Hua Hin, Thailand ? The mount is a two-ton beast of a breed that once stomped Asian armies into mush. Players carry a slender shaft, long as a knight’s lance. Their pith helmet is right out of Rudyard Kipling.

Then players are carried down the field to confront two equally enormous opponents. Behemoths collide. Commands are shouted. Mallets swing, thrust, parry. And the exhilarating, unabashedly elitist but appealing sport of polo is under way.

A Thai movie and TV star takes on reporters in an exhibition polo match in Pra Chuab Khiri Khan Province. The playful elephants proved to be the stars, as journalists were defeated 3-1 in Saturday's match.

Elephant polo, that is.

In this particular contest, however, images of medieval derring-do and British Raj romance quickly crumble. The players a bunch of none-too-youthful reporters pitted against four glamorous Thai TV and movie stars happen to be rank amateurs, recruited for a curtain-raising “exhibition” to this year’s real thing, the King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament.

While Rodney Tasker, correspondent for the news magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, scored the team’s only goal, he later admitted that “the elephants seem to be the main players,” doing their utmost to get into the best position to allow the curious humans teetering on their rolling rumps to smack the ball.

Doro, a mischievous 8-year-old female, appeared to get so frustrated with all of Rodney’s misses that she helped him along by moving the ball smartly with her trunk and legs. This included perhaps the crispest shot of the day, a beautifully timed, surreptitious sideswipe with her right hind leg that put the ball out of reach of Rodney’s onrushing opponent.

Elephants aren’t supposed to interfere in the play, but such infractions are normally overlooked, said referee and elephant polo veteran Col. Raj Kalaan.

Kalaan, who keeps a polo field and 22 horses on his estate outside New Delhi, is a committee member of the World Elephant Polo Assn., set up in 1982 to stage annual games near Nepal’s Royal Chitwan National Park. Matches have also been played in Sri Lanka, and last year Thailand had its first tournament at this seaside resort to raise funds for elephant conservation.

The 2002 event, which ended on the weekend, drew nine teams from six countries, including Australia, Germany, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand.