Book review: 'The Taliban Cricket Club'

Book: The Taliban Cricket Club
Timeri N Murari
Aleph Book Company
325 pages
Rs595

Nowhere on the cover of The Taliban Cricket Club are the words “based on a major motion picture” but author and filmmaker Timeri Murari’s 18th book reads more like an accompaniment to a blockbuster than a novel conceived only for its own sake. This is Slumdog Millionaire meets Bend It Like Beckham; an undemanding narrative of underdog achievement, drama lite and happy endings.

When 23-year old Rukhsana is summoned to appear at the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, she expects to be executed. Not only had she defied the Taliban by not covering her face on the day they’d stormed the offices of the newspaper that used to employ her, but in the four years since, she has continued to file stories surreptitiously about the regime’s atrocities. Instead, Rukhsana is surprised to find herself at a press conference. Afghanistan has applied to the International Cricket Council for membership and there is to be a match that will determine that team that will be sent to Pakistan for training.
Like almost every Afghan, she wants to flee the country. She is engaged to a man in America, but he has not sent for her yet. Meanwhile, her mother has cancer — the grim reality is that Rukhsana and her brother Jahan must simply wait for her to die.

But the cricket match is just too good an opportunity to pass up, most of all because Rukhsana just so happens to be one of the few people in Afghanistan who is familiar with the sport. “Cricket is like theatre”, she tells her brother and his friends as she secretly coaches them. When she chances upon a false beard she’d worn while acting the part of Shylock in the pre-Taliban days, it becomes clear that cross-dressing is the way forward, both for her daily security and to enable an escape. She is assisted in her endeavour by Noorzia, who runs a covert beauty salon and whose candid sexuality makes her the novel’s most well-realised character.

And how could this be a movie in disguise if there was no romantic angle? Rukhsana had learnt how to play cricket in Delhi, where she’d studied journalism degree and met (and fallen in love with) Veer, an intrepid maker of wildlife documentaries. The two have been separated for years because of distance, religion, family obligation and a very bad phone connection. Meanwhile, someone else has matrimonial designs on Rukhsana — the nefarious Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice himself.

Heartwarming but not complex, The Taliban Cricket Club might find favour with an adolescent readership. Its feel-good factor might appeal to an undemanding audience. This is a novel that takes no risks, emotionally or politically. Murari deals with provocative subject matter — gender and religion — but the problem is that he doesn’t go far enough. There is an acquiescence in Rukhsana that is at odds with her bravado, be it as a journalist, cricketer or girlfriend, and which is never resolved.

“He was my future husband, allotted to me by our families, and I had to accept him. I would learn to live with him all my life, like a habit I couldn’t shake off,” says Rukhsana of her betrothed, in a tone just facile enough to carry an almost Orientalist whiff.
Even though Murari approaches them with much empathy, his characters ultimately lack intricacy. Everything about them, from their girl power chutzpah to their chivalry, is standard issue Bollywood fare. That’s where this story truly belongs; The Taliban Cricket Club has the promise of box office success in its pages.