5

FIELDERS WITHOUT FINGERS

YOU KNOW YOU’RE in Central Europe when the first man you see is selling two-stripe tracksuits labeled “Abidas” through car windows.

A capitalist takeoff was in full display between the road and the forest in the Czech Republic. Stalls were offering garden gnomes and plastic mermaids by the thousand—just what you need when going on holiday to Prague. Every twenty yards I saw wigged hitchhikers fumbling with fishnet tights and lipstick. In the towns, pole dancers glanced furtively from sauna-bar windows, causing many a rear-end bump.

I checked my mirror to overtake a truck crash. Looking at me there was a transsexual with shoe polish plastered on her face. “Come over here,” she beckoned with a finger, “and we’ll go mess around in the bushes.”

Motoring through the Czech Republic required considerable caution. When Estonia’s captain Jason came here on his world tour, a policeman spotted his foreign plates and pulled him over. He wanted two hundred dollars.

“No,” said Jason, who was then thrown into jail in Prague.

Jason’s words came to me now as I spotted a sniping police car. “I was in there for two days,” he’d said. “They issued me with an ‘illegal parking ticket,’ even though I was driving through the countryside at the time.”

AFTER SEVEN HOURS at the wheel I merged with Prague’s evening rush-hour traffic. Diesel fumes poured through my air vents. I had no map, no local currency, and little idea where I was going. Apart from an infant ghost, my sole guide was the Prague cricket captain’s address, scribbled down in haste that morning from the internet.

I looped around the city’s ring road twice, and when, after two hours, I could take no more, I exited and drove down tram lines towards the center. As though Great-Uncle Ivor himself was guiding me from the passenger seat, the unmistakable sight of a cricket field came into view. It was here, among all the detritus, that Prague’s cricketers battled it out each weekend.

Captain Leo’s flat was a few blocks away, up a hill in a wealthy suburb dotted with villas. I parked and waited till my sweaty clothes had dried out, then sounded the door buzzer. A tall twentysomething in a baseball cap appeared in the frame.

“Ah. You’re lucky I was in,” announced Leo. “I didn’t know when you were coming. Welcome.”

“Thanks. Is it safe to leave my car here?”

“Yes, though we did have ours stolen last week,” he said rather too confidently. “They broke into the house and took our DVD player, laptop, and CDs. Then they found our car keys. I saw the guy jumping out the window and heard him driving off.”

I now had reservations about living here for a week.

“You look a bit worried,” said Leo.

“Yeah. I had my car broken into here three years ago. They took my photos, my tent, and my boxer shorts.”

Leo grimaced.

“There’s one thing I hate more than a thief, and that’s a crap thief,” I said.

“Better take your cricket gear inside. I’ll give you a hand.”

THAT EV ENING, AS we walked out to get some food, Leo talked about his job. He’d moved from Wiltshire to work for his dad’s marketing company, introducing U.K. firms to the Czech Republic. Then one day he got a job with the Czech Mafia.

“They drove me around and around so I couldn’t identify the place,” he said as we entered a pizzeria. “It was a call center, with women in bikinis in the office. My job was to phone people who’d clicked on pop-up ads, asking them to invest ten thousand dollars. I had to say, ‘Do you have ten thousand dollars? Are you sure you have ten thousand dollars? Can you guarantee you can get ten thousand dollars to us today?’ If they said ‘yes,’ the money was wired to a Latvian account and never seen again.”

“People who click on pop-up ads and enter their personal details deserve to lose ten thousand dollars,” I said. “Did you get any sales?”

“No. I was only there for one day. We had this Jewish guy and his kid working in the office. The dad used to snog the girls in bikinis in front of us. Anyway, a few months later I saw them on the FBI’s Most Wanted.”

Two pizzas the size of car wheels arrived, along with tall, frothy measures of Staropramen. I asked Leo about his cricketing experience.

“I played a game for Chile after university,” he said. “And this season I landed the Prague Cricket Club captaincy. It’s an exciting time. We just launched our national league.”

“How many teams are there?”

“Four: Prague CC, the Indian Embassy, Prague Bohemians, and Hradec Králové—that’s a city east of here. Sometimes DHL provides a friendly fixture.”

“Do you ever get touring teams?”

“In the past we got pissheads coming over from London. We’d arrange the matches six months in advance, then an hour before play they’d phone up and moan, ‘Aw, shit. We feel sick. We’ve gotta cancel.’ So now we’re doing our own thing.”

Leo confessed he knew little about the history of Czech cricket. “All I can say is we’re like nineteenth-century missionaries out here. We poach a lot from softball. They come around when they realize there’s a better alternative.”

I nodded and smiled.

“You’ll get more stories from the others at nets tomorrow.”

NEXT MORNING, LEO left for work and I set out by tram for the city center. Half the passengers were lugging guitars, cellos, or harps. Prague was a city of wannabe musicians and writers. I had come to the right place, I decided. Then I stepped out and heard Robbie Williams blasting from every boy racer’s car.

Starting in the Castle District, I poked through people’s medieval doorways, sniped photos from under painted arches, and zigzagged down the cobbled streets to the river. Few walls were untouched by Prague’s graffiti artists. Even the boarded-up Mafia buildings had been targeted.

Across a park full of kilted bagpipers, I came to the John Lennon Wall. It was here, under communism, that Prague citizens stole out each night to scrawl their protests. Every day the authorities painted it white again. The Czechs say the Beatles saved their lives under communism, in much the same way that David Hasselhoff saved the East Germans.

Near the banks of the Vltava I spotted the legacy of the 2002 flood. The watermark reached above the first-floor windows. In the deluge even the Charles Bridge had been threatened. The Czech army tried to save it by dropping bombs from helicopters upriver to sink barges. They employed four tanks to hold a floating restaurant, whose owner was away on holiday. Cranes on the bridge fought to clear trees and a sea lion that had escaped from the zoo. Even a hippopotamus broke loose and had to be executed.

By midday, the weight of ten thousand tourists was threatening to topple the Charles Bridge. I wanted a flawless photo of its soot-smudged towers and statues. This looked unlikely amid the carnival on top. There were struggling and juggling artists, sketches of Harry Potter and friends, Nigerian sailors in Popeye suits, and hand organists, who’d have fared better with monkeys on their shoulders. The only way I’d get my photo, said the tourist office, was by hiring the bridge for ten thousand dollars between four and eight in the morning.

Over the warbling organ pipes I heard an unmistakable clipped English accent. I turned to see Michael York in a blazer and shades. Leo had said we were one short for Saturday. I thought about asking Basil Exposition if he fancied a game, but a Chinese horde cut me off, screaming, “Austin Powers!”

“How extraordinary,” said Michael York.

Beyond the town square and its astronomical clock, I dodged a horse and carriage and slipped into an internet café. After a browse of the menu, I chose the cheapest item available—toast. The waitress looked at me as though I’d spat in her face.

“Are you going to order butter with that?” she asked scornfully.

I gulped and glanced at the menu again. Butter was indeed a separate dish. It cost three times as much.

“Please,” I said.

The waitress stared at me for an awkward moment as I reached for my money.

SIT DOWN!” she screamed.

Everyone in the café swiveled and gave me a glare. I turned pink and my heart fluttered. I shuffled to a lonely chair in the corner and, for a second, thought about running.

In the twenty minutes I waited for my toast I leafed through a copy of The Prague Post. Nearly forty thousand Americans were living in the city. I wondered what they were all doing, apart from writing for this weekly paper or teaching English. Why weren’t more friendly Americans running the Czech Republic’s catering industry?

I browsed the classifieds section and saw freelance masseuse was a popular career alternative for Westerners inescapably drawn here. “Beautiful women significantly younger than you for serious relationships,” read one ad.

I’m only twenty-four, I thought.

“Linda, twenty-two, pleasure time,” read another.

Sad as it is to admit, it got me thinking about an afternoon’s cricket, scoring my first 100.

The most serious downside of Prague’s U.S. invasion was that cricket had a battle on its hands. Leo and his teammates were struggling to compete against the booming softball and American football leagues, which got regular write-ups in the press.

My slabs of butter arrived on top of a wilted salad. The waitress dumped a slice of burnt toast on the table.

“D™kuji,” I said.

The waitress hovered over me while I hurriedly buttered my toast with a teaspoon. Then she lifted the remainder of the butter and salad and whipped it away for the next customer.

My meal finished, I left a handsome tip and moved over to one of the café’s computer terminals. The moment I logged in and opened my inbox, a backpacker in a ball cap walked towards me.

“Are you gonna be long?” he asked rudely in a Canadian accent.

“There are ten other computers,” I said, pointing them out along the wall.

“Yeah, but the one you’re on is free if you use it for only a few minutes.”

I sighed.

“I’ll be ten minutes,” I said.

“Good.”

He sat down beside me and read over my shoulder.

There were no new messages in my inbox, so I logged off and took comfort in the fact I wouldn’t have to pay. I stood up and the prat in the baseball cap jumped into my seat.

“That’ll be thirty korunas for fifteen minutes!” the waitress shouted to me.

LEO AND I traveled by tram, metro, and bus for over an hour to reach nets that evening. We stepped onto the street among rows of decaying gray tower blocks in the suburbs. “This is where all the Czechs live,” said Leo a little sadly. “You wouldn’t think that when you see the center.”

Clutching our kit bags, we threaded between blocks and over scraggy strips of grass. “Watch out for dog crap,” warned Leo. “I’ve never seen so much dog crap as in the Czech Republic. Especially on the cricket field.”

We reached the British International School and approached four teenagers on the steps. “These guys have formed their own school cricket team,” said Leo as we neared. “They organize it all themselves.”

We shook the kids’ hands. They were Macedonian, Russian, and Czech. “We’re playing the girls’ school team next week,” said one to Leo, “but we’re still six players short. Any ideas?”

Leo said he’d have a think, and we entered the school. Crappy artwork hung on the walls, and the smell of cleaning fluid took me back ten years. Leo and I stopped by the gym. There were hoops and bars, a horse block and a piano, and a cupboard full of cricket equipment.

“It reminds me of Cubs,” I said. “I see you’ve broken a few windows. This is perfect.”

“No, we’re just here to pick up the kit,” said Leo. “Nets are outside. We play here in winter. This is where we held our tsunami benefit match.”

Leo and I strode outside to the AstroTurf pitch. Pheasants were getting frisky around its fenced perimeter. Soon Czech players began arriving in a mixture of whites and jeans. Each handshake was a memorable one, as it produced an electric shock from the AstroTurf.

“This is our national coach and the captain of Prague Bohemians,” said Leo. “Scott from Australia. He also repairs bats for the region.”

“If you meet anyone in Eastern Europe with a broken bat,” said Scott, half taking me aside, “send it my way. I’ll give you a price list later.”

The formation of Prague’s National League seemed to have caused slight fractions among certain players. Leo’s team, Prague CC, had been depleted as players broke away to create the new Prague Bohemians. But Leo had his eye on the broader Czech game and ran nets without bias. At his instructions three batsmen from separate clubs began padding up in a goalmouth.

While the cricketers set about top-edging sweeps into British classroom windows, I roamed the nets, searching out some of the Czech Republic’s fifteen home nationals. “P™kná rána,” they called after every classy shot, meaning “good blow.” Their national squad included a half-Greek, half-Czech hospital porter and a pure-blood travel agent, hooked since seeing cricket on Dubai TV. They were all equally surprised to hear their team floated between 92nd Iran and 105th Estonia in the rankings.

One Czech showed particular promise. Magda, a left-arm seamer and opening batswoman, found herself snapped up by Somerset while studying at Bath University.

“I take cricket so seriously,” she said. “I cried for six hours after dropping a catch in Munich two weeks ago.”

She should be an England wicketkeeper, I thought.

Fielding in Munich was tough, though. One boundary was on top of a six-foot grassy bank, and there was a sandpit and an athletics track to negotiate.

When training ended, seven of us set out for the pub to rehydrate over prize Czech beer. The café was typically old-style, said Leo. Its clientele looked thin and ill. The air was heavily blanketed with cigarette smoke, and the mustachioed waitress had a scowl that could curdle milk.

“If you come to the Czech Republic, you have to try this,” insisted Leo, selecting from a greasy-fingered menu. “It’s a national dish, and it’s sooo good.”

Our dinner of deep-fried breadcrumbed cheese arrived, looking like a Findus Crispy Pancake. It went a long way to explaining why Czech men die nearly five years below the European average. That and their marvelous, frothy beer.

To combat the effects of this dietary disaster, the Czech cricketers had drawn up a constitution that forbade smoking and booze consumption on-field. The benefits, they claimed, had been reaped. In the previous year’s tri-nations versus Poland and Slovakia, they recorded two wins out of two.

“That puts us top of the Twenty20 rankings ahead of Australia,” announced national coach Scott. “We’ve come a long way since our first game against Poland in 2000. We scored 172 and won, yet nobody in the game made double figures.”

“How?” I asked.

“I scored 131; the next top score was Magda with 9. None of the Poles made more than 7.”

I turned to the three Sri Lankans at our table to ask about the conception of cricket in Prague. After a painful ten-year layoff from the sport, they had sparked it all off by convincing three Czechs to join them in a game in 1996.

“We thrashed about between the Technical University and a metro station,” said one, gleefully. “We used tennis balls on concrete.”

Team totals back then peaked at a heady 15. “We did much better on the tram heading home, playing with an apple and a mallet.”

The players could not have known then how their efforts would develop, culminating in an unofficial “Test” versus Slovenia within a decade.

“It was a timeless Test, but the players had to return to work after two days,” said Leo, making everyone laugh as we got up to leave.

FRIDAY ARRIVED AND Leo turfed me out of bed with some unpleasant news. “We’ve gotta go in ten minutes,” he said. “We have to cut the cricket field.”

Official Czech groundsman Lukas was waiting downstairs when I staggered in. Broad-shouldered Lukas was a softball convert and a fan of Surrey County Cricket Club. He was the Czech Republic’s highest run-scorer and their only centurion to date.

“I have to study for my exams today,” he said. “So I can’t cut the pitch. I’ll drive you and Leo and the lawnmower down there.”

During the car ride I asked Lukas where Czechs got their whites.

“I got mine from my mum,” he said. “She’s a doctor at the hospital.”

Lukas deposited us at the ground and left for a cram session. Leo unlocked a blue container and wheeled out a second antique lawnmower.

“The drive function doesn’t work, so you’ll have to push,” he said.

“I bet Australian players never have to do this,” I replied, tugging the start cord.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get paid from the match fees.”

One boundary was covered in pylons and intersected by the number twenty-two tram. Opposite stood ash trees and thick rhododendrons. I looked to the sky and saw this was one of the few grounds in the world where a jet landing behind the bowler’s arm could hold up play.

“Sometimes the games stop because of gypsies on horseback in the covers,” said Leo.

Leo and I began a three-and-a-half-hour mowing session. I adored the smell of fresh grass cuttings and gas. It signaled the start of the cricket season and the happiest time of the year. As fumes and heat went to my head, I envisioned myself moving to Prague and earning my keep as assistant groundsman. Then Leo pointed out that not all was rosy with the job.

“I had to clean sick off the wicket last week.”

By the time Lukas returned from his studies, the ground was no Lord’s, but it would do for an Eastern European international.

“So, tomorrow’s game,” said Leo, turning to me. “Prague CC versus the Czech Republic. You’re playing for the Republic. Nervous?”

“Always.”

MATCH DAY ARRIVED. After a week of blistering sun, Prague CC versus the Czech Republic was a washout. I didn’t even have to look out the window to know.

“We’ve called it off,” said Leo, looking glum as he emerged from the stairwell. “If the ground’s wet, we just can’t use the plastic pitch. It’s lethal. I’m really sorry.”

The cruelest part, I explained, was that we played through conditions like this every week in Scotland.

“Well, my dad’s going to look at some houses out of Prague, if you’re interested. I’m gonna get on with some work.”

Leo left and I took up the offer of a tour of abandoned farmhouses. Leo’s dad, Simon, was president of the Czech Cricket Union. He drove through the drizzle while his Czech partner, Katerina, sat in the back.

We left the outskirts of Prague and, after a brief scout around some bargain holiday villas, visited a garden center. It was in an Edinburgh garden center much like this that my mum had purchased my first pair of cricket pads. They were actually called “My First Cricket Pads.”

At under-twelves boarding-school practice I had to hide the packaging carefully. Though no one ever saw the brand, every teammate laughed whenever I produced the pads. Owning crap pads meant I was a crap player. It just so happened that the captain and vice-captain’s pads, bats, and gloves were the best, simply because they belonged to the captain and vice-captain.

The straps on my pads ripped and fell off after a week, and I had to reattach them with safety pins. The thought of a teammate discovering this caused me many a sleepless night in the summer term.

During one match while I waited to bat, our wicketkeeper, Oliver Holt, ran across and kicked me just because I was wearing my crap pads. It bruised my shin and left a permanent dent not only in the padding but also in my psyche. Both school teams and their masters laughed so hard that there followed a five-minute delay in play, after which the bowlers never regained their accuracy. The haunting memories that came to me now only made that day’s Czech washout all the more bitter.

Simon, Katerina, and I drove next to Kutná Hora, a classic day-trip venue for those who venture beyond Prague’s Irish pubs. Its most famous chapel is decorated with the bones of more than forty thousand humans. A thirteenth-century abbot had returned from the Holy Land with a jar of soil for its grounds, instantly transforming this into one of the most popular graveyards in Europe. Then, in the sixteenth century, a half-blind monk dug up the plague victims’ bones to clear a way for new customers. A woodcarver was later commissioned to hang up the decorations. He made a coat of arms from ribs and a chandelier containing every bone in the human body. He built great pyramids of skulls in the fashion of Pol Pot.

As I stepped out of the ossuary, feeling a little queasy, Czech cricket president Simon had some breaking news.

The Prague cricketers had been watching England slaughter Bangladesh in the first Test at the pub. The rain clouds had parted, and now Leo was on the phone summoning us back to the city.

“There’s about fifty of us playing cricket!” he yelled down the phone. “We’ve got tons of beer! Hurry up!”

Simon stepped on the accelerator.

The location had been switched from the usual ground. Entering a soccer pitch within the confines of a crumbling running track, I came upon the conclusion of an exciting game of tip-and-run. There were metal garbage cans as stumps and a netted goalmouth at slip, and one batsman was brandishing a snapped plank that looked like it might impale him if he tripped. In the distance rose the enormous Soviet T V tower, now with bronze babies crawling up it, and over the hedge a rock concert raged.

The tennis ball squirted out to square leg. “Get it in! Get it in!” everyone cried. With my first touch I scooped up the ball and shied down the stumps. There were drunken cheers and high fives all round. Run-outs are frequently a problem in this part of the world. The Czech word for “yes”’ is “no.” Then someone explained my side was batting and I’d just run out my captain.

After the run-out things only got worse for my makeshift side. Like Bangladesh that day, we suffered an innings defeat. Things became so desperate at one point that coach Scott, umpiring, tried to prevent an opposition catch and ended up copping the ball in his eye.

But win or lose, in the best tradition, the players headed pub-ward after the game, pointing out that Prague is the cheapest place on the planet for post-match drinks.

In the bar, plied with frothy Staropramen, I listened as more bizarre Czech tales came forth. I asked the group about odd players in the past. It emerged there had been two alleged exterrorists without fingers.

“I’m pretty sure they were Tamils,” explained coach Scott. “They had their middle three fingers cut off so they couldn’t fire rifles.”

“And they still played cricket!” I cried. “That’s awful! Where would the captain hide them in the field?”

“One actually held a catch,” said Scott. “The batsman hit it up in the air and thought, This is an easy two. But the guy bounced it with his thumbs and clutched it to his chest.”

Given the difficulties, neither digitless alleged ex-terrorist was ever required to umpire, and they never bowled spin in tandem.

After more drinks, further tales emerged. “Remember that game with the prostitutes?” recalled another player, indicating I should write this down. “An Australian turned up in a stretch limo looking for a game. He came with two prostitutes who weren’t wearing any knickers.”

“Yeah,” said Scott. “Never have so many players and spectators been so keen to explain the rules of cricket.”

The table erupted.

“The Aussie said to our fifteen-year-old virgin wicketkeeper, ‘I’ve paid the girls for twenty-four hours, mate, so you can have your cherry picked if you want.’”

Too bashful at the time, and with his focus on the game, the youngster politely declined. The poor prostitutes got so bored by the cricket that they left within the twenty-four hours.

“Imagine being turned down by a teenage boy,” I said. “They must’ve been distraught. Is the wicketkeeper panged with regret?”

“Nah, he had his cherry picked on May 1, on Petrin Hill, while fireworks celebrating E.U. entry were exploding overhead.” As we continued our late-night crawl into Prague’s cellars, I concluded there was nothing innocent about Czech cricket.