out with Becks

Engineer concludes the tete-a-tete with an invitation to come and watch a Man United match. “It’s an experience you will remember forever,” he says. “It’s a great club with or without David Beckham. What do you think, does he deserve to be persisted with and complete 100 caps for England?’’

C’mon Farokh, you can do better than that.

Read my lips.