Maxwellitis, a cricketing hallucination

Tuesday night at the Wankhede Stadium was ludicrous and ridiculous and scarcely believable

- Rahul Bhattacharya

An outbreak of overactive imagination was recorded in Mumbai in the early hours yesterday. The sufferers, about 20,000, reported strikingly similar – indeed, in many cases, identical – symptoms.

Each was at a storied cricket stadium the previous evening, where two teams were contesting a World Cup match. One team, it seems, had never played an international match until 14 years ago, while the other had been playing and winning them since 1877. That team learnt the sport in refugee camps. It had won five World Cup matches before this notional fixture, while the second had won five whole World Cups. This second team swayed with their arms around each other for the national anthem. The other stood at attention to sing an anthem – so it was claimed by geopolitically aware patients – officially de-recognised by the government.

There was consensus that the first team, identified as Afghanistan, had the second team, Australia, on the mat. Unusual things supposedly occurred. A handsome young opener, Ibrahim Zadran, carried his bat through the innings, as if this were a Test match, and still played shots respondents spoke of with ruminative pleasure – in particular, a kiss over the wicket-keeper’s head. When the team bowled, they said the whole stadium chanted for a fast bowler, Naveen, who would normally get booed for reasons a large number of patients attributed to the Indian cricketer Virat Kohli and mangoes. They claimed that a great spinner called Rashid took a wicket, caught by the keeper, when the ball had not touched the bat but the stump. This, it seems, plummeted Australia to a total of 91 for 7 with 200 still to get.

This is the stage at which the afflicted began to refer to a possibly mythical creature variously called “Maxi”, “Mad Max”, “Big Show” or “Maxwell”.