Review: DUCK by maatin at Jermyn Street Theatre 12 - 18 July 2022

'... uses sport as a metaphoric battleground, but also cares about it as sport, as a thing of great potential for bringing people together' ★★★ ½ 

For more than a century, to play cricket for Yorkshire you had to have been born in Yorkshire. In 1992, they relented and allowed Sachin Tendulkar, the “Little Master” (born in Mumbai, and probably the greatest cricketer on the planet that year) to play for the county. In 2012, Azeem Rafiq (born on Karachi, but a Barnsley boy from the age of 10), captained Yorkshire’s 20-over squad and helped restore the county to the 1^st division with his batting and his bowling. Then he disappeared from the players roster, and in 2020 a complaint he had made against the club for widespread, persistent, continuous racism was investigated. It was revealed that Indian batsman Cheteshwar Pujara was called Steve during his time with the club. All players of colour were called ‘Kevin’. Yorkshire County Cricket Club was strongly reprimanded, the chairman stood down, several players were banned. But it took 12 years.

maatin has written a fine, pithy, funny, and very timely play that illustrates the travails of players of colour in a game invented in England but turned into art on the Indian sub-continent. Ismail is a 14-year-old batting prodigy at a snooty private school. Everyone calls him ‘Smiley’ because Ismail is too hard to say. He has just been promoted to the 1^st XI, the youngest player, when a new coach decides to ‘make him fit in’ by systematically bullying and shaming him. Ismail discovers just how easy it is for boys he had thought were friends to become complicit in humiliating him.

It’s a very funny play, Ismail is excellently played by Gavi Singh Chera, the cricketing moves are convincingly displayed through great movement and a very effective set, and the climax, Ismail’s personal journey, is well earned and effective.

It’s a short play dealing with a niche subject, which reveals big, important, pressing issues. It does it with humour, charm, and compassion. It uses sport as a metaphoric battleground, but also cares about it as sport, as a thing of great potential for bringing people together. I fell in love with cricket watching Kent play. The captain was the brilliant Asif Iqbal, and he was my first cricketing hero. He captained Pakistan as well, but that meant less to me than his captaining of Kent. I don’t know if that is or isn’t dismissive, but Asif was wholly admirable. Ismail initially rejects the bat his father gives him, but it’s the make of bat used by Sachin Tendulkar. Anyone should be proud of a gift like that.

DUCK

At Jermyn Street Theatre until 18 July 2022

maatin - playwright

Imy Wyatt Corner - director

Gavi Singh Chera – Ismail

https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/duck/

Reviewed by Chris Lilly