The Indian miracle-buster stuck in Finland

 By Samanthi Dissanayake

BBC News, Helsinki

An Indian man who made his name exposing the "miraculous" feats of holy men as tricks has fled the country after being accused of blasphemy. Now in self-imposed exile in Finland, he fears jail - or even assassination - if he returns.

When a Hindu fakir declared on live television that he could kill anybody with tantric chanting, Sanal Edamaruku simply had to take him up on the challenge.

As both were guests in the studio, the fakir was put to the test immediately.

The channel cancelled all subsequent programming and he began chanting on the spot. But as the hours passed a note of desperation crept into his raspy mantras. For his part, Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, showed no sign of discomfort, let alone death. He merely chortled his way through this unconventional (and unsuccessful) attempt on his life.

He has spent his life as a prominent member of India's small band of miracle-busters, men who dedicate their life to traversing the country demystifying certain beliefs.

It's a nation often associated with profound spirituality, but rationalists see their country as a breeding ground for superstition.

In the 1990s Edamaruku visited hundreds of villages replicating the apparently fabulous feats some self-proclaimed holy men became renowned for - the materialisations of watches or "holy" ash - exposing them as mere sleight of hand.

As a campaigner determined to drill home his point, sometimes with an air of goading bemusement, he has attracted critics.

He readily admits he took advantage of the explosion in Indian television channels which discovered an audience fascinated with tales of the extraordinary.

"I was campaigning in villages for so long before the television came," he says. "But some people do not like me to be going on television and reaching out to millions of people."

But in 2012, four years after his televised encounter with the fakir, a steady drip of water from the toe of a statue of Christ genuinely did, he believes, put his life in danger.

Immediately hailed as a miracle, hundreds of Catholic devotees and other curious residents flocked to the shrine in a nondescript Mumbai suburb to watch the hypnotic drip. Some even drank the droplets.

Edamaruku was challenged to investigate and so he went to the site with an engineer friend and traced the source of the drip backwards. Moisture on the wall the statue was mounted on seemed to come from an overflowing drain, which was in turn fed by a pipe that issued from a nearby toilet.

The "miracle" was simply bad plumbing, he said.

It was then that the situation turned ugly.

He presented his case in a febrile live television debate with representatives of Catholic lobby groups, while outside the studio a threatening crowd bearing sticks had gathered. He claims they were hired thugs.

For some Catholics the veracity of the miracle is no longer the point. Edamaruku, they say, insulted the Catholic church, by alleging the church manufactured the miracle to make money, by claiming the church was anti-science and even casting doubt over the miracle that ensured Mother Theresa's sainthood.

In the following weeks, three police stations in Mumbai took up blasphemy cases filed against him by Catholic groups under the notorious Section 295a of India's colonial-era penal code.

Section 295a was enacted in 1927 to curb hate speech in a restless colony bristling with religious and communal tensions. It makes "deliberate and malicious" speech insulting to religion punishable with up to three years in prison and a fine. However, some say it is frequently abused to suppress free speech.

"Under this law a policeman can simply arrest me even though there has been no investigation... they can just arrest me without a warrant and keep me in prison for a long time… That risk I do not want to take," says Edamaruku.

He applied for anticipatory bail, which would prevent police taking him into custody before any investigation - but this was rejected. At the same time, he says, he was getting threatening phone calls from policemen proclaiming their intention to arrest him and telling him that unless he apologised the complaint would never be withdrawn.

Threatening comments were posted on an online forum, he says, and contacts in Mumbai told him they had heard talk of somebody being hired to beat him in jail. Catholic groups say they aren't behind any threats Mr Edamaruku may have received.

He decided to leave early for a European lecture tour. Finland was the first country to give him a visa and he had friends on the Finnish humanist scene willing to help.

He arrived in Helsinki on a summer afternoon two years ago, the endless hours of sunlight saturating both day and night. He thought he would only stay for a couple of weeks until the furore he left behind in India had died down.

But the furore has not died down - the Catholic Secular Form (CSF), one of the groups that made the initial complaint, still insists it will press for prosecution should he ever return.

Two years on, he is angry, bitter and defiant. Living in a small flat on the eastern edge of Helsinki, he has forced himself to adjust to an alien landscape. After the crowded hustle of Delhi, more than 3,000 miles away, he can now walk mile upon lonely mile without seeing a single person.

His closest friend here - the founder of the Finnish humanist society Pekka Elo - died late last year.

"I miss a lot of people… That I cannot meet them is something that saddens me," he says.

Since he left India, his daughter has had a child, and his mother has died.

He conducts board meetings of the Indian Rationalist Association by Skype and every morning colleagues update him on the latest tales of the supernatural and fraudulent holy men. He plots their downfall. This routine is crucial to him.

Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai tried to broker a solution by calling upon Edamaruku to apologise and on Catholic groups to drop their case in return.

But Edamaruku staunchly refuses to compromise on what he sees as his freedom of expression.

"I don't regret anything I said," he says. "I feel that I have full right to express my views... I am open for discussion and correction but I am not willing to accept anybody's bullying, change my views or submit to their pressure to apologise."

Some legal analysts think he could risk returning. The courts recognise that Section 295a is regularly misused, they point out. Writers, activists and others have been arrested and imprisoned even before charge - but most were released on bail.

But Edamaruku fears for his safety, pointing to the fate of his friend, anti-black-magic campaigner Narendra Dabholkar.

"Narendra Dabholkar… suggested that if I come to Mumbai he and his friends would be able to protect me. I was considering his proposal," Edamaruku recalls, referring to a conversation last summer.

But four days later he was murdered, a crime which many believe was linked to his campaign against magic.

So Edamaruku spends his time trudging the arresting, bleak forests of Helsinki, sometimes remembering his unconventional childhood in Kerala.

His father, born a Christian, grew up to become a rebel who was excommunicated. His mother gave birth to him in the pouring rain having fled her in-laws' Christian home because they pressured her to convert. But the family always managed to reconcile its differences. The bishops and Hindu priests among his relatives could be found sitting around one dinner table laughing at their own beliefs.

He insists he has no regrets.

"I would do it again. Because any miracle which has enormous clout at one moment, is simply gone once explained. It's like a bubble. You prick it and it is finished."

The statue still stands in that sleepy suburb of Mumbai, but it no longer drips.

On Playing Spin - Watch, move, and play late

Kane Williamson: the key to New Zealand's chances against West Indies' spinners © Getty Images

Martin Crowe in Cricinfo

As New Zealand tour the West Indies in what will be a close fight, it is likely it will come down to who spins their wheels the best. Years back, when touring the Caribbean, there was a queue every second day to get an X-ray for a possible broken bone, but not now. These days it is slow spin that will determine the outcome, and cause the pain.

Mystery spin would normally be West Indies' trump, via Sunil Narine and Shane Shillingford, while rookies Ish Sodhi and Mark Craig carry the responsibility on the other side of the trenches. But shockingly, Narine hasdecided to turn his back on his country to play a domestic T20 game over a vitally important Test series. I will say no more, until the end of this piece, except to say : in my heart it doesn't wash.

Instead, let me speak of what the secrets are to playing quality spin, even the mysterious kind.

To assess the virtues of what it takes to play spin well, I will refer to two great specialist players of spin, rather than just go to the obvious list of greats who dominated the game against all bowling. The two specialists were Pakistan's finest, Javed Miandad, and John Reid, the left-hander for New Zealand during the '80s.

Both were different in method. Javed was the busier of the two, John the more poised and composed. What they both possessed was an open stance to see all possible lines, and an acutely watchful eye to fend off any last-second danger. In essence, they were attracted to the slow, spinning nature of the ball, far more than the split-second flurry of pace.

They also, as did the greats, did not ever fret over picking the mystery ball, or what approach to take. They simply saw the ball at its earliest release, and with a clear mind, zeroed in on the detail of the delivery. This gave them the information as to what was happening and what was the correct response, even at the very last moment.

These days many players feel a need to analyse, to delve into what the mystery is. This is the worst approach. To fill the head with theory and second-guessing will not only confuse the mind and create doubt, it will inevitably block the ability to see what is real, the ball spinning in mid-air and seeing it for what it is. The crux is in the over-analysing and subsequent confusion.

	Most important of all is the need to not overthink the situation or challenge. Far better to just practise it, absorb it, find trust in what you have, to counter spin

Narine, for example, is unique with his finger-flicking technique. It's cool to watch. And it is challenging also, for he is deadly accurate and bowls a nagging length. That he spins it a bit both ways makes him a truly effective international bowler. But he is no Qadir, Warne or Murali. And so the approach should be respectful and simple.

The key is clearing the mind. To not think. A good routine will assist this. What is needed is to turn off from the last ball and to wait 30 seconds before turning on a fierce focus to the next ball. And then the focus becomes the ball, and watching it, gathering the information as you witness the delivery unfolding, curving and spinning through the air.

With the use of good, agile footwork and a steady blade, the ball should be countered and measured surely enough, given the time involved. If the mind is pre-empting what might happen, or trying to make a snap decision as to which way it will spin once arriving, then the chances of playing it correctly are limited.

Too often young players and coaches will believe they need a plan. They don't. As with Reid and Miandad, they just need simplicity and trust. Trusting what they see will be enough, in which their sure feet and hand-eye feel for the ball's twists and turns will be ready at the right time. Reid and Miandad grew up with a natural background of playing on surfaces that spun. This gave them their natural instinctive trust.

When you play in a foreign land on unfamiliar surfaces, it's vital you spend as much time as possible getting exposed to what will be served up come Test time.

Most important of all is the need to not overthink the situation or challenge. Far better to just practise it, absorb it, find trust in what you have, to counter it. Don't spend that practice time going over the various theories undoubtedly on offer. Avoid them at all costs. Simply clear the mind and watch, move and play late.

Kane Williamson will hold a key to his team's fortunes. He is a terrific player, reminding me of Reid himself. With his open stance, bat down, softly held, and fast, trustworthy feet at his disposal, he can anchor the innings. Why he still feels the need to double-pump his bat held high to the quicks is puzzling and self-defeating, especially when he provides a perfect set-up to the spinners. However, if he gets past the quicks and settles in as he can against spin, he will allow Taylor and McCullum to also get in and go big. These three hold the secret to keeping it simple for the rest.

It's a big series this one, for both teams. West Indies have a new captain in Denesh Ramdin, a rapidly slowing Chris Gayle, and many other factors to decipher, which means the local team has a few issues to sort. Yet they can't afford to let this series get away from them, especially after smashing the same opponents two years earlier in the same conditions. Back then Narine dominated majorly, but this time around he won't show. It's his decision, and he isn't the only one to have done this, but under Richard Pybus and a new "West Indies First" mandate, it's a crucial blow for a once-great team to climb the ladder again.

Narine's decision shows we have a problem running too deep for comfort, and I am not looking forward to the spin that will follow.

Britain is still feasting on credit – and the next crunch will hit in 2016

Interest rates won't stay low for much longer. When the cheap loans end the result will be red-letter bills and repossessions

• 
• • Aditya Chakrabortty
  • The Guardian, Friday 30 May 2014

‘This time the credit crunch will primarily affect ordinary consumers, rather than banks or businesses.’ Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Come with me into the near future, just two years from now. In spring 2016 things look much the same: another coalition government has been installed; the spending cuts first outlined at the beginning of the decade have begun again; and somewhere on the continent a newspaper is publishing grainy close-ups of Kate Middleton's elbow. Business as usual.

Except for one big difference. By early 2016, the era of record-low interest rates is over. Borrowing is getting steadily more expensive. And the result is starting to destabilise our entire economic model.

Such a vista is clearly visible from our vantage point today. Over the past couple of weeks, senior officials at the Bank of England have dropped hint after hint that it is simply a matter of time before interest rates go up. Few expect the Bank governor, Mark Carney, to lob anything as inconvenient as a rate rise at Chancellor George Osborne this side of a general election – but some of his colleagues are growing impatient. On the front of Thursday's FT, rate setter Martin Weale asked: "The question is: how close are we getting to 'soon'? Of course we can never be sure, but the economy has sustained fairly rapid growth in demand." Which sounds like the monetary-policy equivalent of the backseat child grumping, "Are we there yet?"

You can see why Weale is getting twitchy. House prices in London are rising at an annual rate of 17%. The unemployment rate has dropped below 7% – the point at which Carney initially committed himself to lifting the key rate off its 300-year low.

This narrow range of indicators doesn't amount to a recovery. Yet – and here's one oddity of Britain's economic situation – it does add up to a case for rate hikes. Rather than suddenly rocketing from 0.5%, rates are likely to go up in what the Bank's outgoing deputy head, Charlie Bean, recently described as "baby steps". He might as well have used the metaphor of a frog immersed in water that is slowly brought to the boil.

Which is what makes spring 2016 so important, because while likely to be still early in the slow uphill march of rates, that's the point identified by economist Matthew Whittaker as being "crunch time" for Britain's indebted households.

As chief economist at the well-regarded Resolution Foundation, Whittaker has probably spent more time than anyone else in the country analysing what higher borrowing costs could mean for Britons. His predictions are frightening. Should the key rate hit 3% in 2018, as the market and the Bank's Bean predicts, then about one in three of all mortgaged households will find themselves dangerously stretched.

Within that group, Whittaker identifies 770,000 "mortgage prisoners" – households who, perhaps because they're self-employed or have low equity in their homes, will find it very hard to remortgage on to a cheaper deal.

What he's describing is a second credit crunch – this time primarily affecting ordinary consumers, rather than banks or businesses, and kicking-in in just two years' time. The Resolution Foundation avoids sketching out what the human implications of this consumer credit crunch might be, but they're not hard to infer: red-letter bills, forced sales of homes, and a rise in repossessions. All this at a time when the bulk of Osborne's austerity programme will be pushed towards completion.

In its Financial Stability report last November, the Bank of England noted that 16% of mortgage debt is owed by households with less than £200 left over each month after paying their essential bills and groceries. Imagine such a household has a £100,000 mortgage on a 3.6% variable rate. As the rate goes up in line with the base rate, their monthly mortgage bills will rise from £506 to £644. Between now and Christmas 2018, they'll have paid something like an additional £4,400 solely on home loans. All that before you look at any other debts or financial mishaps they might have.

Looking at these figures, some might say this is the fault of the feckless, of those who wanted newly built flats, German kitchens and exotic holidays during the boom but couldn't afford them. That ain't necessarily so, for three main reasons.

First, as estate agents say, location matters. Look at Northern Ireland, where Whittaker thinks around 70,000 households face mortgage imprisonment. A lot of those people will have taken out perfectly prudent home loans in 2005, 2006 or 2007 – it's just that their properties have halved in value from their pre-Northern Rock peak. A London couple could have borrowed to the hilt in the boom – but they will have been kept afloat by the bubble in the capital.

Second, for each heedless debtor, there will have been a predatory lender. Even at the end of 2007, well after the credit crunch had begun, just under half of all mortgages were given without any proof being demanded of the borrower's income. This was a no-questions-asked market, and both lenders and politicians liked it that way.

Finally, your average cash-strapped Britons, with their wages lagging far behind rising prices, don't have the space to sort out their finances. The story of British households is simply told: we went into the crash with historic levels of debt; we cut back a bit, but are still burdened with debts worth about 140% of our income – higher than the eurozone and even credit-happy America. In cash terms, household debt is way above that racked up by the government – even though the right only bangs on about the latter.

Step back and the big picture isn't even of three-quarters of a million British households unable to pay their way, but an entire country unable to do so. As research from the TUC and others shows, Britons built up so much debt during the boom because they weren't getting paid enough. National income grew, sure enough, but it largely went to those at the top. For the rest of the country, the model was simple: let them eat credit. The result is summed up by former head of the Financial Services Authority Adair Turner in a speech this March: "We seem to need credit growth faster than GDP growth to achieve an optimally growing economy, but that leads inevitably to crisis and post-crisis recession."

During the long bust, the problem wasn't fixed – it was simply shoved under the carpet of ultra-low rates. The existential question facing post-crash Britain is this: if we now rely on cheap debt and tax credits to keep our heads above water, what happens in an era when neither loans nor benefits are so easy to come by?

'In cricket, if you allow yourself to relax, you'll be swept away' Saeed Ajmal

Umar Farooq's interview with Saeed Ajmal in Cricinfo

Everyone in Pakistan either wants to be a fast bowler or a batsman. How did you end up a spinner?
I was a fast bowler until 15. I used to play mostly with a tennis ball covered in vinyl electrical tape. My school captain Maqsood Ahmed encouraged me to try off spin. He felt I might be more successful as a spinner. He probably noticed that my height and build weren't good for fast bowling. It was a breakthrough. So here I am.

What does cricket mean to you?
Cricket is a tough game. I would say 90% of the time it makes you cry, but the 10% that forms the good parts is truly worth it. The key to success, I think, is to bear the bad days with a smile. If you can do that, the good days become more and more frequent.

You made a relatively late entry into international cricket, playing your first Test when nearly 32. How come?
I cannot tell why I took so long and who and what were the forces that delayed my entry into international cricket. I'd rather focus on my present and future rather than cursing my past. God has given me this personal quality of shrugging off failure quickly and not taking disappointments to heart. That's just the way I am and this approach has helped me greatly in life. I simply refuse to be disappointed.

How did you master the doosra?
I learned to bowl the doosra by watching video footage of Saqlain Mushtaq's bowling during my days in England playing league cricket. I never got any direct tips from him but I closely studied him bowling the doosra on video.

But way before that, Aqeel Ahmed, who played for Faisalabad, could bowl a pretty good one. Variation is a key weapon for any spinner. I used to watch Aqeel take wicket after wicket with his doosra and I wanted to do the same. I felt confident that if he can do it I could too.

Is it still a problem for you to bowl to left-handers?
During the early phase of my career it was. It had almost become a mental block. Left-handers are supposed to be fearful of offspinners, but I could see that I wasn't making them afraid. It became very frustrating for me and I knew I had to do something about it. I thought to myself, I have this ball in my hand, that's my biggest weapon; why am I not able to use this weapon effectively against left-handers? I worked hard at the problem, going to the nets and bowling at left-handed batsmen for long periods. Allah was kind and I was able to work out my deficiencies. Over the last year and a half to two years, it has ceased to be a problem. I came at the problem with a positive mental attitude. I fine-tuned my doosra for left-hand batsmen.

Do you fear that overusing the doosra might make you predictable?
I don't think I overuse it. When I look at the left-handers I've dismissed over the last two years, 70% have fallen to the doosra. I use it because it works. To me, that's effective use, not overuse. If I find that a batsman is uncomfortable against the doosra, I'll bowl exactly that to him, even if I end up bowling ten doosras in a row.

We heard you were offered the Pakistan captaincy.
I don't want to put myself forward for captaincy. I think I am better as a team player. I do think about being captain of Pakistan, but I am reluctant too. Captaincy in Pakistan is not easy. The captain ends up being blamed for anything that goes wrong. Just look at Mohammad Hafeez. He resigned after our exit from this year's World T20. Why? It's because all the blame was being dumped on him. I have been approached for captaincy but I declined. I want to be relaxed about my cricket. God has blessed me with a sunny disposition and I want to keep it that way.

Misbah-ul-Haq has been outstanding in this role. In fact, when you consider the circumstances in which he has performed his job, I would say his services as captain are greater than even Imran Khan's. Yet he doesn't always receive his due. He's been a tremendous leader during an extremely difficult time for Pakistan and he's been our leading run getter. Yet each time we lose a match, people forget about his magnificent contributions. They start demanding that he be dropped. I really fail to understand this. Even as a batsman, people complain he's too slow, that he blocks a lot, does a lot of tuk-tuk. This is not fair to Misbah. He is a watchful batsman and becomes extra-watchful if the team is losing wickets from the other end, which often happens with us. His approach is appropriate and serves the interests of the team. I can tell you as a bowler that it pleases me greatly to see Misbah standing at the crease. If he is batting, it gives me heart that I will have runs to bowl at.

	"As a bowler that it pleases me greatly to see Misbah standing at the crease. If he is batting, it gives me heart that I will have runs to bowl at"

Don't you think Misbah is over-reliant on you and that this keeps you under pressure all the time?
I agree that they rely heavily on me. This is a responsibility I accept with a sense of honour and humility. I am there to be used as and when my captain needs. I am never sure which overs I'm going to bowl, when I'm going to get called upon. I remain alert all the time, ready to serve. All I know is that whenever my captain calls on me, I have to give it everything. There was a time when I used to feel anxious that I could get called upon unpredictably, but I no longer feel any pressure about it.

Cricket is a team game, so you obviously can't get five or ten wickets all the time. Others too have to respond to contribute.
Whether it's the first over or the last, whether the boundary is short or long, whether the batsman is new or well-set, I always answer the call of my captain. I would never say, hey, that's a short boundary over there, I don't want to bowl from this end. That's just not me. I have a sense of duty about it. Whenever I'm called upon, my answer always is, come on, give me the ball.

You can never relax in cricket. You have to keep working at the game all the time, keep trying and learning new things. If you allow yourself to relax, you'll be swept away. It's an unpredictable game. You can never be sure of what's going to happen next. It can also be a cruel game. It can give you a lot of heartache.

You have never played Test cricket in your country. How does that feel?
It is perhaps the greatest misfortune of my career that I have been forced to play nearly all my international matches outside Pakistan. I have played over 200 international matches by now and only three have been in Pakistan. None of my 33 Tests has been in Pakistan.

I grew up watching many Tests at Iqbal Stadium, in my home town of Faisalabad, and used to dream of one day playing there myself. That has yet to happen. I can't say if it ever will. I am extremely keen to play in front of my own people. Few things would give me greater joy. I keep praying for the quick return of international cricket to Pakistan. If it happens after my retirement, it will leave me very sad indeed. I do agree that our team has nicely managed to adopt the UAE as a second home, but my heart still aches with the desire to play at home. I want to see the intensity of support I am able to attract here. That is something I would like to experience. We have played our so-called home matches in a number of locations, including the UAE, England, Sri Lanka, and even New Zealand. These locations have all been welcoming and provided top-notch facilities, but they aren't home. It's different when I come to Pakistan. Just breathing the air here makes me feel better.

As one of the world's top spinners, do you miss playing in the IPL?
No doubt it would be better for us if we could be included in the IPL. But the loss is only financial. We're all playing a good deal of cricket as it is, so we're not losing out on that count. But yes, Pakistani players fully deserve to be included in the IPL. I can understand why they might want to exclude us from matches inside India, but the IPL has now been exported to South Africa and the UAE. There should be no hesitation in including us when the games are being played outside India. I would even ask the IPL organisers to host matches in Pakistan. Why not? It would be good for the fans and our players would benefit. It will reveal the close bond and mutual affection that exists between Indians and Pakistanis. That is what should be allowed to truly define the relationship between our countries.

There has lately been some talk about reviving bilateral series between India and Pakistan. I would love to see that. I dearly hope it happens.

You predicted you'd take a ten-wicket haul in Cape Town last year before the start of the match. How did you feel it coming?
The first thing I do whenever I arrive at any ground is to go look at the pitch. At the start of the Cape Town Test, a commentator and a TV cameraman were standing there doing a pitch report. When I saw the surface I couldn't help rubbing my hands in glee. The camera managed to get a shot of me rubbing my hands together. It appeared to be a pitch tailor-made for me. I can't explain it in words and I can't tell you what I saw in that pitch that made me feel this way, but I sensed I would be taking wickets.

It was just this realisation that arose from somewhere deep inside. It just happens that way sometimes in cricket. If you're a batsman, there are days when you'll play your first scoring shot and right away you can sense you'll be making a hundred today. That's the kind of feeling that Cape Town pitch gave me. I took ten wickets in that game, so it proved correct.

Did you lose faith in technology in cricket after Sachin Tendulkar was not given out off your bowling in the 2011 World Cup?
I was left dumbfounded when Hawk-Eye gave Tendulkar not out in the semi-final in Mohali. As I understand it, the way the system was set up back then, it was controlled by a producer who could influence the images. Now it has been improved and the technical people are required to present all the available angles to the third umpire without editing.

I am telling you: Sachin was 100% out. He was lbw. As far as I am concerned, it did not reflect the truth of the event. In fact, this is not just my view, it is what the entire cricket world thinks. But we move on and so does the technology. I believe it is evolving and learning from its mistakes. I am fine with it.

What encouraged you to start a cricket academy in Faisalabad?
Pakistan has immense cricketing talent but we lack proper facilities. This is where the PCB should place its energies and focus. My effort to establish a properly equipped and organised cricket academy is also motivated by this concern. I am eager to get it done while I am still active internationally. I know nobody will give me the time of day after I retire. So time is short and I need to be efficient and take advantage of the opportunity. The Faisalabad authorities and the leadership of the Agricultural University have been most helpful. I am extremely grateful to them.

	"If I find that a batsman is uncomfortable against the doosra, I'll bowl exactly that to him, even if I end up bowling ten doosras in a row" © AFP  Enlarge

The country used to be known for its fast bowlers but your success might change that.
I would agree that the quality of seam bowlers from Pakistan has declined somewhat. I think the reason is that we have started making green and bowler-friendly wickets in domestic matches. In the old days, the wickets were dead and bowlers had to try hard to succeed. They were forced to learn tricks and skills. After all this toil they would come into the international arena and find helpful wickets and they would be able to dominate easily. Now the situation is reversed. Our bowlers are being raised on seaming surfaces. They perform adequately on green pitches, but if they come across a batting wicket they are unable to adjust and end up getting badly punished. I would advise the PCB to favour batting surfaces in our domestic set-up. It will certainly be good for the bowlers - both spinners and seamers - and I am sure it will produce a few great batsmen too.

What have been the highs and lows of your career so far?
The best moment of my career, I will say, is the 3-0 Test whitewash over England in the UAE in early 2012.

There have, of course, been a number of bad moments too. Losing last year's Cape Town Test against South Africa, despite my ten wickets, was a terrible blow. There is the ODI against South Africa in Sharjah last year, where I took four wickets and we had a modest target to chase, but we had an awful collapse, losing the last six batsmen for only 16 or 17.

And of course, there is the last over I bowled to Michael Hussey in the 2010 World T20 semi-final.

But I would say the absolute worst match of my career was a Test against West Indies in the summer of 2011. I took 11 wickets in that game. Despite conceding a first-innings lead, we had a reasonably modest fourth-innings target and we still lost. That hurt deeply. It still hurts when I think about it. I had this bagful of wickets but it gave me no real sense of achievement.

How do you expect Pakistan to do in the 2015 World Cup?
The next World Cup remains less than a year away. I have a feeling its location in Australia and New Zealand is going to suit us. My prediction is we are going to do well. Our batsmen have a flair for playing shots on bouncy wickets. They love to cut, for example. The Akmal brothers Umar and Kamran, opener Ahmad Shehzad, even Hafeez, and the newcomer Sohaib Maqsood - they are all happy on bouncy tracks. They all love it when the ball comes quickly onto the bat.

Twelve ways to fix politics

Our politicians have lost all credibility. If they want us to engage with them, they had better mend their ways

• 
• • Suzanne Moore
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 28 May 2014 20.00 BST

(L-R) Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Prime Minister David Cameron leave after the wedding ceremony of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey, in central London, April 29, 2011. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

What do the watery eyes of Nick Clegg and the resurfacing of Tony Blair mean? How many more pictures of a man with a pint of beer can anyone bear? Has a whole political class lost the election? What can be done to end their misery? Here are a dozen suggestions as to how politicians might do better ...

1 Forget this talk of reconnection with voters – it sounds stalkerish. Most people have never had a relationship with a political party in the first place. How come politicians carry on as if we were married to them? At what stage in politicians' careers, I often wonder, did they become so surrounded by like-minded people that they didn't notice that we left them long ago?

I learned this salutary lesson when I was working for a small but influential political monthly. Our circulation was smaller than that of Metal Detecting Weekly. Politics as it is practised is regarded by many as a similarly odd hobby. Only without the fun of going round a beach with headphones on.

2 If all political careers end in failure, then perhaps they all start with beliefs? These folk are sucked into a system in which those beliefs are so compromised, they become unintelligible to much of the electorate, who would be hard-pressed to say what their MP actually stands for. Anyone who appears to believe something or "be real" stands out. This is now called "character", as if having a set of extremely rightwing views is actually a sign of amazing individualism under a Tory government. Thus Miliband's current gig – "I feel your racist pain" – is never going to work. Coming from a guy whose parents fled fascism, it is painful. You can't outflank a single-issue politician by accepting their belief system.

3 The so-called "professionalising" of politics is widely despised. No one should become an MP without having done other jobs. The media doesn't count as a job! The small genetic pool of Oxbridge PPE types is bound to produce intellectually inbred and inferior thinkers. This is fine if we want cloned technocrats – but shouldn't we want the democracy that represents us to look like us?.

4 No one should stand for a seat in a place to which they have no connection. Why on earth should ambitious Londoners be helicoptered into safe seats? I have heard talk that the standard of MPs would drop if it were left to local talent alone. Yes, really.

5 Language: the terrible fear of actually saying something results in verbless slogans and expensive logos. Hardworking Britain Better Off, for instance, appears as if it were the result of a brainstorming session that had to be abandoned halfway through as a fire alarm went off. The making up of new phrases should always ring alarm bells. If you can't tell voters who you are and what you want to do with the pre-existing vocabulary and vernacular of the entire English language, surely that's not good.

6 Be honest about what you can and cannot do. Climate change and inequality are global problems. The idea that any economy can survive on its own is clearly nuts, as is the idea that children need to be schooled as if it were the 1950s. No man is an island, not even Nigel Farage. Because nowadays no island is an island.

7 Get with the programme. Alongside loss of reverence for politicians has been a flattening of media hierarchy due to social media. It no longer works to think of us as passive consumers of politics produced from on high. Unless, of course, you are the BBC,which covered the Euro elections as if none of us could use a calculator, thus calling it for Ukip from the very start.

This is a huge turnoff and though we perk up to any signs of actual leadership, whole swathes of debate are happening completely outside the traditional forums.

8 Spit it out. Much feels like a charade if policies are spun. What does a smaller state mean if not privatisation? Why not spell out the need to regulate big business instead of pretending market processes will self-adjust? Why has so little changed with the banking system? Don't underestimate those you seek to represent. We understand the need for regulation and safety nets.

9 Jokes. If they haven't occurred to you, then don't pay a committee to write them into your speeches. Even when professional comedians are involved, there is nothing more offputting than the phrase "topical comedy".

10 Media training. Don't go there. We can spot it a mile off. I blame Bill Clinton and his famous handshake that involved clasping your elbow with his free hand. I have always experienced media-trained politicians as strangely unsuccessful gropers with inappropriate smiles who practise unblinking eye contact.

11 Real life. This means more than two children and a wife who went to Zara and the claim you once liked a CD. Hinterland remains an undervalued asset. We are currently governed by those for whom culture and education is everything to do with getting a better job and nothing to do with having a better life.

12 Don't blame us. The disenchantment of the electorate means that the political class has to change or be changed. It's no use them crying, Sunset Boulevard style: "I am big. It's the politics that got small." The reality is that they have shrunk themselves into a self-regarding circle jerk propped up by a lazy media, just when the problems actually became epic. If they won't be part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

It's simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up

It's the great taboo of our age – and the inability to discuss the pursuit of perpetual growth will prove humanity's undoing

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 27 May 2014 18.38 BST

'The mother narrative to all this is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots.' Photograph: Alamy

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham.

Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It's 2.5 billion billion solar systems. It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.

To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.

Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels. Before large amounts of coal were extracted, every upswing in industrial production would be met with a downswing in agricultural production, as the charcoal or horse power required by industry reduced the land available for growing food. Every prior industrial revolution collapsed, as growth could not be sustained. But coal broke this cycle and enabled – for a few hundred years – the phenomenon we now call sustained growth.

It was neither capitalism nor communism that made possible the progress and pathologies (total war, the unprecedented concentration of global wealth, planetary destruction) of the modern age. It was coal, followed by oil and gas. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots. Now, with the accessible reserves exhausted, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our impossible proposition.

On Friday, a few days after scientists announced that the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet is now inevitable, the Ecuadorean government decided to allow oil drilling in the heart of the Yasuni national park. It had made an offer to other governments: if they gave it half the value of the oil in that part of the park, it would leave the stuff in the ground. You could see this as either blackmail or fair trade. Ecuador is poor, its oil deposits are rich. Why, the government argued, should it leave them untouched without compensation when everyone else is drilling down to the inner circle of hell? It asked for $3.6bn and received $13m. The result is that Petroamazonas, a company with a colourful record of destruction and spills, will now enter one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, in which a hectare of rainforest is said to contain more species than exist in the entire continent of North America.

 Yasuni national park. Murray Cooper/Minden Pictures/Corbis

The UK oil firm Soco is now hoping to penetrate Africa's oldest national park, Virunga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo; one of the last strongholds of the mountain gorilla and the okapi, of chimpanzees and forest elephants. In Britain, where a possible 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil has just been identified in the south-east, the government fantasises about turning the leafy suburbs into a new Niger delta. To this end it's changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent and offering lavish bribes to local people. These new reserves solve nothing. They do not end our hunger for resources; they exacerbate it.

The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world's diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.

Some people try to solve the impossible equation with the myth of dematerialisation: the claim that as processes become more efficient and gadgets are miniaturised, we use, in aggregate, fewer materials. There is no sign that this is happening. Iron ore production has risen 180% in 10 years. The trade body Forest Industries tells us that "global paper consumption is at a record high level and it will continue to grow". If, in the digital age, we won't reduce even our consumption of paper, what hope is there for other commodities?

Look at the lives of the super-rich, who set the pace for global consumption. Are their yachts getting smaller? Their houses? Their artworks? Their purchase of rare woods, rare fish, rare stone? Those with the means buy ever bigger houses to store the growing stash of stuff they will not live long enough to use. By unremarked accretions, ever more of the surface of the planet is used to extract, manufacture and store things we don't need. Perhaps it's unsurprising that fantasies about colonising space – which tell us we can export our problems instead of solving them – have resurfaced.

As the philosopher Michael Rowan points out, the inevitabilities of compound growth mean that if last year'sthe predicted global growth rate for 2014 (3.1%) is sustained, even if we miraculously reduced the consumption of raw materials by 90%, we delay the inevitable by just 75 years. Efficiency solves nothing while growth continues.

The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth's living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. As a result, they are mentioned almost nowhere. They are the 21st century's great taboo, the subjects guaranteed to alienate your friends and neighbours. We live as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle-class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.

Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn't worthy of mention. That's how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it.