We were stumbling around the garden the other night looking for fighting crickets when ketut the gardener thought he had found a good one.

"Look at the size of its wing,"he said, holding the insect between thumb and foreigner. Moonlight glinted on its ugly body. "This one is definitely a champion, "he smiled.

Well perhaps, I said. We would have to see. Would he feed it on puree of gecko meat or farngipani leaf, I asked? Some err towards meat, others feed them on a strictly vegetarian diet.

"I'm all for gecko meat, myself, "said Ketut, studying its legs. "They don't live more than one moon on it but they fight like demons. Gecko meat, definitely. Chopped rather than purred."

We took the cricket back to his duty compound where a few glasses of arak, this island's clear but pungent hooch, cheered our spirit. Then wet set about organizing the insect's training schedule.

Ketut reached over and plucked a hair from my head. He tied it around the cricket's back leg, then hung it from a nail knocked into the wall. It struggled wildly.

"Look at him go", he said."I'm going to be rich!"

When training was over, bathing began. Ketut found a saucer and filled it with water, added a few drops of betel juice before plunging our hopeful warrior in. The cricket hopped about a bit, as if he was enjoying himself.

"He's ready, "said Ketut. "we fight tomorrow."

Daylight came, and we trudged through the fields with Pooty the mutt in attendance. Soon the three of us blundered on a group of sullen-looking chaps gathered in the corner of a coconut grove. Cricket fighting, like it's more gruesome cousin cock fighting, is a serious business in Bali. It is also illegal.

Ketut and I joined the melee while Pooty attempted bonding with a bay-headed mongrel close to a clump of frangipani tress. Someone passed me a small cage, and I back I stared into it. A dark mahogany monster in miniature stared back. It was a mean-looking creature-a cross between a kind of alien gladiator and one of those Transformer robot toys that turn into fighter planes. I noticed a blob of something on the top of its head.

"Tobacco juice," said Ketut, knowingly. "It makes them crazy, so they fight better. Come one. We're next."

In went our Great Brown Hope - into a short bamboo fighting tube. At one end sat our man; at the other its opponent. A cardboard partition separated the competitors. And the the betting started.

"Telude! Tule-tule-tule!"

What a racket! Thirty men shouting at each other in the middle of the equatorial countryside. Our cricket took odds at 4:3. We bet the price of a chicken.

"Chock-chock-chock..." The odds narrowed. Ketut took out short tickling stick and began rubbing it in the face of our charge.

He looked good, like he was warming up, flexing his jumping leg and doing the insect equivalent of the Ali shuffle. The crowd fell silent, and the partition came out.

Nothing happened. Both crickets remained in their respective corners. I sensed a tension in the crowed. Ketut tickled our cricket; our oponent  tickled his. And then they went for it.

"dhjdfhjsdfdsf fbfdjfdf..."

This is the sort of noise that two crickets make when they fight.

"dhjdfhjsdfdsf..."

Our man turned and run.

"Blast, "said Ketut. "He could have been a contender. "No more baths for him, I thought; no more gecko steaks. We gave him to the children, who pulled off his wings. No one likes a loser, even in Bali.

"Let's go and look for another one," said Ketut. "I hear the graveyard's full of them. "Pooty the mutt followed, smiling. He liked cricket fighting. I could see.

end

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