Assam

What is Assam? Who is Assam? Where is Assam? All valid questions. And in response to them: It is one of the so called 'north-east states', which funnily enough are in the north-east of India, in the bit that is only faintly connected to the rest of the country by the narrow strip of land (17km at its narrowest) in between Bangladesh and Bhutan. The whole north-east region doesn't have a great rep, its far too close to Burma for that, its always been known as a bit of a terrorist hideout, big on crime, lacking in development. Imagine, if you will, most of Africa.

These days however, according to Mark Tully and others, it is making some progress. It has decent natural resources, mostly minerals and tea gardens, and importantly they are being utilised, unlike nearby Bihar which has enough of the former but is doing very little of the latter.

However I'm not here to do a study on democracy or development, I'm here because of India's other great passion, (the one they are actually quite good at); cricket. Invitational Cricket Tournaments are a big thing among the top schools here and after performing rather abjectly in their own tournament, Bishop Cotton School accepted the tour to Assam as a shot at redemption.

The boys lining up at BCS to say farewells

 It's a bit of a slog to get to the school from anywhere, for us it was 8 hours on a coach down to Delhi, a two hour flight with cracking views of Mt Everest and then a sweaty, bumpy ride in a cramped bus to Assam Valley School.

 The lads at Delhi airport

The campus is beautiful, privately owned, funded by the surrounding expanse of tea gardens, it is twice as big as Marlborough with sports pitches and courts of all varieties sprawled across the 250 acres. The buildings are modern, with differing levels of aesthetic beauty, from Communist era concrete blocks to fancy, arty designs.

Rory and I were housed in the infirmary with the boys in a boarding house and Mr Roach the cricket coach in the guest house, about 15 minutes walk away. Our role on the tour was unspecified, keeping bus banter levels up initially seemed crucial so we got stuck into that but then found a new, absolutely essential daily task once at the school. Now sense of direction has never been my strong point, it took me three years to work out the 5 minute route from home to school, but I was nothing compared to Mr Roach. He took it to a new level. We were called up five or six times a day with: Hey Max, hey Rory, come pick me up!'. We obliged, not quite sure whether he was winding us up but when he demanded I walk him home in the pouring rain while QPR's relegation from the Premier League was at stake on the tele I dug my heels in. I begged and pleaded and offered a map but in the end he won and I got wet.

So feeling it was time to branch out I made myself fitness coach/physio/medical coach. Stretching bowlers backs, applying arnica to bruised hands and taking warm ups were my thing while Rory took fielding practice, which involved him hitting a small piece of leather very hard at boys who don't really like small hard pieces of leather being hit very hard at them but catch it anyway. Because they don't have much of a choice.

Mr Roach

I also became the statistician, drawing up wagon wheels and bowling stats on my computer. Unfortunately their batting figures were very small and their bowling stats were very high; ie they lost. Badly. So we thought bugger this and got a rugby ball out. This proved far more popular, and we found a good range of players. The Biharis, who live off buffalo milk were big on bosh, hand-eye co-ords, not so much. The Punjabis ditto while the Delhi boys are small and nippy, probably due to ancestors who made a living pinching from sahib's pocket, and would make good wingers. However the cream of the crop was the 14 year old Nepali wicket-keeper who was rapid, could actually catch and despite just tipping 5 foot promptly beat one of the Biharis in a wrestling match to show he wasn't a wimp.

Our last cricket match, which the lads had to dominate to have any chance of qualifying for the semi-finals was dire. Morale was sky high after bowling them out for 67 but despite a rapid 31 from afore-mentioned Nepali they wimpered out on 60, having lost all their matches and finishing rock-bottom in the group.

'An absolute disgrace!' assessed Mr Roach. Whether he was talking about my map or the cricket I'm not sure. It meant that we had two days to brush up their rugby and for the boys to chase after the girls. Unfortunately they were even less successful at that than the cricket.

Rory and I on the other hand joined all the other coaches for a bit of a piss-up in the guesthouse. It was hilarious, normally very stiff, lots of 'yes sirs' to men their own age; the coaches dropped the facade and turned into complete jokers. Mr Roach took a lot of abuse for his team being so bad but gave as good as he got and made sure everyone was well refreshed.

Our bus back to Guwhati airport was shared with the tournament winners and their massive trophy which didn't do much to cheer up the boys. Once in Delhi we loitered until it was time to catch the bus home to Simla. Unfortunately the bus didn't realise that it was time and we waited on a Delhi pavement for 3 and a half hours while Roachy tried to find out where his bus had gone! No biggie for experienced India travellers such as myself of course but I have had comfier three hour waits.

Manners and Mangers in Guwhati

It did finally arrive, to the chagrin of two members of the cricket team who suffer terribly from motion sickness and had to make emergency sick bags to contend with an uprising of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the windy mountain roads of Himachal Pradesh. Our arrival back at school wasn't glorious but it was nice to be back at a school with proper views and where you don't sweat away more weight than you put on while eating.

We've now left BCS, and I will fill all the massive gaps when I can but for now a slightly different blog with fairly dire pictures is all.

Max