All this looks like a local, video-recorded Twenty20 cricket match being played somewhere in India. Except this was part of what the police call a "fake" cricket tournament involving a group of unemployed men in Gujarat state and a bunch of punters curiously based in Russia.
The video is soundless – a blue strap at the bottom of the screen tells you the scores of the batting team, the two batters, the projected score and the bowling records. It says that Chennai Fighters are chasing a score of 151 set by the Gandhinagar Challengers, the BBC reports.
The outfield is brown and dusty, and the cricket pitch is a whitish carpet nailed to the ground. The Chennai team is scoring at a steady clip of nearly seven runs an over. Strokes are sometimes played but we never see a ball reach the boundary. The batters mostly run clumsy ones or twos.
The umpire appears to be more enthusiastic than the players, waving his hands vigorously, signalling wides and no balls. In keeping with the rather amiable mood of the game, a bowler doesn’t seem to be interested in running out a batsman who’s stranded yards away from the crease.
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