Oxford University tutors finally open up about admissions interviews

Oxford marks undergraduate application deadline by publishing selection of interview questions including ‘How much of the past can you count?’

• Richard Adams, education editor 
• 
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 15 October 2014 18.48 BST

The questions published by Oxford confirm the stereotype of the contrary and offbeat, satirised by The History Boys. Photograph: Robert Harding World Imagery/Alamy

The mysteries of the Oxford admissions interview have been laid bare by the university, in an effort to explain the questions at the core of the fraught 20 minutes in an office that can change the course of a life.

To mark the deadline for 2015 undergraduate admissions, the university asked admissions tutors to open up about the interviews that all UK undergraduate applicants are subjected to – and what the admissions officers are looking for.

But rather than shine a spotlight on a process criticised for admitting a disproportionate number from independent schools, the questions published by Oxford instead confirm the stereotype of the contrary and offbeat, satirised by the Oxbridge applicants of Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys.

A question from Nick Yeung, an admissions tutor for psychology at University College, asks: Why are Welsh speakers worse at remembering phone numbers than English speakers?

“This question is meant to be deliberately provocative, in that I hope that it engages candidates’ intuitions that Welsh people aren’t simply less clever than English people,” Yeung said.

“The key point is that numbers are spelled differently and are longer in Welsh than in English, and it turns out that memory and arithmetic depend on how easily pronounced the words are. I would hope the student would pick out this connection between memory and how easy to spell or pronounce a word is.”

Other questions published by Oxford included: How much of the past can you count? “In this case, the question gets at all sorts of issues relating to historical evidence,” said Stephen Tuck, a fellow at Pembroke College.

“Of course, much of the interview would be taken up with discussing in depth the history courses the students have studied – the interview is not all about unusual questions.”

Samina Khan, Oxford’s acting director of undergraduate admissions, said for many students the interview is the most daunting part.

“We know there are still lots of myths about the Oxford interview, so we put as much information as possible out there to allow students to see behind the hype to the reality of the process,” Khan said.

But a former admissions tutor at a Russell Group university said that while the questions were reasonable, Oxford’s over-reliance on interviews to select undergraduates was part of its problem.

“It seems to me though that by revealing the mysteries of the interview, Oxford is continuing the fetishisation. It is Oxford, not interviews, that is weird,” he said.

The university interviews more than 10,000 applicants over two weeks in December, for around 3,200 undergraduate places.

Applicants to read biology might be asked ‘Why do some habitats support higher biodiversity than others?’ while prospective art history students are shown a painting and asked if they recognise it. “It is the only question for which there is a single, correct answer, which is ‘no’,” said Geraldine Johnson of Christ Church, explaining that she wants applicants to discuss works they haven’t seen before.

The mathematician who loved cricket

 Haider Riaz Khan

The Fenner's ground in Cambridge, where GH Hardy watched a lot of cricket  © Getty Images

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"If I knew that I was going to die today, I think I should still want to hear the cricket scores," GH Hardy is said to have remarked to his sister as he lay dying at the Evelyn Nursing Home in Cambridge in late 1947.

The name GH Hardy is synonymous with pure mathematics, a subject on which he wrote a most insightful book for the layperson, called A Mathematician's Apology, though he is perhaps more well known as the mentor of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Not many are aware that Hardy, one of the predominant English mathematicians of the pre-war era, was also devoted to cricket. Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesian economics and a friend of Hardy's at Cambridge, observed that if Hardy had read the stock exchange for half an hour every day with as much interest and attention as he did the day's cricket scores, he would have become a rich man. 

Hardy did not receive any form of cricket coaching during his formative years, which led to defects in technique later despite having a brilliant eye for the ball. After finishing school at Winchester, he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he began his ritual of watching cricket at Fenner's, Cambridge's picturesque cricket ground. Hardy would saunter to the ground after lunch and settle into his preferred place opposite the pavilion with an umbrella, some sweaters, and a PhD thesis, or a mathematics paper he was refereeing for the Royal Society. Hardy dubbed these items his "anti-God battery", bringing them along in case it rained.

There was often a troop of cricket enthusiasts accompanying him. In particular, during Hardy's second stint at Cambridge, CP Snow, the author ofStrangers and Brothers and The Two Cultures, was his regular companion at cricket games (Snow is the source of much that is known about Hardy's personal life, including his love for cricket). In the foreword of the Apology, Snow recounts the facets of cricket Hardy found most endearing: "Technique, tactics, formal beauty - those were the deepest attractions of the game for him."

Lev Landau, the great Soviet physicist, used a logarithmic scale to rank the productivity of prominent physicists. Hardy had an equally unique way of ranking notable mathematicians and physicists. In a postcard to Snow he wrote, "Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton and Gauss remain in the Hobbs class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They had better be moved from now on into the Bradman class."

Hardy's use of cricket jargon also extended to the types of people he befriended. "He had a great many friends, of surprisingly different kinds," Snow writes in the Apology. "These friends had to pass some of his private tests: they needed to possess a quality which he called 'spin' (this is a cricket term and is untranslatable: it implies a certain obliquity or irony of approach: of recent public figures, Macmillan and Kennedy would get high marks for spin, Churchill and Eisenhower not)."

Even Snow's friendship with Hardy was owed "to having wasted a disproportionate amount of my youth on cricket". Hardy was looking for a cricket companion on his return to Cambridge from Oxford in 1931 and word had reached him that a junior fellow by the name of Snow was a cricket enthusiast. One night, Hardy summoned a nervous Snow after dinner to Christ College's combination room and began a gruelling examination of his cricketing knowledge. Who would he have chosen as captain for the last Test match, a year ago? What would have been his strategy if the selectors had decided Snow was to be England's saviour? And on it went. At the end of the inquisition, Snow recalls Hardy's reaction fondly. "He smiled with immense charm, with child-like openness, and said that Fenner's next season might be bearable after all, with the prospect of some reasonable conversation."

Snow's time with the mathematician is a rich source of Hardy's humorous yet insightful "maxims" on hypocrisy in cricket:

"Cricket is the only game where you are playing against 11 of the other side and ten of your own."

"If you are nervous when you go in first, nothing restores your confidence so much as seeing the other man get out."

The beauty inherent in Hardy's mathematical work is reminiscent of the aesthetic attractiveness of cricket. This love of the game sustained him in his later years when the first love of his life, mathematics, deserted him. As Hardy states in the Apology: "No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game." So as his mathematical prowess waned, and his health deteriorated (he had a coronary thrombosis in 1939) and the Second World War raged around him (Hardy was a pacifist and detested anything related to war), he took solace in cricket.

In this gloomy period of Hardy's life, Snow encouraged him to write a cricket book to lessen his despondency. The book was to be called A Day at the Oval, in which Hardy was to write of his experience of watching cricket for a day. It never came to be written, and cricket literature is poorer for it.

Hardy attempted suicide in early 1947 and only survived because he vomited the barbiturates, having taken more than were necessary to kill himself. He was now bedridden at the Evelyn Nursing Home and knew death was imminent. In these last days, he was cared for by his sister. She was aware of her brother's intense fondness for cricket and would search for any cricket story to read to him. As did Snow when he visited Hardy. "Mostly though - about 55 minutes in each hour I was with him - I had to talk cricket. It was his only solace. I had to pretend a devotion to the game which I no longer felt… Now I had to study the cricket scores as intensely as when I was a schoolboy. He couldn't read for himself, but he would have known if I was bluffing."

The last time Snow visited Hardy they discussed the Indian Test team playing in Australia that season. Hardy died early one morning a few days later. His sister had been reading out a chapter from A History of Cambridge University Cricket to him every evening. It seems fitting that that was the last thing Hardy heard.

Camkerala win first game of green winter sport season

by Girish Menon

On the first day of the green winter* sport season CamKerala beat Burrows Green (from Newmarket) by 18 runs thanks to good performances by Austin, Vincent, Shinto, Jijo and a two wickets off two balls burst by Manuel. The game played at the Hills Road Sports Centre cricket pitch off Sedley Taylor Road, had a good pavilion but a slow pitch with small square boundaries and a heavy outfield.

Vincent won the toss and elected to bat. In the third over Vibin tried an uppish on drive which refused to spill out of short midwicket's hands. Girish and Austin played the next 7-8 overs carefully seeing off a good offspinner. At the first bowling change, Girish tried an expansive drive and was bowled by a slower ball. this led to a minor collapse with Austin and Manuel following Girish back to the pavilion. Vincent steadied the ship on one side, while Anil dispatched his first two balls for six over the midwicket area, one of the balls went on the railway tracks and a new ball had to be used. Anil perished in his cavalier way and then a good partnership between Vincent and Shinto rescued Camkerala. Govind in his debut match of proper cricket, as against the rubber ball cricket that he played before, managed 11 runs and the rest of the team folded quietly on 135 in 35 overs.

A good batting partnership by the opening pair of Burrows Green had CamKerala worried as they reached 55 runs without any loss. At this point Shinto held a well judged catch off Austin and the first breakthrough was achieved. Then Manuel in his first over bowled two batsmen off consecutive balls and was unlucky to miss a hat trick. Jijo then held an excellent catch on the square leg boundary and another  at point which allowed Austin to get a 5 wicket haul. Vincent then bowled well to get the tail end wickets. There was some panic towards the end as the scores got close but when Vincent bowled the last man there was relief all around. Joshy laboured hard on the field and Matthews was unlucky not get any wickets in his six overs.

Overall, it was an auspicious start to the season. To look at the positives, Austin and Vincent bowled good lengths which resulted in wickets. Shinto and Jijo held good catches which turned the game. But the old frailty of not batting the entire 40 overs seems to persist and this is a cause for concern. Nonetheless a win is a win.

*Green Winter - An African writer explaining the weather in North Europe stated that there were two seasons here. White winter and green winter. He said he preferred the white winter because they'd put on the heaters. This writer turned up for this game wearing thermals.

Orthodox economists have failed their own market test

Students are demanding alternatives to a free-market dogma with a disastrous record. That's something we all need

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 20 November 2013 21.00 GMT

Ha-Joon Chang, one of the last surviving independent economists at Keynes's Cambridge: 'The supporters of neoclassical economics have an almost religious mentality.' Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

From any rational point of view, orthodox economics is in serious trouble. Its champions not only failed to foresee the greatest crash for 80 years, but insisted such crises were a thing of the past. More than that, some of its leading lights played a key role in designing the disastrous financial derivatives that helped trigger the meltdown in the first place.

Plenty were paid propagandists for the banks and hedge funds that tipped us off their speculative cliff. Acclaimed figures in a discipline that claims to be scientific hailed a"great moderation" of market volatility in the runup to an explosion of unprecedented volatility. Others, such as the Nobel prizewinner Robert Lucas, insisted that economics had solved the "central problem of depression prevention".

Any other profession that had proved so spectacularly wrong and caused such devastation would surely be in disgrace. You might even imagine the free-market economists who dominate our universities and advise governments and banks would be rethinking their theories and considering alternatives.

After all, the large majority of economists who predicted the crisis rejected the dominant neoclassical thinking: from Dean Baker and Steve Keen to Ann Pettifor, Paul Krugman and David Harvey. Whether Keynesians, post-Keynesians or Marxists, none accepted the neoliberal ideology that had held sway for 30 years; and all understood that, contrary to orthodoxy, deregulated markets don't tend towards equilibrium but deepen the economy's tendency to systemic crisis.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and high priest of deregulation, at least had the honesty to admit his view of the world had been proved "not right". The same cannot be said for others. Eugene Fama, architect of the "efficient markets hypothesis" underpinning financial deregulation, concedes he doesn't know what "causes recessions" – but insists his theory has been vindicated anyway. Most mainstream economists have carried on as if nothing had happened.

Many of their students, though, have had enough. A revolt against the orthodoxy has been smouldering for years and now seems to have gone critical. Fed up with parallel universe theories that have little to say about the world they're interested in, students at Manchester University have set up a post-crash economics society with 800 members, demanding an end to monolithic neoclassical courses and the introduction of a pluralist curriculum.

They want other schools of economic thought taught in parallel, from Keynesian to more radical theories – with a better record on predicting and connecting with the real world economy – along with green and feminist economics. The campaign is spreading fast: to Cambridge, Essex, the London School of Economics and a dozen other campuses, and linking up with university groups in France, Germany, Slovenia and Chile.

As one of the Manchester society's founders, Zach Ward-Perkins, explains, he and a fellow student agreed after a year of orthodoxy: "There must be more to it than this." Neoclassical economics is after all built on a conception of the economy as the sum of the atomised actions of millions of utility-maximising individuals, where markets are stable, information is perfect, capital and labour are equals – and the trade cycle is bolted on as an afterthought.

But even if it struggles to say anything meaningful about crises, inequality or ownership, the mathematical modelling erected on its half-baked intellectual foundations give it a veneer of scientific rigour, valued by students aiming for well-paid City jobs. Neoclassical economics has also provided the underpinning for the diet of deregulated markets, privatisation, low taxes on the wealthy and free trade we were told for 30 years was now the only route to prosperity.

Its supporters have an "almost religious mentality", as Ha-Joon Chang – one of the last surviving independent economists at Keynes's Cambridge – puts it. Although claiming to favour competition, the neoclassicals won't tolerate any themselves. Forty years ago,most economics departments were Keynesian and neoclassical economics was derided. That all changed with the Thatcher and Reagan ascendancy.

In institutions supposed to foster debate, non-neoclassical economists have been systematically purged from economics faculties. Some have found refuge in business schools, development studies and geography departments. In the US, corporate funding has been key. In Britain, peer review through the "research excellence framework" – which allocates public research funding – has been the main mechanism for the ideological cleansing of economics.

Paradoxically, the sharp increase in student fees and the marketisation of higher education is creating a pressure point for students out to overturn this intellectual monoculture. The free marketeers are now being market-tested, and the customers don't want their product. Some mainstream academics realise that they may have to compromise, and have been colonising a Soros-funded project to overhaul the curriculum, hoping to limit the scale of change.

But change it must. The free-market orthodoxy of the past three decades not only helped create the crisis we're living through, but gave credibility to policies that have led to slower growth, deeper inequality, greater insecurity and environmental degradation all over the world. Its continued dominance after the crash, like the neoliberal model it underpins, is about power not credibility. If we are to escape this crisis, both will have to go.

Police are cracking down on students

Police are cracking down on students – but what threat to law and order is an over-articulate history graduate?

For most of my life student politics has been little more than a joke. Suddenly it's become both serious and admirable

• 
• • Aditya Chakrabortty
  • The Guardian, Monday 18 November 2013 20.00 GMT

A protester against the proposed closure of the ULU student union last week. Photograph: Paul Davey/Demotix/Corbis

Why are some of the most powerful people in Britain so terrified of a bunch of students? If that sounds a ridiculous question, consider a few recent news stories. As reported in this paper last week, Cambridge police are looking for spies to inform on undergraduate protests against spending cuts and other "student-union type stuff". Meanwhile, in London last Thursday, a student union leader, Michael Chessum, was arrested after a small and routine demo. Officers hauled him off to Holborn police station for not informing them of the precise route of the protest – even though it was on campus.

The 24-year-old has since been freed – on the strict condition that he doesn't "engage in protest on any University Campus and not within half a mile boundary of any university". Even with a copy of the bail grant in front of me, I cannot make out whether that applies to any London college, any British university – or just any institute of higher education anywhere in the world. As full-time head of the University of London's student union, Chessum's job is partly to protest: the police are blocking him from doing his work. But I suppose there's no telling just what threat to law and order might be posed by an over-articulate history graduate.

While we're trawling for the ridiculous, let us remember another incident this summer at the University of London, when a 25-year-old woman was arrested for the crime of chalking a slogan on a wall. That's right: dragged off by the police for writing in water-soluble chalk. Presumably, there would have been no bother had she used PowerPoint.

It all sounds farcical – it is farcical – until you delve into the details. Take the London demo that landed Chessum in such bother: university staff were filming their own students from a balcony of Senate House (the building that inspired the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, appropriately enough). Such surveillance is a recent tradition, the nice man in the University press office explains to me – and if the police wanted the footage that would be no problem.

That link with the police is becoming increasingly important across more and more of our universities. London students allege that officers and university security guards co-ordinate their attempts to rein in demonstrations while staff comment on the increased police presence around campus. At Sussex, student protests against outsourcing services were broken up this April, when the university called in the police – who duly turned up with riot vans and dogs. A similar thing happened at Royal Holloway university, Surrey in 2011: a small number of students occupied one measly corridor to demonstrate against course closures and redundancies; the management barely bothered to negotiate, but cited "health and safety" and called in the police to clear away the young people paying their salaries.

For most of my life, student politics has been little more than a joke – the stuff of Neil off the Young Ones, or apprentice Blairites. But in the past few years it has suddenly become both serious and admirable, most notably with the protests of 2010 against £9,000 tuition fees and the university occupations that followed. And at just that point, both the police and university management have become very jumpy.

For the police, this is part of the age-old work of clamping down on possible sources of civil disobedience. But the motivation for the universities is much more complicated. Their historic role has been to foster intellectual inquiry and host debate. Yet in the brave new market of higher education, when universities are competing with each other to be both conveyor belts to the jobs market and vehicles for private investment, such dissent is not only awkward – it's dangerously uncommercial. As Andrew McGettigan, author of The Great University Gamble, puts it: "Anything too disruptive gets in the way of the business plan."

Last month it appeared that Edinburgh University had forced its student union to sign a gagging clause (now withdrawn). No union officer is allowed to make any public criticism of the university without giving at least 48 hours' notice. University managers reportedly made that a deal-breaker if the student union was to get any funds.

The managers of the University of London want to shut down the student union at the end of this academic year. The plan – which is why Chessum and co were marching last week – is to keep the swimming pool and the various sports clubs, but to quash all university-wide student representation. After all, the students are only the people paying the salary of the university vice-chancellor, Adrian Smith – why should they get a say? The plan, it may not surprise you to learn, was drawn up by a panel that didn't number a single student. What with sky-high fees and rocketing rents in the capital, you might think that the need for a pan-London student body had never been higher. But then, you're not a university manager on a six-figure salary.

Where universities were historically places of free expression, now they are having to sacrifice that role for the sake of the free market. For students, that comes in the form of a crackdown on dissent. Yet the twentysomethings at university now will end up running our politics, our businesses and our media. You might want these future leaders to be questioning and concerned about society. Or you might wonder whether sending in the police to arrest a woman chalking a wall is proportionate. Either way, you should be troubled.

Ethics, Economics, Education

The decision of the courts against a photocopying shop that provided course-material to Delhi University students will have global repercussions

ALI KHAN MAHMUDABAD in outlook India

The right to education is fundamental to the development of any society. Implicit within this right is the right to access knowledge without being constrained by one's socio-economic background. The state, which is the mediator between private interest and public good, has a duty to enforce these rights. A court case in India instituted last year by Taylor and Francis, Cambridge University Press and its Oxford equivalent against Delhi University and Rameshwari Photocopy Services is being heard again and will force the judicial system not only to address technical and legal questions concerning copyright but deeper questions about what constitutes the public good.

The case concerns the photocopying and sale of books printed by these publishing houses, as buying the originals, even the Indian editions, is beyond the means of most students. In fact, has been established through empirical studies by academics like Shamshad Basheer, often only short sections of these books are copied to make course-packs as is done in the US under the 'fair use' laws. A bare reading of the copyright laws in India might lead some to the conclusion that the photocopying is illegal as the photocopying house, an official licensee of Delhi University, is making a profit. At the same time the carefully worded section 52 of the Indian copyright act makes certain provisions, as has been argued by Niraj Kishan Kaul the advocate for the University of Delhi and goes to great lengths to differentiate between ‘reproduction of work’ and ‘issuing copies of work’ and sub-clauses that allow for an exception to be made for students and teachers.

The court granted temporary relief to the petitioners and stopped the photostat shop from making any copies and on the last hearing on the 1st of October listed the matter for the 21st of October.

Interestingly, copyright laws have not always been restrictive. In 1790 a copyright law was passed in America, actually permitting the re-printing of foreign material, as copyright was deemed a privilege and not a right, which led to an entire industry being built around material that otherwise might have been deemed ‘pirated.’ So although today America is a stickler for enforcing copyright laws, its own market was initially built by breaking these very rules.

What is perhaps of as great importance as a discussion of the technical aspects of the law is a conversation about the value of the service being provided by the Rameshwari Photocopying Services and, crucially, what the stance of the university presses says about their approach to knowledge dissemination.

The argument that the authors of academic works suffer is largely redundant as most academic presses give relatively modest remuneration to the writers. Furthermore, many of the people mentioned in the lawsuit, including noted academics such as Amartya Sen amongst others, have actually written an open letter opposing the case. Notably, there are very few countries in the world in which academics are remunerated in a manner which is commensurate with the role they play in today’s world: writing the history of the future of coming generations. Most academics do what they do because of a love of the subject and of course there are those who are able to cash in on their expertise but these form the exception rather than the norm. The argument for a loss of income to the publishing house is also questionable since the closing down of shops such as the Rameshwari Services will not mean that the students will suddenly be able to buy original prints as these will still be too expensive.

In a section entitled ‘what we do’ the Cambridge University Press website states in big bold letters that its purpose is “to further the University’s objective of advancing learning, knowledge and research.’ Beneath this admirably expressed goal, in smaller font, the blurb talks of 'the global market place,’ ‘their 50 global offices’ and ‘the distribution of their products.’ The two parts of the section speak volumes about the press’ approach in fulfilling its objectives and indeed this is symptomatic of a system that encourages institutions or indeed individuals to profess an ethical approach to economics but one which is in actual fact often under girded by a fine print that almost inevitably puts self-interest before anything else. The Oxford University Press website states similar aims and interestingly even acknowledges that "access to research helps push the boundaries of research."

Of course any institution needs to be self-sufficient but at the same time in many countries those institutions that are deemed to be serving a public good are granted tax-free charitable status, as is the case with both the university presses. This of course in effect means that the taxpayer subsidizes them.

The case instituted by these publishing houses then seems to be part of the worrying effort to commercialize education by making it bend to the ‘logic’ of the market. India is already facing the effects of unregulated private educational institutions that are often used to launder money and which essentially offer a degree on payment service. The publishing houses then are acting in a manner which is no different from the way in which certain corporate entities bully smaller organisations out of the market. The difference is that the some of the students who buy photocopied material might well end up publishing material with the university presses because ultimately both are part of the same system. In a recent statement the spokesperson for the Cambridge Press even said that their primary purpose is "not as a commercial organisation."

In a speech in the House of Commons on the 5th of February 1841 Lord Macaulay, while accepting its necessity, dubbed copyright ‘a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers…for one of the most salutary and innocent of human pleasures.’ Later in the speech, he gave the example of Milton’s poetry, the sole copyright of which lay with a bookseller called Tonson who once took a rival to court for publishing a cheap version of Paradise Lost, after its performance at the Garrick theatre. Macaulay then concluded that the effects of this monopoly led to a situation where ‘the reader is pillaged; and the writer’s family is not enriched.’

The decision of the Indian courts will have global repercussions, as has been the case in its rulings against big pharmaceutical companies. The practice of making course-books is found in many other countries such as Nigeria, Peru and Iran, with the latter also suffering as sanctions mean that many journals cannot be accessed, let alone copied. In Syria, just outside the University of Damascus, in the underpass beneath the Mezze autostradde were a number of shops that provided cheap copies to students who otherwise would not have had access to key material.

In a world delineated by bottom lines, fine prints and sub-clauses, in which freedom in essence translates into 'consumerist freedom,' it is easy to speak of ideals and values but much harder to put them into action. As Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues, the more we treat everything as a product to be sold or bought, including our education, our bodies and even our emotions, the more we devalue their intrinsic worth and so what is needed is 'bringing ethics, morality and virtue into public discourse.' For students, any society's real assets, the closure of the small yet crucial services provided by shops that produce photocopied coursework would only add one more obstacle in a country that is already riven with economic disparities.

A new meaning for 'relationship support'

From Cambridge News

A day of bondage workshops at a village hall was cancelled as red-faced trustees in Cambridge said they had got the wrong end of the stick.

Officials at Trumpington Village Hall believed the venue was booked for ‘relationship support’ meetings.

But after the News exclusively revealed the High Street venue was in fact booked by a bondage group the trustees were stunned to discover the hall, which usually hosts WI meetings, bingo and Brownies, was actually going to host lessons in flogging, spanking and domination.

Community listings for the Fifty Shades of Grey-style event also promised tips on how to “truly get a bottom’s attention with canes”.

Organisers Peer Rope Cambridge also promised advice on “violence/resistance play” and the “basics of erotic hypnosis”.

Another lesson entitled ‘Kink on a budget’, said it would focus on “BDSM (Bondage & Discipline, Dominance & Submission), without breaking the bank”

The fee for the day was £10 - which included tea, coffee, pastries and biscuits.

Hall committee members cancelled the event and said the booking was “made under false pretences”.

Outraged hall manager Barbara Fernandez, 51, said she would be seeking legal advice over the matter.

Part-time teacher Mrs Fernandez, a mother-of-two, said: “The woman who made the booking said the group would be doing one thing, but they were doing something else.

“On the forms she said it was a ‘relationship support group meeting’. But it is not. It is bondage. It did not see bondage on the booking form.

“We provide services for little old ladies and child care groups. Some of our little old ladies who come to play Bingo will be upset.

“It is not a question of what activities they are doing, it is more about lying to us. We take things in good faith when they fill out the booking form.

“We do not bang on the doors to find out what people are doing. We expect people to be honest about they are using the halls for.

“Had we known what the booking was for I would have consulted the trustees about whether we wanted to host the event. I will be seeking legal advice.”

The sex workshop was advertised to take place on October 12.

A similar event was held by the group last year and the village hall said they had several invoices from them for other ‘meetings’.

Participants were told ‘Mistress Bond’ would lead “a group discussion on how to ensure your sessions go with a bang!”.

The programme said “topless nudity (covered ladynipples please) is permitted once inside the venue” and under ‘things to bring’ the instruction leaflet states “er rope”.

The small hall was also set to host flogging lessons while a ‘maid’ would serve snacks throughout the day, including sandwiches, crisps and fruit for lunch.

The hall trustees said: “It has been brought to our attention that the premises have been hired under false pretences by PRC Cambridge.

“When the bookings were made, the activity was described as a ‘relationship support group meeting’.

“This description did not fully state the activities being undertaken. The trustees have therefore cancelled all future bookings and have no further comment to make.”

Peer Rope Cambridge said they had a policy of not commenting to the press.

Trumpinton Village Hall was founded in 1908 and owned by a charitable trust. 

Mavelli comes to Cambridge

Lyrics - Girish Menon

The Asura king Mahaballi
Rich, generous had a big belly

The Devas just hated him
Into Patalam they kicked him

But he can visit us once a year
To meet his beloved, near and dear

SWAGATAM O MAHABALLI
TO CAMKERALA'S ONNAKALLI

For his sadya we've made Ollan
Sambar, Erisserry and some Kallan

He likes his rice mixed with Rasam
And tops it up with Payasam

To lift his spirits we've got Nadan Cull
For entertainment we'll do Onnam Thall

SWAGATAM O MAHABALLI
TO CAMKERALA'S ONNAKALLI

Youth cricket in Cambridge - A structured middle class affair.

By Girish Menon

Rob Steen in his article, Ravi Bopara and the cultural conundrum,  raises an important question when he asks, "Why does Britain still await its first batting star of Asian stock ?". In this article I will attempt to answer Rob's questions based on my observations in Cambridge.

In Cambridge, where I live, children's cricket is a formally structured activity. A child has to be enrolled in a cricket club early; he goes for training once a week, mostly in a net, and he plays in a 15/20 over match against another club on a weekday evening. There are few spontaneous games of cricket played by kids using rubber balls and plain bats unlike in the maidans of the Indian subcontinent. Those parents who have cricketing ambitions for their children double up as manager of the club team which gives their kids an unfair developmental advantage. These parents also employ certified coaches to ensure that their child has a further edge as he climbs up the cricket hierarchy. The parent's aim is to get their child into the county team at the earliest age possible because this confers the advantage of opportunity and incumbency to their child. Also, as discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in 'Outliers', those children born at the start of the school year and whose parents know the workings of the system have a greater likelihood than the latter borns of unaware parents. To add to this inequity, there is no cricket played in most of the comprehensive schools in the county. Thus cricket has become an additional academic subject for the children of upper middle class parents. The absence of cricket on terrestrial TV further accentuates the problem, as children with no access to SKY TV are not exposed to real time live cricket and its heroes. The popularity of IPL among some schoolchildren shows that the ECB is focussed on short term monetary gains while sacrificing the need to foster a large cricket playing talent pool.

Children of upper class Asian parents seem to be very clued up on the workings of the system and their children have lead roles in most club teams. But children of less well off parents (non Asians included), who may be unaware of the system's working become a cropper in this cricket structure. Hiring a coach is another handicap for a less well off kid, since the coach often doubles up as a selector and coaches have their own networks which exclude non coached children. This may even explain why a Wasim Akram or a Dhoni will never make it through the English system.

So in Cambridge at least the problem with the cricket set up is that it may never produce any cricketer with flair. The selection of players who progress through the hierarchical structures is biased towards upper middle class kids who have been coached to play cricket. In the absence of a large cricket playing talent pool which represents all economic sections living here, the youth playing cricket in Cambridge today can only become journeymen cricketers. Their cricketing style comes from a mould and lacks individuality, which is the hallmark of any superstar.

Thus Rob Steen's cry will remain in the wilderness until such time England chooses from a wider talent pool and breaks with the parent-coach nexus in youth cricket.

Pick 'em early? The fate of young English talent.

Jon Hotten in Cricinfo 

Brian Close: the youngest male cricketer to play Tests for England  © PA Photos

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It was a day for history at North Marine Road. Yorkshire, like the venerable Almanack, are celebrating their 150th anniversary this year. Sunday was also 50 years removed from the first of Geoffrey Boycott's 151 centuries in a Roses game at Bramall Lane, an occasion marked with the presentation of a framed scorecard. And then there was Matthew Fisher, all of 15 years and 212 days old, the youngest player to appear in a competitive county game since Charles Young, who turned out for Hampshire against Kent in 1867, aged 15 years and 131 days.

There is an inevitable melancholy about this great wash of time, refracted through the boys at either end of it. Young, a left-hand allrounder who was born in India, played 38 games across the next 18 years before slipping away into history. No one knows when or where he died, or the circumstances surrounding his end. He was here and then he was gone. We're left with his wickets and his runs and his odd little record, which may stand forever. Fisher is from an entirely different world and a more focused and intense game, yet prodigies always carry with them a chance of unfulfilment that can be unsettling. 

Fifteen, you think, that's just too early, isn't it, however good you may be. For a start, it is such a brief span. Boycott had been retired for 11 years by the time Fisher was born, and no doubt Geoffrey could (and perhaps has) told the young man how fleeting those years can feel.

Yorkshire know a prodigy when they see one. Their 2nd XI keeper Barney Gibson was 15 years and 27 days old when he played against Durham University. Tim Bresnan got a Sunday League game as a 16-year-old. They had the young Sachin, of course, and before him Kevin Sharp, who seemed set for greatness after making a double-hundred for Young England and appearing in the first team at 18.

Then there was Brian Close, a man whose legend exists on different terms to those that his precocity seemed sure to dictate. Born in the same town, Rawdon, as Hedley Verity, he played Under-18 cricket at the age of 11, appeared for Leeds United and England youth as an amateur footballer and was considered bright enough to have attended Oxford or Cambridge had he chosen that path. Instead he became the youngest man ever to play for England in a Test match, in July 1949 at the age of 18, whilst in the process of completing the "double" of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in his first season (another record). Had the world known then that Close would make his final Test appearance almost 27 years later it might have imagined a new Leviathan had come, yet he played just 22 times for England.

In its place, Close's fame is based around his unyielding toughness, the brilliance of his captaincy (six wins and a draw in his seven Tests as England skipper; sacked after being accused of time-wasting in a game for Yorkshire) and his ability to nurture young players both in cricket and in life. Perhaps some of that understanding came from his earliest years, and the burden that they bestowed. He was by almost any measure a wonderful player, almost 35,000 runs, 1171 wickets and 800 catches batting left-handed and bowling right, and yet his first season casts its long shadow.

We are programmed to think that the earlier a talent emerges, the bigger it must be. That is not always the case. It will certainly not be rounded enough to offer anything other than promise, and promise is ephemeral stuff, available only for the briefest of moments. Matthew Fisher has promise, and our good wishes. What he needs most now is simply time.