Cricket XXXX Cricket (24 page)

It is almost inevitable, however (and the same goes for the chit-chat in the interpreters’ booth once the microphones are switched off), that the conversation off-air – the asides, the commentary and the jokes – is far more entertaining than anything ever broadcast. The never-heard gloss that would be appended to stories on the set was far better value for money than the same old dreary autocue introductions. As I said, Gordon Elliot is a very funny man.

On the Wednesday of the week I was introduced to the astounding gastronomic phenomenon of the great Australian ginger-nut biscuit. These ginger-nut biscuits have been keeping Australian orthodontists and dentists in earphones, skiing holidays in Gstaad, and houses in Double Bay for generations. It is impossible to break one with your bare hands. These small, round, brown discs could easily be used as an alternative to those heat-resistant tiles on space shuttles, or incorporated as one of the more lethal elements in a ninja’s armoury. Plated together, they could easily be marketed as protective clothing for cricketers in the West Indies, or used by the building industry to provide indestructible high-rises along the San Andreas Fault. Strong men have been known to weep trying to crunch them, and it is common knowledge that black-belt karate experts would rather break a couple of hundred bricks than one Australian ginger-nut biscuit.

There is only one recognised mode of ingestion for the Australian ginger-nut. First it must be ceremoniously dunked in something hot, preferably a television station’s inimitable machine-produced tea or coffee, soused for a few minutes until it becomes soft, and then quickly swallowed before the entire soggy mess disintegrates, like a heap of confectioner’s mulch on your lap. Packets of the things were strewn ubiquitously throughout the set. The camera crew, who had been up since all hours, would use them for a quick sugar-fix. Gordon, who would choose a calorie-conscious lunch of Caesar’s salad and soda water, would scrunch the dreaded ginger-nuts as if there were no arteriosclerotic tomorrow. I never mustered the guts to experience one in between clips. As Gordon said, it was bad enough when I concentrated.

Bored with tales of hand-made doll’s houses, and with people plugging themselves, we decided it was high time to make some mention of this great Aussie tradition, as quintessentially Australian as Vegemite, as imperturbably hard as Crocodile Dundee. On the Thursday therefore I composed an ‘Ode to the Great Australian Ginger-Nut’, and read it to Gordon before the programme.

‘We’ll do it,’ he agreed conspiratorially.

‘Shouldn’t I square it first with the producer?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Gordon. ‘He’ll stop us.’

I, after all, was leaving the country shortly, and Gordon was leaving the show within ten days.

Fade-out came at 8.55 am, the scheduled item a musical snippet from Lionel Richie, who had already been interviewed on the programme.

Despite frantic signals from the floor manager we moved, as unstoppable as juggernauts into our own ‘nut’ finale.

All over the country, good middle-class Australians, the ‘disgusteds’ from Mooney Ponds, the ‘horrifieds’ from Hamilton, and the ‘speechless’ from Sydney erupted in a self-righteous orgy of myocardial infarcts.

By one minute past nine Channel 10’s switchboard was in meltdown situation. The watchdog of Antipodean morals, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, was on the blower immediately, giving producer John Barton ‘the worst day in my television career’. That is saying something. Barton was the unfortunate investigative film-maker who had been sacked by Alan Bond after his Channel 7 documentary on Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen, which eventually resulted in libel damages of half a million dollars.

What was it, well may you ask, that so incensed the population of a country whose projected image abroad is embodied by the Sir Les Pattersons, the Dame Edna Everidges, the Paul Hogans, the Pamela Stevensons and the Dennis Lillees? Here, in unexpurgated form, unbowdlerised by a single syllable and brought to you by the unqualified broad-mindedness of William Heinemann publishers, is the verse:

Our GMA
*
anchor-man, Gordon,

Kept dunking his nuts on the programme, When quite flaccid and soft

He held them aloft

Saying ‘No man can cope with a hard ’un’.

Later, that evening, during a moment’s respite from the incoming calls, John phoned me to say it might be better if I did not bother to turn up for the final day. I was quite staggered at such a reaction to what was, when all was said and done, a piece of puerile double entendre. Let’s face it, the limerick could have been taken either way. It taught me a few salutary lessons, however. Never underestimate the prudery of a country that we Poms, often mocked for being the conservative ones, have always perceived as a trifle brash and outrageous.
^†
And never, ever, ever sidestep a producer.

The team left to spend the weekend in Brisbane, and I invited two of the distaff team, Lindsay and Vicky to Double Bay for lunch to celebrate my being banned from Channel 10.

Afterwards we said goodbye to Vicki, who was returning to sub-zero temperatures in England to help organise David’s benefit season, and I returned to the Sebel to move the ever-increasing volumes of luggage into our next team abode, a block of self-catering service flats at Bondi Junction. There was a message waiting for me at the hotel. It was from Channel 9’s top-rating programme
Willesee.
Could they come and film a day in the life of Frances Edmonds (all copyright on poetry reserved)? I suddenly remembered that this is the country where Jean Shrimpton scandalised the good burghers of the city by wearing a miniskirt to the Melbourne Cup, and, what was worse, failing to wear gloves and a hat.

And I recalled with a wry smile where that bit of controversy got her . . .

Two days later a huge floral arrangement arrived from Gordon, all pink proteas, carnations and, metaphorically, tortured willow, with a message entitled ‘The Ginger-Nut Crunch’.

There once was a boy called Gordy,

Whose remarks were exceedingly bawdy.

Till his mate got the sack

And he got a smack

And the lawyers from Arnotts
*
said ‘Tawdry’.

Dear old Gordon. I remember him with great gratitude and affection. His new programme, an amalgam of hard news and current affairs, all melded together by Gordon’s own irrepressible personality, is bound to be the success he made of GMA. It was all great fun while it lasted.

As luck would have it, my literary agent Mark Lucas, of Fraser and Dunlop, was at the time on business in Sydney from London. He assured me that this minor debacle, which had merely shocked the entire Australian nation, was really nothing to worry about and we could probably turn it into an ‘earner’. I had already been to the first day of the Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground with a group of his suitably iconoclastic mates. It is wonderfully soothing to be with people whose vaguely outrageous, undergrad sense of humour is consonant with your own.

Mark, of course, had been immediately swept off to R. M. Williams, the men’s outfitters, by his schooldays buddy Mark Hopkinson, and kitted out with all the basic
Crocodile Dundee
gear, including the Akubra hat, the sort of hat for fanning the fire, watering the dog, staving off the dingoes and cornering the odd snake; the moleskins; and the kangaroo-skin boots. All this gear, and indeed anything Australian is currently the absolute rage in the States, thanks to the phenomenal box office success of the film. Apparently all you have to do to get laid in LA is get off your Qantas flight and say ‘G’day’. No letters, please.

Mark Hopkinson is a whizz-kid merchant banker here at Schroders, Australia. He reminds me of my second brother, Brendan: extremely bright, a very dry wit, encyclopaedic knowledge on all sorts of unlikely esoteric subjects, constitutionally incapable of suffering fools gladly. We have now all decided that the only ‘corporate-yuppy’ way to communicate is over the carphone in the BMW, preferably in a traffic jam on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, whilst letting whomsoever you happen to be talking to know that you just have to hop out for a minute to pay the twenty-cent toll. I was suitably impressed to learn that Mark had swiftly sold all his New Zealand stock upon hearing the early morning weather forecast one day on the car radio. The winds in Fremantle were about to favour Dennis Conner’s
Stars and Stripes
against the Kiwis, who were fighting a last-ditch attempt to stay in the Louis Vuitton challengers final for the America’s Cup. Sure enough, big bad Dennis romped home, and sure enough, the stock exchange in Auckland plummeted immediately. Until then the mystique of the money markets had always fascinated me. Suddenly I realised that such things are merely based on the way the wind blows.

By about lunchtime that day we were all feeling a couple of tinnies over par and rather peckish. No Swan Brewery hospitality box on offer here, I’m afraid. I went to scavenge and came up with an unlikely comestible reclining sluggishly in the pavilion bar’s microwave. It rejoiced in the name of Chicken Hero, although whether this appellation designated the product or the potential consumer remains unclear. The Chicken Hero comes hermetically sealed in its own silver foil bag, presumably for reasons of environmental pollution. I do not think that any putatively edible takeaway has ever occasioned such ribald mirth amongst its consumers. This Hero is a long, thin roll, generously stuffed with a sort of mucous secretion which once upon a time might conceivably have been tangentially connected with a chicken. Then again, it might not.

Nick, Mark H’s future brother-in-law, who along with Prince Edward has patently missed his vocation in the Marines where men are men, and sheep are scared, ate two. The rest of us had finished after one bite.

Australia, of course, went on to win the fifth and final Test, but there was far too much bad batting, bad bowling and bad umpiring to make it a truly great game. Nevertheless, if nothing else, the match demonstrated one point: two teams playing mediocre cricket can still prove genuinely exciting for spectators and players alike. A contest in which any one of three results remains possible until the very least minute, with the entire population of the Sydney Cricket ground teetering on the brink of its seats until the bitter end, cannot be all bad. Besides, the match did evidence various aspects which were indicative of the series as a whole.

On the Australian side, Greg Ritchie, who in most people’s books should be a permanent middle-order fixture in the team, was unfortunately forced to open the innings. A solid opening pair is a priceless asset in Test cricket, as England’s Broad–Athey combination has shown. Indeed, much of the English psychological dominance in this series has stemmed from the stalwart performance of these two openers, and from the reciprocal fragility of their Australian counterparts, despite the often laudable efforts of an extremely professional Geoff Marsh.

All the more credit, therefore, must go to Dean Jones, who in effect at number three, has often to all intents and purposes been opening the innings.

Jones’ swashbuckling one hundred and eighty-odd at Sydney certainly established an excellent platform from which the Australians should have progressed. However, despite that, and some singularly exasperating lower-order partnerships, England still managed to bowl Australia out for three hundred and fifty. Jones has grown in stature and confidence as the series has progressed, aided by two stylish, if eventually redundant, centuries in the intervening Perth one-day challenge series, and it has been a joy to watch his development.

Allan Border has had a relatively quiet series for a figure of such international stature, but that was almost inevitable considering the intolerable media pressures to which he has been subjected since Australia’s first Test defeat in Brisbane. How England should thank the Australian press for its often vicious excesses. For all that, Border must still surely rank as the English bowlers’ most prized scalp, and I know Phil rates his five Border dismissals in ten Border appearances as his own greatest contribution to the retention of the Ashes. Border’s dogged century in Perth, allowing Australia to survive when a second successive defeat looked inevitable, was a brave captain’s innings. I sincerely hope that this modicum of Australian success will at least serve to deflect some of the media flak from a man who, until recently, has had to play in a one-man band.

Peter Taylor, the overnight hero, was awarded the Man of the Match award, but for me the true highlight of the game was David Gower’s first innings’ effort, an impeccably beautiful gem. For the hundreds of thousands of cricket followers who hold the often misunderstood former England captain in great affection, it has been a treat to witness his gradual return to form this tour. After that lucky break in Brisbane, when he was dropped on nought, he has gone on to score over four hundred runs in the series, an aggregate surpassed only by Chris Broad, whose four hundred and eighty-seven at an amazing 69.5 average includes three consecutive Test match centuries. It was certainly no more than his just deserts when Chris was acclaimed the Man of the Series.

Ian Botham’s much heralded exit from overseas Tests occurred with more of a whimper than the usual bang. He too has had a quiet series in every possible way. His two vital performances, however, the one with the bat during his blistering century in Brisbane, and the other with the ball when he snapped up five wickets in Australia’s first innings at Melbourne, give some indication of what we shall all be missing in the future. Only Bruce Reid of the Australian attack survived with any degree of stature from Beefy’s merciless Brisbane onslaught, and it looks as if he will remain the fulcrum of the Australian attack for many years to come. There is, on reflection, no shortage of positive elements which could be galvanised into a very useful Australian side in the future.

As for England, Graham Dilley’s return to form after years dogged by terrible injury, and Gladstone Small’s remarkable success with the new ball, all go to show that the England team never has been, and most certainly is not now, a one-man show.