Our own Ian Harris is quite used to press coverage when he goes travelling. Avid Now and Z/Yen readers might recall Michael’s obscure account of Ian’s fame in the newspapers of Bhutan, in 2000. Last month, Ian was in the state of Chhattisgarh, in central India. For reasons Ian finds hard to explain, he found himself in demand to do some cricket commentary on an Interstate competition match in Jagdalpur. It seems that no-one asked Ian the rather obvious question, “have you ever done cricket commentary before?” to which Ian’s answer would have been a rather emphatic, “no!”.

Still, you might observe from the following photographs that Ian was able to look the part at least.

Ian even threw in one word of cricket Hindi, “chakka”, when the ball sailed over the commentary tent for six. After his stint, both Ian and Janie were interviewed at length for cable television and several newspapers. Now and Z/Yen can’t help thinking that the whole incident might have been a case of mistaken identity. But just look at Ian’s blasé “oh yes, I do cricket commentary and press interviews all the time” body language and facial expression in following photograph.

This historic event made the front page of New India and the back page of the Bastar Sun.

Those of you with Hindi-reading skills or connections with Hindi readers might get the above scans translated, but Ian assures Now and Z/Yen readers that none of the material facts in the articles are true. Now and Z/Yen is not sure who to believe, but readers have the opportunity to win a bottle of bubbly in the Z/Yen caption competition if you can tell us what the headline ought to have been before 31 March 2011.