Xi's XI

The Doordarshan stand-in newscaster may have made the biggest howler of the decade when, during an early-morning newscast, she hurriedly called the Chinese President “Eleven Jinping”! But intuitively she pointed us in the direction of searching for the top Chinese Eleven that will be fielded to encounter India. If anything smacks of oriental inscrutability, it is the way Chinese leaders take charge, and it is always difficult for the outsider to know what positions of power they hold in the command structure. Here is an attempt to help Team India decipher the Chinese puzzle.

Already, Xi has said concisely what he expects from the match – China will be the world’s factory, India its back office. It is a reasonable prognostication, considering that the backbone of India’s modernisation was composed of its vast cadre of babus and accountants who managed the nation during its imperial times, and later as well, and the present-day follow-through in the services sector by its IT professionals.