Sunday, April 08, 2007

Gatting in Gujrat

This one is from one of England's tours to India in the eighties or early nineties when Mike Gatting was the captain. One of the one-day matches was played in Ahmedabad, which is located in India's west, in the state of Gujarat. Now, Gujarat is the birth place of the Father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi and based on this very flawed logic, the local administration has declared Gujarat as a dry state, meaning sale or consumption of any kind of alcohol is banned within the boundaries of that state.
In the evening of the match, when the temperature was hovering around 35 degrees C, Gatting felt the urge to down a chilled beer. When informed of the dry-ness of the state, Gatting was far from amused and couldn't help making a memorable remark: "I fail to understand what kind of government would stop its citizens from enjoying a chilled beer on a hot evening like this."