"Just Banter, Old Boy"

Exporting English culture as energetically as Britons ever did in the palmy days of Empire, cricketers of the staid old Marylebone Cricket Club began their tour of Pakistan this winter by roughing up some hotel servants in Karachi. "A bit of tomfoolery," said the diplomatic hotel manager. Then the ambassadors of good will moved to Dacca, where they squirted soda water over other hotel guests. Polite Pakistani laughed it all off as mere youthful enthusiasm. Last week, the Pakistani stopped laughing.

Smarting from a series of defeats, the men of Marylebone moved to Peshawar, where they were promptly whipped again. The losers were galled, less by the score than by a series of "leg before wicket"* decisions awarded to Pakistan's star bowler by Umpire Idris Beg. Back in their rooms at Deans Hotel, the cricketers got themselves sufficiently stimulated to hire tongas (horse-drawn rickshaws) and hunt down Umpire Beg. When they found him. they politely invited him back to Deans for "a little private party." Beg refused, so the players took him anyway--according to Beg--dislocating one of his arms in the process. At Deans, the Pakistani recounted later, the cricketers doused him with water and forced him to swig some whisky, a beverage which he, as a Moslem, had never tasted voluntarily. Not until a team of Pakistani cricketers heard about Beg's ordeal and descended on the party was he rescued from his hosts.

Next day the test match continued, and Idris Beg faithfully turned up--with his arm in a sling--to umpire. Marylebone men blithely dismissed the night's adventure: "Just banter, old boy. Pure banter." But Pakistani students paraded in the streets shouting, "M.C.C., go back! Long live Idris Beg!" Police searched spectators for weapons, and stood guard over the visiting Englishmen during play.

Even a topheavy Pakistani victory by seven wickets did not smooth Pakistani feelings--nor did a formal apology by Britain's Deputy High Commissioner J.M.G. James to Governor General (now President) Iskander Mirza, who is also the Pakistani cricket board president. "English players' defeats have upset their mental balance," said Lahore's Civil and Military Gazette. "Britain's sportsmen show irritability, and resort to indecorous behavior in defeat," added the Pakistan Times. At home the English press called the cricketers "graceless boors . . . bad losers . . . bullies." Said the London Times: "Hooliganism has blotted Britain's reputation for sportsmanship."

Through it all, Marylebone's men kept a stiff upper lip--and kept on losing.

* The umpire may call a batsman out on "L.B.W." if, in his opinion, a missed ball, blocked by any part of the batsman's body except his hand, would otherwise have hit the wicket.

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