Cricket XXXX Cricket

by Frances Edmonds

  The storm clouds were starting to gather, however, with criticisms of overspending and wasted ratepayers’ money.

  ‘Oh, I’m used to all that,’ remarked Sallyanne, unperturbed. ‘When I was trying to convince the International Olympic Committee that the Olympic Games should come to Brisbane I was obliged to travel all over the place, and people complained that I was never at home looking after the garbage collectors’ dispute! We have now put Brisbane on the map. At least people know where we are, and how to pronounce the name.’ (Bris-bun, not Brisbane.)

  Sallyanne is nothing if not a pragmatist. Of course she was disappointed that Brisbane had failed in its Olympic bid, but at least the episode had given her the opportunity to promote the city and the state.

  ‘One of my strengths is that I can see the best in everything,’ she admitted, as we looked at her collection of memorabilia, stopping over one of her prize exhibits – a bowlful of Scottish stones. Were those from her recent visit to Edinburgh, where she had handed over the Commonwealth Games flag to the luckless Scottish organisers? Brisbane had successfully hosted the games in 1982, and had hoped to use much of the existing sporting infrastructure to accommodate the Olympic Games.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she corrected my mistaken conclusion quickly, ‘I’ve had those since the days when we lived in Scotland, at a time when my husband (a neurosurgeon) was doing a stint of his training in Edinburgh. One of my daughters was even born there, on the National Health, and we let her keep her British nationality in case she ever wanted to swim for Scotland.’

  Sallyanne’s face erupts into smiles, at the aberration of the thought, and she starts to giggle. ‘Unfortunately the Scottish swimmers got a lot better, and now for my daughter to be able to vote here in Australia, she will have to be naturalised.’ She paused for a minute, obviously consigning that comment to some mental in-tray, a chore to be dealt with at a later stage.

  By now the interview had developed into a tête-à-tête chat. We laughed about the aggressively new and extremely inappropriate visual display unit sitting defiantly white against the ceiling-to-floor leadlight windows overlooking King George Square. In amongst the 1930s furniture and light fittings, made to the design of the originals, it looked as incongruous as an outer-space man in the Long Room at Lord’s. We both pretended to be computer-illiterate, the sort of games women play when all around them are men knowing only half as much as they do yet claiming to be experts.

  ‘I think these things are counterproductive,’ she remarked mischievously. ‘Instead of the men in the office popping their heads around the door and giving you a message, they are all now busily sending one another memos on their computer terminals.’

  It would appear that Sallyanne shares my doubts about men ever really growing up.

  ‘I think women make ideal politicians,’ she continued. ‘I came into politics after I had raised a family and looked after a husband. When you’ve spent a few years with a baby in one arm, a toddler hanging on to your skirt, trying to stir the peas, stuff the chicken, open the door and answer the phone you have an excellent grounding in trying to deal with twenty people and a hundred problems all at once.’

  I think that here, Sallyanne has put her finger on one of the reasons why so few women make it to the top, and the very reason why they are such forces to be reckoned with if they do. Men are basically mono-conceptual. They tend to compartmentalise their day, their feelings, their thinking and their performance. We are all aware of the phenomenon of the man who slams the door behind him in the morning, entirely capable of forgetting his wife and his kids while he is in the office, completely capable of forgetting the office while he is on the rugger or cricket field, and more than totally capable of forgetting the lot of them while he is in the pub. A woman, meanwhile, has to play a juggling act with various interwoven lives throughout her normal day. If she has a career, even if it is as intellectually demanding and lucrative as her husband’s, it will nevertheless be her responsibility to think about making a detour to the supermarket before traipsing home, organising Susie to visit the orthodontist to have the expensive ear-to-ear scaffolding checked, and ensuring that Johnnie gets to his lethal jiu-jitsu class on time. Women rarely get to the top of the pile because of all these important yet trivial interferences in their lives. Women who have the energy to be world-beaters after these multifarious demands on their time and attention are generally unstoppable.

  We are apparently now witnessing a new breed of man, however – Sensitive Man, the sort of man who helps with the children or considers giving the wife a hand with the dishes when he has been playing darts in the pub or punting in the betting shop all day, and she has just returned from Sainsbury’s, the launderette and an eight-hour session lecturing in astrophysics. These chaps are already coming in for a lot of flak from the old macho types. Rumours abound that these softies use pH-balanced soap bars, exfoliating skin rubs, foaming face cleansers, astringent tonics and – is there no end to it? – moisturisers. Malevolent machos go so far as to suggest that these sensitive types even go down to the off-licence to fetch their own beer during Match of the Day. I mean, why else did the good Lord create women? Anyway, if Sensitive Man is alive and doing well somewhere, it must be recorded that he has not yet reached the portals of the Edmonds’ household.

  Men, of course, are not always the severest critics of high-profile women. It is often women, under-achieving women frightened that their comfortable and undemanding role as second-best is being tacitly questioned by the Sallyannes of life, who are the most vicious. Certain types of redundant female who have nothing better to do with their lives than go to the hairdressers and organise their wardrobes are quick to pounce on outstanding members of their own sex. ‘I’ve had women complain that they saw me wearing the same dress on two consecutive days, and that I was always wearing the same colours,’ remarked Sallyanne, patently unconcerned. She had been, at the time, heavily involved in the final do-or-die-bid for the Olympics, lobbying in Lausanne for the East European vote, and giving stand-up interviews from six in the morning. I thought I ought to mention this, because re-reading what I have just written, in a quick burst of feminist furore, it might seem that I have little time for men. In effect, nothing could be further from the truth; some of my best hairdressers have been men. No! My utmost contempt on the contrary is definitely not reserved for any sort of man, but for a certain type of woman. She knocks around, even in cricketing circles. Oh, you will never have heard of her, of course; she will never have done anything of note in her life, except perhaps marry someone of whom she has become an added accessory. She will never have put her name to an article or a book, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the unattributed bitchy quotes in gossip columns will have come straight from her. Sweet as pie to everyone, she will grease up to selectors and committee men and do regular hatchet jobs on players and wives alike, or organise some feature artiste to do the dirty work for her. No, you have probably never heard of these females. They wear their doting maternity as a badge of care and concern, but from personal experience we all know these are the true vipers in any confraternity’s bosom.

  All politicians must, of course, learn to inure themselves to criticism. The good ones will listen to fair comment and disregard the rest, and the bad ones will disregard the lot. Not that listening to too many people is the best course of action either. Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, with his apparent policy of government by opinion polls, is at present doing little to impress the solid Labour base which originally swept him to power. As Lord Mayor of Brisbane, however. Sallyanne Atkinson is accountable directly and immediately to her electorate, and is proving a popular choice. Formerly a journalist, she has naturally winning ways with the media, and an engaging stock of anecdotes and accents. She relates with wry amusement her early days as a freelance reporter for some local Edinburgh paper, when for want of a babysitter she was obliged to drag the children along to an interview with some suitably august (at least in his own mind) municipa
l dignitary: ‘I could see him thinking, “who on earth is this woman?”’ she recounts. Neither does she mind giving a very passable imitation of French Prime Minister and Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac. All French men love a pretty lady, and few pretty ladies are entirely unsusceptible to the intoxicating power of full-strength Gallic charm. Sallyanne and Jacques formed a mutual admiration society during their respective unsuccessful quests for the Olympic Games, and the suave Gaullist even promised to visit Brisbane should the Lady Lord Mayor’s bid succeed. ‘A mayoralty, more than any other political office, represents something specific,’ explained Sallyanne; ‘the Mayor is very much the symbol of the town. Chirac is inextricably connected with Paris – in everybody’s mind sophisticated, special’.

  She too, this bright, warm, vivacious and engaging lady has become a symbol of a new Brisbane, a forward-looking Brisbane, a city aiming to develop along the right lines to attract and encourage family businesses as well as vast corporate investment, to become the thriving heartland of a major tourist industry. ‘I admire our premier because he encourages private enterprise,’ she claims. ‘We are now witnessing a worldwide drift to the sun, aided by the fact that modern technology means people no longer need to live on top of their work. The recent expansion and investment in Queensland has been phenomenal.’

  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 i
rony, ‘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.