Next morning, a pleasant walk on Oxford’s main road from St John’s College to St Antony’s led to the conference venue. It began slowly, with a welcoming inauguration where Boria’s tremendous contribution towards organizing this event was duly acknowledged and applauded. In the first session, David Frith (former editor of Wisden) spoke about Bodyline and expressed that age-old gripe that it was not quite sportsmanlike. He accused West Indian teams of similar issues, which led to the West Indian historian and professor Hilary Beckles (sitting next to an amused Clive Lloyd) making a rasping observation that for most of its history, it was slow bowling that made West Indies a competitive side (Ramadhin, Gibbs, for example). It was only in the late 1970s that Lloyd chose to utilise his resources in this manner, given what he had at his disposal, and everything happened within the rules. Frith’s self-righteousness did seem awfully outdated for these times.

This somewhat lively start was followed by a series of rather-too-academic presentations on cricket’s early years and its ethnic beginnings. Then, after a tea-break, Bedi and Lloyd came on stage to converse with Boria and Mihir Bose. It was quite bizarre to see Bose and Bedi make disparaging remarks about each other (obviously some baggage there) – to paraphrase from memory - “Mihir Bose is that brand of Indian who lives in the West and puts Indians down all the time” and “Bedi may have been heavenly as a bowler but hearing him go on and on without knowing when to stop can be hell.” But Bedi did say some interesting things. First, he announced that he had no hard feelings about happened in Sabina Park in 1976 (India declared at 97-5 with three of their batsmen in hospital, thanks to intimidatory bowling from West Indies – which can officially be considered the beginning of the West Indian reliance on pure pace). Then, he hijacked the conversation and went off on his familiar tangent about how certain bowlers are being protected regarding their suspect bowling actions because of political reasons; about how the ICC tacitly agrees with him but is too indecisive to do anything and finally, comparing the “doosra” with a second wife who is unlawful and illegitimate. None of this was said with venom, but with conviction and more than a little humour. The fundamental point he was making is of course modern-day cricket’s biggest conundrum and as he himself admitted, Bedi deliberately chose to deviate from the assigned topic because this was the issue closest to his heart. On one level, wacky, but on another – meaningful, because at least something concrete was being said to the right ears.

The balance between substance and entertainment was particularly noteworthy in the afternoon session when Clive Lloyd, Bob Willis, Sourav Ganguly and Angus Fraser spoke about the game as it changes (Bedi was also supposed to be a part of it, but as we would realise the next day, his working day ends at lunchtime – they could consider naming a vineyard after him). It was engaging while it happened but strangely I don’t remember too many specific things beings said. Lloyd’s disparaging remarks on the current greed in West Indian cricket stood out – “People with an average of 15 are becoming millionaires, how can that be good for the game?” Bob Willis’ comment on how he thought Bradman was over-rated as no one ever seemed to challenge him or even change the field elicited an angry remark from someone who pointed out that he averaged over 50 during Bodyline too. Ganguly’s anecdote about how he bought his first major cricket bat when he was selected to play in 1996 brought some smiles.

(Jatin adds: After this session, I approached Lloyd and was pleasantly surprised by his avuncular demeanour – hand on my shoulder, he patiently answered all my queries in a very lucid way, despite all the distractions around him. I understood why this man must have been such a great captain.)

Quite a few representatives from the Indian media were there – knowing nods, self-absorbed self-importance in front of open laptops and fake smiles in attendance. After that session, it became clear why – they were only interested in the stars – especially Ganguly. After they got their quotes from these few people, they actually left! They had to cancel the Press Meet an hour later as there was no press! These idiots had come all the way to Oxford to quote Ganguly and vanish (to presumably resume their paid holidays). They didn’t show up the next day either; they had no interest in any of the events of the conference.

This utter lack of curiousity, commitment and intelligence coupled with an arrogance that is becoming the hallmark of the modern Indian media is also responsible for the dumbing down of cricket in India. Of course, it is also commerce, and all this was the subject of next day’s first session (in which there seemed no members of the media present). Ironically, it was Shantanu Guha Ray who spoke about this issue. Ironic because he has single-handedly brought down the standard of Tehelka more than anyone else in its history – just take a look at the utterly insipid, pamphlet-like unimaginative “cricket special issue” he’s edited for this occasion. In February, he did a piece on our website when we did our first report – the result of a casual interview with me on the phone whilst instructing his driver where to park; the piece was riddled with factual errors (he even spelt my name wrong), irresponsible and thoughtless (he called my two colleagues my “man-Fridays”), obliquely knocking my novel and my feature film (neither of which he even knew about before, let alone sampled) and managing to even dismiss our website and our first study as “quirky” without even going through it (we did not show him most of the study as it was unpublished till then). He also blatantly lied about when his issue would come out which caused a lot of problems for me with Hindustan Times who were doing a cover story on our report – this is without exception the worst interaction I have had with the Indian media in my life (and I’ve had a few really bad ones since 2005). And this man was standing there self-righteously passing judgement on the Indian media – it wasn’t easy to take. Of course, the gathering enjoyed it – after all, the Indian media is such an easy target today. In between examples of moronic cricket coverage in the Indian media, he shrugged and said – “Oh, I did that too when I was at ESPN” – the implication being – “I knew that was cretinous but look at what even us smarter journalists have to do in this age of Commerce.”

Bishen Bedi, who was attending the session (but would vanish after lunch again), had been guffawing right through the presentation enjoying the spectacle a compilation of samples that showcases the Indian media’s moronity in these times can doubtless produce, till “Match Ka Mujrim” (this ghastly show has Bedi and a hired studio audience rabidly pick the villain of the match) was mentioned. To his credit, he was quite sheepish after that.

I just wondered why better minds from India had not been invited for this conference – there are so many of them who don’t get their rightful place in these crazy times, and this would have been such a good space for them. Sure, they wouldn’t have been covered by the Indian media either, but so what? It was a pity that Boria didn’t present something himself, but I guess he was too weighed down by organisational responsibilities.

(Jatin adds: Our disgust and anger about the Indian media is not just that we weren’t covered. What we find appalling is that while people abroad are showing interest in our device and study, the media at home seems uninterested in exploring a genuinely new way of looking at a time-honoured thing that some of their own have come up with - after notifying 2-3 publications who didn’t respond, Jaideep just refused to contact anyone. What makes it really disgusting is that that these same Indians will show an interest later when they discover that Westerners are covering us – this is not a judgement based on speculative behaviour, it has happened before. Much more than being hailed as individuals, we wanted our idea to be tossed around and scrutinised, for it to be tested by the right minds. Probably too much to expect in an environment that finds celebrity far more meaningful than ideas. It makes you really wonder how much intelligence is being wasted in our country.)

The highlight of the conference was the session where Hilary Beckles, Gideon Haigh and Don Neely spoke about the game from their countries’ perspectives. Beckles was magnificent – with thoroughly interesting nuggets on West Indian cricket through their history (especially on some very revealing anecdotes about Frank Worrell), in a short span of twenty-odd minutes (even the moderator felt reluctant to call his time because he was enjoying it so much) we got a terrific perspective of West Indian cricket. Gideon Haigh read out his beautifully chiselled piece with the delicacy of a book reading performance and Don Neely’s talk was positive and upbeat like the man himself. He ended by showing great pleasure in having three marketable forms of the game – “Which other sport has that?” Quite a remarkable point-of-view from a man who should logically be a traditionalist. There’s a lot to learn from such people.

The most unpopular man in the gathering was ECB Chairman Giles Clarke and his palpably arrogant vibe rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including Gideon Haigh who sharply asked him not to pontificate from the audience but to come and say something from the podium if he indeed had something to say. It was good to see two non-Indians getting sharp with each other for a change. There were other self-important corporate fakes too – like this head of a prominent sports channel– after a seemingly interesting chat, when I asked for his card, he said he’d run out and pretended (it felt fake then itself) to send an email to me from his Blackberry. Nothing arrived, of course.

Venu’s presentation on US cricket was witty and informative with a lightness of touch that made it very stimulating overall. Cricket’s connections with the US are not widely-known and this was interesting new territory for a lot of us. There were also presentations on cricket in Bangladesh and Afghanistan – both interesting for the obvious realisation that T20 is a godsend for levelling the playing field both in terms of the cricketers and the audience.