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白芝浩专栏

The great game
板球中看英-印关系

To improve his grasp of Anglo-Indian relations, David Cameron should watch more cricket
为改善对英-印关系的把握，戴维·卡梅伦应从板球中汲取教训

“IT IS in the matter of patience”, wrote Lord Harris, an early England cricket captain and later ruler of the British empire's favourite game, “that I think the Indian will never be equal to the Englishman.” It was interesting to recall this last month as India's batsmen were trouncing England's at Lord's, the north London home of cricket. And that was not all that would have horrified Harris who, as a 19th-century governor of Bombay (now Mumbai), was widely credited with introducing cricket to India.
“这是耐心的问题”，哈里斯勋爵曾经写到：“我认为印度人将永远无法与英国人匹敌。”作为早期的英格兰板球队队长和后来的大英帝国最钟爱的游戏的主导者，哈里斯万万没有想到，就在上个月，印度击球员在伦敦北部的贵族板球场痛击英国，使这一评价成为一个笑话。而这只是使这位19世纪孟买州长、公认的将板球带入印度的第一人震惊的一部分。

Nothing illustrates the turnabout in British-Indian relations more starkly than India's financial and political takeover of what was once an English summer game. When India's best cricketers played their first Test match—cricket's gold-seal, five-day format—at Lord's in 1932, around the time Harris delivered his racist verdict, they came as hapless colonial subjects. At home they were the idols of an unlikely national religion. In England, where it took them four decades to win, India's cricketers were timorous, poorly paid and uncompetitive. Yet in the 1990s India's growth rate picked up, sparking a sports-media explosion which has transformed the world's second-most-popular game; over 80% of cricket's revenues are now said to be generated in India.
没有什么比印度对这一曾属于英国的夏日游戏的金融和政治接管更能充分地表明英属印度关系的转变了。1932年，当印度最杰出的板球运动员们在贵族板球场首次亮相，开展为期五天的对抗赛时，哈里斯颁布了他的种族论，使他们成为了一批倒霉的殖民主体。在印度，他们是一个没有希望的民族宗教的偶像。而在英格兰，在这个他们花费了四十年来获取胜利的国度，这些印度板球运动员唯唯诺诺、入不敷出，毫无竞争力。然而，在上个世纪90年代，印度的经济增长率回升，促使体育传媒迅猛发展，转变了这一全球第二大流行的赛事。如今，已有超过80％的板球收入在印度产生。

The Indian team that visited England this summer—to play a five-Test series which ended this week—included some of the world's richest sportsmen. Its captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, earned $30m last year; hardly any English player made a million. And money buys influence. Holding court at Lord's was a ponderous Tamilian, N. Srinivasan, wearing jam-jar glasses and a smear of vermilion to denote his high Hindu caste. The boss of India's and the world's governing bodies for cricket, he is the most powerful cricket administrator since Harris. He also owns one of India's best cricket teams, the Chennai Super Kings, in the world's fastest-growing sports contest, the Indian Premier League.
今年夏季，印度板球队员们本周结束了在英国的五国对抗联赛，他们当中的一部分是全球收入最高的运动员。队长马亨德拉·辛格·东尼去年的收入是3000万美金，而在英国，几乎没有板球选手的收入超过百万。金钱带来了影响力。在贵族板球场主持开场的是呆板的T.N.斯里尼瓦桑，他那果酱罐眼镜和涂片红唇展示着他的高种姓。作为印度和世界板球管辖机构的老板，他是自哈里斯之后最具影响力的板球权威。他还在全球发展最快的体育竞赛---印度板球联赛上拥有着金柰超级国王队，这支队伍是印度最好的板球队之一。

For David Cameron, a cricket fan, there are lessons here. The Conservative prime minister has made improving British-Indian ties one of his priorities. Cricket, the international arena most disrupted by India's rise, suggests how he might attempt that.
板球迷戴维·卡梅伦应从中汲取经验教训。保守党首相已将改善英国与印度的关系列为首要任务之一。被印度崛起扰乱的板球国际竞技场启示着卡梅伦该如何采取行动。

The first lesson is that he is right to try. Countries that share a colonial legacy, including language and culture, should trade together far more prodigiously than Britain and India do. Cricket symbolises their bond; no other countries have so defined themselves by it. For eminent Victorians, cricket displayed their national virtues. It was “English, you know quite English,” wrote Harris. That is why their aspiring Indian subjects—with little help from Harris—embraced it. And a trace of that anglophilia endures among India's elites. It was suggested by Mr Srinivasan's emotional response after his team, the world champions of lower-brow one-day cricket, won at Lord's (though they lost the series).
第一条经验是，他的尝试是正确的。共享包括语言和文化在内的殖民遗产的国家本该更多地开展贸易，而英国和印度却没有。板球象征着两国的关系纽带，这是其他国家从未如此定义过的。维多利亚时代的名人则认为，板球展示了他们的民族美德，如哈里斯所定义的“英国精神”。因此，在哈里斯的帮助下，那些有抱负的印度人积极地追捧板球。在印度精英中出现了一种长期的亲英趋势，这源自斯里尼瓦桑提获胜后的感言，当时他的队伍在贵族板球场赢得了比赛（尽管他们输掉了联赛），这是一支低额一日板球赛的世界冠军队。

Yet most Indian cricket fans have perhaps never heard of that venerable English ground. Their enthusiasm is almost for a different game, the glitzy, shorter formats at which India excels. Cricket represents for them a different national story: India as a “cricket-crazy nation”, a youthful, patriotic place, bursting with hope and a desire to consume. This is the India that has got Mr Cameron excited for its economic potential; it will take more than appealing to a common history, in which young Indians are uninterested, to win its love. Taking England's winsome cricket captain, Alastair Cook, on the prime minister's next trip to Delhi might help.
然而，大多数印度板球迷们或许从来没有听说过那古老的英国球场。他们所热衷的几乎是一项完全不同的运动---一项印度人所擅长的激情洋溢、节奏紧凑的运动。对印度来说，板球则有着不同的含义：印度作为一个“为板球而疯狂的国家”，是一个充满活力、爱国情怀的地方。这里充满希望和消费欲。正是这样的一个国度，使得卡梅伦先生为她的经济潜力而惊艳。为赢得印度的青睐，英国需要更多的措施，而不仅仅是强调共同的历史，因为年轻一代的印度人已经对此毫无兴趣。在首相先生下次访问新德里时，带上英格兰队迷人的板球队长阿拉斯泰尔·库克或许会有所帮助。

A more sobering lesson for Mr Cameron concerns the nature of Indian power, which has bruised cricket. India's growing influence has, in large part, been traumatic and divisive to a game which is unusually based on international competition. The collaborative culture that formerly governed that, albeit tinged with Anglo-Australian self-interest and suzerainty, has broken down. What India wants in cricket, concerning the international programme and sales of media rights, or even the rules of the game and its administration, it increasingly gets.
卡梅伦先生更应清醒地关注到印度的权利属性，这已波及到板球领域。印度日益增长的影响力，对于这一不曾基于国际竞争的对于在很大程度上来说，是具有杀伤力的。尽管与英澳利己主义和宗主权有着千丝万缕的联系，昔日占主导地位的写作文化已不复存在。印度想要在板球领域所获得的利益，如：国际计划和媒体播放权的销售，甚至是赛事的管理和规则，都逐渐纳入囊中。

That was clear earlier this year, when India demanded more of the international revenues its team is mainly responsible for generating. This was not unreasonable; but the threatening way it negotiated, the craven way England and Australia accommodated it, and the resulting impoverishment of Pakistan, New Zealand and other poorer cricket nations were contemptible. What was once an English game, then an international one mapping the former British empire, is India's to command. And this is a worrying prospect for cricket, given the match-fixing, infighting and administrative chaos that are other aspects of the game in India. The fact that Mr Srinivasan, even as he negotiated cricket's new architecture, was suspended from the Indian cricket board while being investigated over corruption allegations, seemed indicative of this.
很明显，今年年初，当印度想要获得更多的国际收入时，她的板球队挑起了大梁。这并不是不合理的，但威胁式的谈判使英国和澳大利亚只得懦弱地容忍，更使巴基斯坦、新西兰等不擅长板球的国家每况愈下。曾专属于英国、在国际上代表着大英帝国的比赛，现已由印度主宰。然而，在印度的板球赛有着不同的一面—假球、勾心斗角、管理混乱，使得板球前景堪忧---尽管曾有意构建印度板球新局面，斯里尼瓦桑已被印度板球委员会停职调查、正面临着贪污腐败的指控足以证明。

Play hard, play fair
严格公正的竞争

That suggests two final truths for Mr Cameron. First, to expect no favours; India's power brokers are ruthless and obdurate in cricket and otherwise. Indeed cricket, because of its wealth and popularity, is another facet of Indian politics. India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, and finance minister, Arun Jaitley, are among a clutch of Indian politicians leading state cricket associations—which makes the chaos in Indian cricket all the more dismal.
卡梅伦首相应认清两点：第一，不要指望得到好处。印度的权威经纪不论是在板球还是在其他方面都是安忍无亲、冷酷无情的。的确，板球因为财富和声望，是印度政治的另一面。印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪和财长阿伦·杰特利是印度政客领导的板球协会中的要员—这使得印度板球的混乱加剧。

The second lesson is not to do as England's cricket board did and bow to Indian bullying. In world trade and climate negotiations, where India has been unhelpful, and in its recent high-handed treatment of foreign investors, its bad behaviour should be condemned and resisted. Respecting India as a rising power is not the same as pandering to its elite's worst compulsions.
第二，不要像英国的板球委员会一样向印度的强势低头。在世界贸易和气候变化的谈判中，印度一直毫无帮助。近来，又对外国投资者采取了高压的政策，这些不良行为应当受到谴责和抵制。对印度这一正在崛起的大国的尊重，不能等同于对她的精英中最恶劣的冲动行为的纵容。

If Mr Cameron, whose diplomacy tends to veer between finger-wagging and love-bombing, cannot see the difference, Indians can. And in a fading corner of their cultural memory, haunted by self-righteous but upstanding Victorians such as Harris, is perhaps a small feeling that the creators of cricket should hold India to a higher standard. Mr Cameron should honour that.
如果卡梅伦首相的对印政策倾向于在坚决抵制和纵容之间摇摆，那将毫无意义，只会让印度获益。由于那些像哈里斯这样---自以为是、却又正直诚恳的维多利亚时代的人失误，板球的创造者不应小瞧印度这一观点，被搁置在了两国文化记忆中布满尘埃的一隅。卡梅伦首相应正视印度的实力。