The journalist gave his name, the topic and location, and added politely: ‘Can you be as quick as you can, mate. It’s urgent.’
‘Hang on,’ said the copytaker, and there was a rustle of paper followed eventually by the rat-a-tat-tat of a typewriter. Then the bored-sounding voice spoke again: ‘O.K. Go ahead.’
The writer had decided on a colourful start to his piece. It had been an outstanding win by M.C.C. on an island with Spanish historical associations. He therefore began dictating:
‘Magnifico! Magnifico! This was an outstanding performance...’
‘What?’ said the voice in London. ‘It’s a bad line, you’ll have to speak up.’
‘Magnifico,’ repeated the writer.
‘Eh?’
‘Magnifico. M for Monkey, A for Apple, G for George, N for Nuts, I for Island, F for Freddie, I for Island, C for Charlie, O for Oswald.’
‘Right,’ said the copytaker. ‘Magnifico. I’ve got it. Carry on.’
‘Magnifico!’ said the writer, slightly hesitantly, a second time, only to get the irate retort:
‘Alright, alright, I heard you the first time.’
Such frustrations are an occasional part of the job. On the whole, though, the Press-boxes of the cricket world are filled with characters prepared to put up with the occasional reverse and eager to enjoy the good times. Two inseparable companions during the summer months are Peter Laker of the Mirror and Basil Easterbrook of Thomson Newspapers. It was Basil who once phoned through his report on a League match in the North and, being somewhat pedantic at times, began by giving the copytaker his full name: ‘Basil V. Easterbrook.’ The reply was: ‘Which League was that in?’
Small, rotund, bespectacled and a great gourmet, Basil reads novels at a faster rate than anyone I have ever met. Peter Laker is a great practical joker and spends much of his time trying to catch his friend out. During 1981 Easterbrook got his own back by pretending that he was going senile. Every now and then he would throw an irrational tantrum about the window being open too far or a strange smell which no-one else could detect; or he would pretend he had lost his hat when it was on his head; or suddenly begin a nonsensical sentence about a lady he knew in the High Street in Market Harborough. In the end no-one quite knew who was conning whom.
When he goes to Leeds, Peter Laker delights in putting anonymous calls through to the Sheffield cricket-writer Dick Williamson, a great stickler for cricket details, asking him some obscure question or other. He once rang Jack Fingleton and pretended to be a Monsieur Alphonse Dupont, a French cricket fanatic who had been Jack’s lifelong admirer. Could he come up to the Press-box to meet him as he was visiting England? Jack went to some trouble to clear the way for his entry into the ground and into the box, and it took him a moment or two to realize who the very French-looking gentleman in a black beret really was.
Peter Laker is accident-prone. Among his many scrapes, he came close to being arrested on an aircraft in Pakistan when, soon after much publicity had been given to a hijack in that part of the world, he walked onto the plane with two evil-looking daggers acquired somewhere near the North-West Frontier. His explanation that he was taking them home to his children in Sussex took some time to be believed and he was relieved of the weapons until he got to London. However, such is his capacity to survive that one has always felt there was a good chance of making it to the end of the journey if one was on the same plane as Peter. His special delight in Australia is taking dollars off the home journalists at pitch-and-toss. A former bowler on the Sussex staff, he is almost unbeatable, spinning the coin with uncanny precision, but the Australians can never resist a challenge or a gamble.
Cricket journalists, though Keith Fletcher used to know them collectively as ‘the spies,’ seldom act in a body, tending rather to break up into various small cliques which, at least on tours, often see the ‘popular’ journalists in one group with the ‘quality’ men in another. The leaders of the latter group in recent years have been John Woodcock of The Times and Michael Melford of the Daily Telegraph, a modest though knowledgeable pair who prefer to spend such leisure hours as are possible on hectic modern tours at a golf club rather than on the beach or by the swimming pool. Many people in cricket journalism, myself included, owe much to the guidance of Jim Swanton, Melford’s predecessor on the Telegraph, who used to do things in style wherever he went, never staying at a hotel if a Duke or a Maharajah was within range.
Jim Swanton used to travel Britain in the summer months with a secretary, and there tended to be a fairly swift turnover because he was a stern taskmaster. One of his longest survivors was Daphne Surfleet, now Mrs Richie Benaud. Another, not quite so durable, was the former Richmond fly-half, Robin Whitcomb, who on one occasion took letters dictated by Jim from his Jaguar as it was being lifted into the air on a garage ramp to have the tyres changed. When Jim was active as the Editorial Director of The Cricketer in its days in Great Portland Street, Robin used to go over to a pub called the Masons Arms on the other side of the road to get a gin and tonic at lunchtime each day, which he then carried back to the Master. One hot day the pub completely ran out of ice and Jim noticed at once when he was handed the glass that the ice was missing. Robin explained apologetically that the pub had completely run out. ‘But,’ said Jim, with a note of exasperation, ‘didn’t you tell them who the drink was for?’
SWIPER PEACH
Surrey all-rounder Alan Peach was a bold natural hitter whose most successful shots were played with the bat scything through almost parallel to the turf. Such was Peach’s trademark that when his captain, P. G. H. Fender, sought to indicate from the wicket that he wanted Peach in next, he did so by making a horizontal swipe of his bat. A few moments later, in came Peach.
In that same office of The Cricketer in 1967 I was clearing out the desk of Irving Rosenwater, my predecessor as Deputy Editor, a man of humble origins as well as a true fount of cricket knowledge. Amongst the scraps of paper in the desk drawers I came across a jar of a well-known brand of after-shave lotion. ‘Is that Rosenwater’s?’ asked Jim. ‘I presume it must be,’ I said. Jim looked very perplexed and then said in a surprised voice: ‘But that’s the after-shave I use.’
Tony Pawson, the Observer cricket-writer who also did the Deputy Editor’s job for a while, tells how he was rung up by Jim at the printer’s and told that he must include a last minute review of the latest volume of Wisden. Tony protested that it was very late in the printing process and that in any case the printers were going slow. It was too late to commission a special article. Jim insisted so Tony said that the only answer would be for him to write the review himself at the printer’s. ‘Oh, alright,’ said Jim after an exasperated grunt. ‘But you must remember that with us the review of Wisden is normally the occasion for some good writing.’
Jim’s own outstanding contributions to cricket literature are well enough known and I tell these tales of a larger-than-life character with affection and gratitude for the help and encouragement he has given me. One last memory of our association on The Cricketer: Jim used to commission articles from far and wide and was never refused owing to his own, and the magazine’s, prestige, despite the fact that the payment was (in those days) somewhat paltry. Jim had a regular phrase when writing to well-known authors: ‘...even to the great and famous our fee cannot exceed a guinea per 100 words.’ One day he got a letter back from J. J. Warr which went like this:
‘Dear Jim,
I shall be delighted to do the 1,000 word piece you asked for. If I may say so, your rate of a guinea a word is more than generous.
Yours ever,
J. J.’
It is a pity John Warr did not remain a cricket journalist for longer than he did, for he is a noted wit who once said of the medium-paced New Zealand Test bowler Bob Cunis that ‘his bowling, like his name, is neither one thing nor the other.’
There are plenty of characters amongst the cricket-writers of other countries too, and the cameraderie of the game extends to th
e Press-box with warm personalities like Mike Coward from Adelaide and Brian Mossop from Melbourne keeping the atmosphere jovial in Australia, where Press facilities are often as inadequate as they are on many grounds in England when it comes to watching the game in any comfort or from a suitable position. Mossop works on the Sydney Morning Herald, in conjunction with the great Bill O’Reilly, a man who speaks his mind with unimpeachable authority. At times he can strike one as a little stern (he was for some years a schoolmaster) but he is not a man with any bitterness in him, unlike another well-known Australian cricket-writer who, in 1974–75, walked round the vast Melbourne Cricket Ground with me at the end of a game to catch the coach which was to take teams and Press to the airport.
After a long walk round the concrete perimeter of the ground (it was hot and humid and it had been a hard day’s work) we were appalled to find the gate behind which the coach was parked locked and barred. The time for the coach’s departure was imminent but there was nothing for it but to walk all the way round to the main gate on the other side of the ground. It was nobody’s fault and, knowing the customary Australian friendliness, I was somewhat disillusioned by the reaction of my colonial cousin. He spat twice and said through clenched teeth: ‘Fancy following a f...... Pom!’
THE TEST CRICKETER
What they lacked was certainly not quality of cricket, or, from the players’ point of view, a sense of true competitiveness. Those who played in W.S.C. all say it was at least as tough as Test cricket. But the games did lack, from the cricket follower’s viewpoint, the sense of national involvement which makes Test cricket such a life-or-death business: if you like, a substitute for war.
Once upon a time Test cricket was not necessarily the supreme trial of strength. H.K. Foster, probably the second best of the seven brothers of a Malvern clergyman who all played for Worcestershire (they used to throw the plates to one another when washing up in the kitchen), said that he had no wish to play for England. Another great early amateur, Reggie Spooner, turned down the chance to captain England in Australia for business reasons, something that would be unthinkable for a young cricketer today. There were, as a result, some distinctly fortunate additions to the hallowed ranks of Test cricketers, amongst them the Irishman J. E. P McMaster, who went in number nine for England in a Test in Cape Town in 1888 – 89, scored nought in both innings and neither bowled nor took a catch. For Australia Roland Pope, effectively the team doctor, found himself playing a Test in Melbourne when several players dropped out because of a disagreement over pay. What is more, having made a duck in the first innings, he actually scored three in the second! Indeed he did better than Roy Park whose wife bent down to pick up her knitting just as he was about to face his first ball against England at Melbourne in 1920–21 and thereby missed seeing his entire Test batting career! (Perhaps it was some consolation that his nephew, Ian Johnson, later went on to captain Australia.)
Nowadays cricketers do not become Test players by accident, although the journalist and former Cambridge Blue Henry Blofeld nearly made a ‘dream’ appearance in India in 1964 when so many players were ill that England only just found eleven fit men. There are more Test players today because there are many more Tests, so much so that the players, frequently televised, are becoming too familiar, losing their mystique, and the matches themselves are losing their sense of occasion. Between September 1979 and February 1980, for example, Australia alone played 22 Test matches against five different opponents: there are only five opponents for them to play in any case until such time as South Africa abandons apartheid or Sri Lanka is admitted to the élite.
Along with a Test cap there now comes not only fame but fortune. The basic pay for an England player in a home Test of £1,400 a match is supplemented by substantial win bonuses, additional prize money, a possible share of ‘man of the match’ and ‘man of the series’ awards and a cut of the various commercial deals now being laid on for Test teams by companies like Mark MacCormack’s organization which makes so much for tennis and golf stars. No wonder players say it’s not the game it was!
A DUBIOUS BENEFIT
J.E. Shilton, the Warwickshire left-arm bowler, had the misfortune to be arrested for debt in 1895 only days before his benefit match. He was saved at the eleventh hour by the county club agreeing to pay the money into Court. The match, against Yorkshire, went ahead, and Shilton to his relief was released from prison, played, and collected his benefit – though minus the amount already paid out by the club.
It is not necessarily easy money, however. A Test lasts a week if you take into consideration the gathering of the team for nets on the day before the match and the rest day which still exists for the majority of Tests. In that time the player is under severe public scrutiny and failure must be very painful. To enter a dressing-room during a Test is to discover a new level of intensity in cricket. Amongst all the jumble of bats, pads, gloves, helmets, boots, medical apparatus and towels the most important item of equipment seems to be chewing gum, vigorously munched by most of the players to soothe their nerves and tighten their concentration.
Nerves can upset the staunchest of characters. One day in Australia in the 1920s Maurice Tate was appalled to find that his boots had disappeared before a day in the field. The England players turned the dressing-room upside-down in vain but Tate had to bowl in borrowed boots which fitted his enormous feet badly. He returned to the dressing-room at the end of the day in agony, with his toes all skinned. Delving miserably into his bag for some plasters he found his boots, hidden in an old pair of flannels. On such chances Tests have been won or lost.
Frank Hayes, the Lancashire batsman who scored a hundred in his first Test against the West Indies in 1973, was so nervous before going in to bat during the tour of the Caribbean early in 1974 that he was more than once physically sick before a Test innings.
David Steele, the grey-haired, bespectacled hero of England’s fights against Thomson and Lillee in 1975, had an inauspicious start to the first of his many defiant innings for his country. Picked, to general surprise, to go in at number three, he was soon called into action when Barry Wood was out l.b.w. to Dennis Lillee.
With the good wishes of his colleagues still in his ears, Steele went downstairs from the England dressing-room (on the right of the Lord’s Pavilion as you look out) and a few moments later found himself not in the Long Room, where he should have been, but in the Gentlemen’s lavatory in the basement. In the consternation of the moment he had gone down two flights of stairs instead of one. Wood had already passed through the Long Room when Steele appeared, to Wood’s surprise, going upstairs instead of down. ‘Where are you going? Get a move on,’ Wood said. Steele coolly asked what the ball was doing, then made his way through the crowded Long Room towards the steps leading down past the members to the green outfield below. Just as he reached the first of the steps he heard one man say: ‘Bloody hell, he’s a bit grey isn’t he?’
Steele looked like a village cricketer but played like a hero in a Test against Australia at Lord’s. That is the original and the ultimate cricketing dream come true.
Steele presumably suffered from the right kind of nerves: he was tense enough to be on edge, with his senses at their sharpest, but not so wound up that he froze. I remember Mike Brearley telling me that his legs felt like jelly when he walked out for his first Test innings at Trent Bridge and Alan Jones, the Glamorgan batsman whose record in county cricket suggests he should have played plenty of Test cricket, was unable to do himself any justice through sheer shaking when he played his only representative game for England against the Rest of the World.
The late Ken Barrington also used to get very keyed up before a Test innings, chain-smoking often before he went out to bat, but in his case his intense preoccupation with the job in hand always had the right effect when he got to the crease. His concentration, discipline and courage are legendary and the word grim often comes to mind in connection with the batting of a man who in fact had a tremendous sense of fun.
Many players believe it is easier playing Test cricket away from home, not least because, on many tours, a real esprit de corps builds up. It is not so easily achieved at home when a side gathers only on the day before the Test and breaks up again six days later. It is on tours that the character of cricketers becomes even more important. Ken Barrington was perhaps the ideal ‘tourist.’ Meticulous about all he did he would never lose a suitcase or appear late for a journey. He would practise diligently. He would play every innings as if the future of his country depended on his own performance. Not least, he would keep the morale of his colleagues high with his bubbling enthusiasm, quick wit and his gift of mimicry. Amongst his favourites were Alf Gover, who speaks in a deep-voiced mumble punctuated by ‘Old Boy,’ and, more recently, Graham Gooch. It used to hurt Ken that Gooch, in his earlier Test days, used to seem so untroubled by getting out, and on the Australian tour he would imitate the big amiable Essex batsman coming back into the dressing-room, giving a brief and laconic description of his dismissal, then getting on his sunglasses and going out to sunbathe!
Tours bring out the best and the worst in cricketers, on and off the field. As a player Barrington used to love the slow, true wickets of India, matching the oriental patience with his own blend of grit, discipline and determination. It was on one of his earlier tours that he asked a waiter for a coconut and was served with a coca cola and a plate of nuts; and on another that he was asked for his autograph by a small boy, found that the pen he had been handed was not working and then had his clean whites and touring blazer covered in ink as the youth shook the pen in front of him! It was also in India that he had some back trouble and asked for a harder bed to be delivered to his room. The mattress was removed and a hard wooden board inserted under the sheets instead. Unknown to him, however, the bed being used by Barrington’s room-mate Peter Parfitt had also been ‘improved’ in this way. Parfitt came chirpily into the room after a long day in the field, and threw himself bottom-first onto his ‘mattress’ only to end up with even more severe back trouble than his colleague!
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