Cricket XXXX Cricket (11 page)

She is perfectly right. While we were in Queensland, ABTA, the Association of British Travel Agents, was being treated to some typically sumptuous Queensland hospitality up on the Gold Coast. Indeed, any British tourist who can overcome the psychological hurdle of a twenty-four-hour flight could do a lot worse than test the beaches, the shellfish, the climate and the sybaritic lifestyle so easily affordable out here. I sincerely hope we get the opportunity to return for a real holiday at the end of this exhausting tour. It is not a matter of sheer coincidence that the France/Australia Association has twinned Brisbane with Nice, that most exhilarating of all Mediterranean millionaires’ playgrounds. The Mayor of Nice had recently been to Queensland to visit Sallyanne, and suggestions of starting a perfume industry, similar to the celebrated enterprises encouraged by the flower growers of Grasse, are currently under serious consideration. Perhaps the Iron Frangipani will shortly have her own personalised fragrance. She certainly deserves it. My abiding impression is that this woman could well scale the ultimate political heights, and if so, they better watch out in Canberra. Sallyanne Atkinson, that potent combination of the pretty, the practical and the powerful, is no man’s fool.

I left the Lord Mayor on the stone steps of the City Hall atrium, the choir from the local Girls’ High School practising full-voiced for their end-of-term prize-giving, and the good burghers of Queensland’s capital wandering in and out seeking municipal advice, or inspecting a local art and sculpture exhibition. Pope John Paul II would be arriving here within the week, the media hype and evangelical fervour were already starting to gather momentum. A practising Roman Catholic and an indefatigable promoter of her town, Sallyanne looked down on to her milling fellow citizens, and chalked up another plus for the city of Brisbane.

It was the Test match rest day, and so Phil and I hired a car and drove to Surfers’ Paradise, a putative paradise on earth for those not particularly interested in Giovanni Paolo II’s message of the more transcendental one in heaven. Perhaps it was a piece of pre-papal-visit Divine Intervention, but England were poised to win this match, their first win in eleven Tests. After their decidedly shabby performances thus far in state matches, the Australian media were beginning to wonder whether there had not been a deliberate ploy to confuse and confound the enemy. Ian Botham’s quite remarkable display in a hard-hitting century during England’s first innings would probably rank as the high note of the game. A consummate showman, perhaps second only to the Polish pontiff himself, Botham has an unerring sense of exactly when and where to deliver the goods. Earlier in the tour, during England’s match against Queensland, Botham had declared that he would be contracting himself to the state for the next two if not three years, and would be devoting his still remarkable talents to Queensland during the English winter months rather than being available for overseas tours. Botham’s reasons were that he had made the decision for the sake of his wife and his family, which was difficult to comprehend since in England’s
Sun
newspaper his wife was meanwhile declaring that she could not stand Australia, disliked the sun and blue skies, was extremely unhappy when she was here for four months a few years ago, would on no account disrupt her children’s education, and had every intention of staying in England.

Whatever his motives, there is no doubt that Botham would do well in a place like Queensland. Jeff Thomson, another of Queensland’s adoptive sons, has already claimed in his biography that Ian Botham would make a good Aussie, and the sort of outdoor, rugged, macho society which prevails in this state would appear to be on all-fours with a Botham-like temperament. Quite apart from all that, there are indisputably lucrative promotions contracts for the taking, and Botham’s agent, Tom Byron, who is now a regular feature of this tour, is well on the way to making the jaded-with-touring-superstar a dollar millionaire. Why on earth, at this stage of the game, spend uncomfortable and financially unrewarding months on tours to places such as Pakistan, the country Botham has described as ‘the sort of place to send the mother-in-law’, when mega-bucks can be commanded in this hedonists’ Utopia?

Spectators and the press in particular will no doubt miss the ‘Living Legend’ (dixit Tom Byron), but it is, perhaps more than anything, the relentless invasions of the media into his colourful rock-star lifestyle that have precipitated Botham’s decision. No more world-media microscope. No more interminable private life dissection. No more excoriating personality analyses in Queensland. I think he has made the right decision. Too bad for the British press. They have succeeded in killing the goose that laid their golden circulation eggs for the past decade. At thirty-one Ian Botham looks very much in danger of growing up, and one thing is for certain: he left the banana-benders at Brisbane’s Gabba in no doubt that whatever investment might be ploughed into one I. T. Botham, it would all be money well spent.

It was a relief to see dear old Gower score a much overdue half-century, admittedly after having been granted a life early on. After inordinate amounts of media pressure, David has at least had some stripes, if not his former epaulettes, restored, after being co-opted on to the selection committee. Phil thinks he is crackers to accept, feeling that it is a no-win situation. If the team does well, David will not share in the captain/vice-captain bouquets, and if the team screws it up, he will nevertheless be obliged to shoulder a proportion of the collegiate liabilities. My feeling is that he has been granted at least some token restoration of amour-propre, but, at the end of the day, Phil proved right.

The most poignant casualty thus far has been Nottinghamshire’s perennially cheerful wicketkeeper, Bruce French. Having stood with good-humoured patience in Paul Downton’s shadow for so long, he has now been passed over in favour of the popular Cornishman Jack Richards, in an effort to shore up the dicky higher-order batsmen. It is exactly the same phenomenon which we witnessed on our last tour to the West Indies. Specialist positions were sacrificed wholesale in increasingly frantic efforts to strengthen a tail which resolutely refused to wag. The itsy-bitsy selection policy of batsmen who can bowl a bit, and bowlers who can bat a bit, wicketkeepers who can balance a ball on their noses or catch a wet fish in their mouths a bit, seems a sure recipe for disaster. This series the Australian selectors too would appear to have embraced the philosophy with gusto.

Well, for the First Test at least, it very much looked as if one specialist left-arm orthodox spin bowler, Philippe-Henri Edmonds, was about to be sacrificed on the altar of selectorial mediocrity until the timely intervention of ex-England captain Tony Greig. I cherish memories of the tall, voluble South African being interviewed on his promotion to the England captaincy, his clipped accent, redolent of Pik Botha, trilling almost Afrikaans-style, without the slightest trace of irony, ‘I’m only proud to be captain of my country!’

It was, of course, the very same Tony Greig who master-minded the massive exodus of international cricketers to Kerry Packer’s World Series cricket way back in 1977. The ensuing cleavage in the world of cricket, despite the sanctimonious cant from governing bodies everywhere, did not prove entirely deleterious to the financial prospects of all professional cricketers. A massive influx of hitherto-untapped sponsors moved into traditional cricket, in attempts to stop the ever-increasing flow of players leaving for the Pyjama Game. Packer, whose erstwhile TV channel holds exclusive rights for the coverage of these ‘Clashes for the Ashes’, has been generous, even paternalistic, in finding jobs for the boys. Ian Chappell, Max (Tangles) Walker, Rodney Marsh and Greig all play major roles in the Test match commentaries and in the Channel’s sporting profile.

So it was that Greggie, who initiates the day’s cricketing proceedings with a veritable armoury of incomprehensible technology (light meters, moisture meters, comfort meters, all but the Kennington Oval gasometer), happened to meet England captain Mike Gatting, inspecting the state of the wicket.

‘You would be mad not to play two spinners,’ said Greggie, knowing full well that England had every intention of playing just one, in the person of off-spinner John Emburey. The received wisdom at the Gabba is that pace bowlers do the damage, and far too many people whose job it is to think these things out for themselves demonstrate disturbing tendencies to rely exclusively on just such received wisdom.

The ex-England captain’s advice was taken on board, and proved to be correct. Greig’s philosophy, which is now gaining greater currency in both camps, is that you play your best players, almost irrespective of conditions. A wicket, even a wicket that looks positively Emerald-Isle green on the first day, is often likely to change quite dramatically by the fourth and fifth. England won the Test match with no little help from spin, and as happens on these occasions, Gatting was hailed as a master tactician, and a profound thinker of the game.

However, back to Surfers’ Paradise, a creation which epitomises more or less everything that can go wrong when urban developers are given an excessively free rein. Although I did not actually spot any advertisements promising the dubious gastronomic and recreational pleasures of fish ’n’ chips and a knees-up, the place nevertheless reminded me strongly of Torremolinos at the height of the season. Endless high-rise apartment blocks stood at stark right angles to the seashore, thus eliminating any semblance of a view for the further endless high-rise apartment blocks located just behind. We did not go surfing; Phil is hardly constructed in the ‘Hang 10’ mould. Instead we made our way to the new shopping/eating/drinking complex, Fisherman’s Wharf, where we bumped into the postprandially very well disposed David Gower, with Allan Lamb and his wife Lindsay. Lindsay had just arrived in Queensland, via a very hard session with her plastic charge-card in Hong Kong. I had spoken to her on the phone in London just before my departure, when she had been working for some sheikh. ‘I’ve got a switchboard the size of the organ at Westminster Abbey,’ she groaned hyperbolically, ‘and a typewriter the size of my double bed.’

It was good to see her again, although we both miss Alison Downton, a conjugal touring casualty along with husband Paul. Paul, now spending the winter months with stockbrokers James Capel, would actually be visiting us all at the First Test, on his round-the-world mission to flog British Gas shares. Every cloud has its silver lining. Paul, an extremely bright, affable and be-law-degreed cricketer will do well in the City. It is far better, to my lights at least, to get out of the overseas tour rat race before your thirties and start an alternative career elsewhere. It is absolutely true that not all cricketers have the necessary grey matter to pursue such options, but if they do, even if it means missing out on the meretricious and transient buzz of international cricket, they must assuredly be far better off. England caps do not pay children’s school fees. Neither do ‘Man of the Match’ awards help forty-year-olds in the dole queue.

The lady Lord Mayor of Brisbane had remembered Mrs Lamb from her visit to London to watch Australia in the Davis Cup, in the days when Lindsay was on a nice little earner ferrying VIPs and tennis stars between their hotels and Wimbledon. Lindsay is genuinely a very funny woman, and Alison and I wept with laughter one lunchtime down the King’s Road, as she regaled us with tales of decanting two bickering superstars on to the pavement, after advising them along with their twenty tennis rackets where to find the nearest Tube station. I could just imagine her doing it to some ‘you cannot be serious’ super-brat, and watching him erupt.

The last day of the Test was a formality. I arrived in the press box to see England sweep to victory by eight wickets, and to witness the genuine jubilation in the British contingent. It makes life so much more pleasant for everybody, if admittedly a little dreary, when England are winning. There will be no news hounds flown in to do special investigative pieces on why individuals are not up to scratch if England’s fortunes continue in this vein.

I am finding quite enough to keep me busy this tour with a fortnightly diary column for
The Times
back home in London, and regular phone-ins for London’s Capital Radio. And then once a week it is the five-in-the-morning start for a breakfast TV spot on Channel 10’s
Good Morning Australia
, not to mention the
Not the Test Match
report for ABC national radio. Then there are features for the ever-expanding Murdoch group of papers, News Corporation Ltd, pieces which are syndicated all over the country, thus satisfying my neurotically megalomaniac desire for ubiquity. Apart from all that, of course, there is this here diary.

I felt it, therefore, almost perfectly justifiable that I should be awarded my colours, my media accreditation medal, by press-gang leader Peter Smith during a touching little ceremony in the entrance hall of the Brisbane Crest hotel. It is a piece of memorabilia I shall treasure all my life, especially since it took the combined efforts of
The Times
sports editor, Tom Clarke, and
The Times
editor, Charlie Wilson, to acquire it for me. It is a green and cream enamel on gilt artefact, three wickets superimposed on an outline of Australia, this interesting artistic perspective crowned by two crossed writing quills and placed into full aesthetic focus by the legend ‘Australian Cricket Board’. Underneath, more gilt on cream, the word MEDIA glisters, patently not gold, and balances lintel-like over a removable base-metal stopper proclaiming the vintage ‘87’. Said medal may be affixed to the person, or indeed to any other expedient protrusion, by means of a green cord. It was, as I say, an emotional scene, as memories of Mother Mary Paul, Order of St Ursuline, came flooding back to me, as she pinned my house captain’s badge to my palpitating-with-emotion bosom. ‘And if you lose this, you’ve had it,’ said Mother Mary Paul. ‘And if you lose this, you’ve had it,’ said Mr Peter Smith.

It would not look entirely the thing in the Givenchy accessories boutique at the George V, Paris, but I wear my medal with pride on the de rigueur Gucci handbag. If I stay twenty-five years in this profession, I shall probably have one made up in marcasite, like they do at M&S.