Can Anyone Hear Me?

by Peter Baxter

  First published in the UK in 2012 by

  Corinthian Books, an imprint of

  Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

  39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

  email: info@iconbooks.co.uk

  www.iconbooks.co.uk

  This electronic edition published in 2012

  by Icon Books Ltd

  ISBN: 978-1-90685-049-4 (ePub format)

  ISBN: 978-1-90685-050-0 (Adobe ebook format)

  Text copyright © 2012 Peter Baxter

  The author has asserted his moral rights.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Typeset by Marie Doherty

  For Claire and Jamie –

  With apologies from such an absentee father

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright information

  Dedication

  Introduction

  1. The Mysterious East

  2. The Lands Down Under

  3. The Best Tour

  4. The Caribbean

  5. The African Experience

  6. The East Revisited

  7. The Commentaries

  8. The Teams

  9. The Talk Sport Years

  10. The World Cups

  11. The Conclusion

  Index

  Introduction

  On Christmas Day 1972 England won a Test match in Delhi. I was staying with my in-laws and trying to find out what had happened in the match. It was not always easy to do so in the days before the internet and rolling news networks.

  There was no Test Match Special on that series. In fact, since the retirement from the BBC staff in September that year of Brian Johnston, there was no BBC cricket correspondent at all at the time. The reports on the tour were done – on a rather hit-or-miss basis – by Crawford White of the Daily Express, when he could find a phone. Communications from India were not that good in those days.

  I had then been at the BBC for seven years and in my frustration I vowed – I suppose rather arrogantly – that if I were ever to become the cricket producer I would make sure that this situation never arose again. I certainly didn’t imagine that in three months time I would, indeed, be asked to be cricket producer.

  My predecessor, Michael Tuke-Hastings – who had been doing the job since before the concept of continuous commentary on a combination of radio networks under the title Test Match Special – had grown bored with cricket. So, in early 1973, the head of Radio Outside Broadcasts, Robert Hudson, took the bold step of inviting this 26-year-old to take over.

  A producer’s job can encompass many things. In television, with more elements (and more people) involved in broadcasting a programme, the duties are, of necessity, more cut and dried. In radio, and particularly in the world of outside broadcasts, anything it takes to get that programme on the air is your responsibility.

  A great deal of this is inevitably more administrative than creative. You are the BBC point-of-contact with the relevant sporting body and the ground authority. When I started, negotiating the broadcasting rights was part of the job. These days the rights have become such a huge business that the producer will be only marginally involved.

  Commentators have to be selected and briefed, commentary boxes have to be checked, renovated or sometimes built, and all the technical arrangements must be made with the engineering side. Billings have to be written, the fine details of planning and presentation have to be worked out with the host network, and listener correspondence has to be dealt with. In my first couple of seasons in the job, I was very much a one-man band, laboriously typing out all the commentators’ contracts myself.

  Apart from the Test matches and international cricket, there is the coverage of the county game to be dealt with too. Matches have to be selected. In the seventies we would probably have had commentators at three championship games on a Saturday afternoon so engineers, scorers and broadcast lines had to be arranged for each of those. At least technical arrangements have become much simpler in that area, with the advent of the more flexible dial-up ISDN lines.

  At a Test match itself I used to say that the job simply requires getting on and off the air on time and making sure the needle on the meter registering the outgoing sound keeps ticking in between. There is a little more to it than that. Commentary rotas have to be drawn up, which sometimes involves negotiation with those who have other duties to fulfil. Intervals have to be filled with interesting and appropriate subject matter. Frequently decisions have to be made about what to do in the event of bad weather. Sometimes a quiet word may need to be had with a commentator about his reluctance to give the score or recap often enough. When it is all ticking over nicely, you might be able to find a spot to settle at the back of the box to deal with the administrative details of the next Test match.

  Just after I was appointed cricket producer, there were considerable changes to the way sport was covered on BBC Radio. The amalgamation of Sports News with the Outside Broadcasts department transformed several job descriptions. Presenters who might have relied on other people’s scripts were now expected to write their own. In other cases the use of a script at all was a new approach – the old-school outside broadcasters scorned reading a report. Much more emphasis was placed on interviews and frequently it was reckoned to be part of a producer’s duty to do these himself. Everyone was expected to be capable of doing any part of the job.

  By the next winter after my appointment, the BBC also had its second cricket correspondent – Christopher Martin-Jenkins – and at the start of 1974 he went off to the West Indies to cover England’s tour there. We took little commentary from that, though when it became apparent that Mike Denness’s team were going to win in Trinidad to square the series, I did persuade Radio 2, the vehicle for sports broadcasting in those days, to carry the local commentary that included CMJ.

  Up to that time the only guaranteed commentaries from overseas tours were from Australia, usually just for the last session of play and accompanied by all the whistles, bangs and general mush of the old Commonwealth Pacific cable (COMPAC). Many people of my generation remember listening under the bedclothes to just such an imperfect broadcast in the early morning, or shivering by an old-fashioned radio, waiting for the valves to warm up.

  Until Sky took up the mantle in the nineties, television coverage from overseas was a rarity. BBC television did broadcast the 1987 World Cup in India and Pakistan, and mounted highlights programmes from Australia, though they were often broadcast so late at night that the next day’s play would already be underway. The editing by Channel Nine for an Australian audience was frequently none too sympathetic to an English point of view, either.

  Meanwhile, with a new young cricket correspondent and increased radio sports coverage, I was making a priority of improving our reporting from England’s overseas tours. When we did take commentary, it was by arrangement with our opposite numbers in each country, who would include our man in their team on a reciprocal basis.

  That mould was broken in India. New Zealand went there in late 1976 and with them went the New Zealand commentator, Alan Richards. Included in the All India Radio commentary team, he commented on some of the more outrageous umpiring decisions that went against his countrymen. An edict went out from All India Radio that never again would they include a visiting overseas commentator in their team.

  England arrived in India hot on New Zealand’s heels accompanied by Christopher Martin-Jenkins, for his first tour of the sub-continent. Tony
Greig’s team won in Delhi and then in Calcutta and when it became apparent that they might seal the series in Madras, my suggestion of carrying commentary was approved.

  With the All India Radio ban on visiting commentators, CMJ had to raise a commentary team in very quick order, fortunately finding Henry Blofeld, who was there for the Guardian and Robin Marlar of the Sunday Times. And so Test Match Special came live from India for the first time.

  That seemed to spark an increase in the amount of commentary we took from overseas – still usually on the basis of joining the local broadcaster.

  Don Mosey and Henry Blofeld mounted a Test Match Special from Pakistan in 1977. That was another place in which Alan Richards’ presence had fostered reservations about shared commentary. On that occasion, Radio New Zealand had been carrying the local output and Alan had done the second 20-minute description of the opening day of the first Test. He finished, as he had been instructed by his hosts, by handing on to the next commentator, who thanked him in English and then launched into 20 minutes of commentary in Urdu. Back in Wellington all became pandemonium as they wondered what on earth had happened to their broadcast.

  It was more BBC politics than practicality which drove the decision to send a producer on an England cricket tour for the first time in 1981. In fact, my brief then was more to do the news reporting, ‘Oh, and you can also produce Test Match Special.’ Up to that point my touring involvement had been all the logistical support – booking lines and any commentators that might be needed and liaising with my opposite numbers in the various countries, many of whom became friends long before I met them. Then there were the overnight or early morning vigils in studios in Broadcasting House, anxiously waiting for lines to appear and filling in when they didn’t. Going on a full tour myself would be a very different story.

  The working relationship of a producer and his correspondent is probably never closer than on tour, even when the producer is thousands of miles away in a London studio. In the last fifteen years of my BBC career the cricket correspondent I travelled the world with was Jonathan Agnew, who always took to the touring life and could usually be relied on to uncover the quirky side of things. Before him it was Christopher Martin-Jenkins, whose career as BBC correspondent had started pretty much in parallel with mine as producer.

  Christopher had revolutionised cricket reporting with concise, thoughtful summing up – a fact which might amuse his more recent colleagues who were more used to a cavalier relationship with the clock. At the time of writing, he is fighting a battle against a serious illness, in the course of which, the absence from the Test Match Special box of his companionship, the detailed, easy commentary style and, yes, the idiosyncrasies, has been felt by all.

  When I first went on tour – to India – I decided to keep a daily diary of my experiences. That became a habit over the next quarter of a century as I visited all the Test-playing countries and battled to get Test Match Special on the air from them. In this book I have used selected extracts from these rather battered notebooks, which still bear the scars of their travels, to give a taste of life on an overseas tour.

  Freed from most of the office work, I was able to concentrate more on the cricket. Production really did become a matter of getting the programme on the air by hook or by crook. In 25 years, I only had the luxury of an engineer travelling with us on two occasions, so my rudimentary technical abilities were hastily learned and often severely tested. As if that wasn’t enough, any of the other radio disciplines might be required at any time. Reporting and interviewing were expected. When there were not enough ball-by-ball commentators available, that had to be done. Sometimes a scorer might fall by the wayside, so I might have to take up the pencil myself. And in many places the role of diplomat and negotiator was required.

  Looking through these diaries years afterwards, I find incidents which I had misplaced in my memory and some which I had totally forgotten – though there are others which are all too painfully clear in their detail! I can see how my major preoccupation was always with sorting out the tortuous problems of communication.

  It is difficult nowadays to remember life before mobile phones. We take it for granted that we can get in touch with anyone, whenever we need to. That was far from the case in 1981. Recent technical advances have improved not only the ability to get through, but also the sound quality when we do. In those days we put up with extraordinarily scratchy broadcasting lines, which would probably not be allowed on the air now.

  Thus the rather anguished title of this book – Can Anyone Hear Me?

  Peter Baxter, 2012

  1. The Mysterious East

  A track wound between some large bushes. Brightly coloured shamiana canopies stretched over bamboo poles appeared through the undergrowth. And between them I could make out figures clothed in white. Thus, in an unlikely clearing in the grounds of a maharaja’s palace, I caught my first glimpse of an England cricket team playing abroad.

  It was November 1981 and my predominant emotion was one of relief as I came down the track in the grounds of Baroda’s Motibaug Palace, 36 frustrating hours after my arrival in India. What I found was a scene almost reminiscent of Arundel. For the previous day and a half I had felt fairly isolated, so to be suddenly surrounded by the familiar faces of the travelling press corps was a wonderful moment.

  I had landed at Bombay at two in the morning the previous day. It was a great cultural shock, one that even my previous experiences of such places as Singapore, South Arabia and Kenya had not fully prepared me for.

  Everywhere there was a babble of noise and more people than you could imagine. Hands grabbed for my luggage to get me to a taxi – I supposed – and eventually I found myself in the back of a grubby, antique vehicle. Knowing that my flight on to Baroda was not scheduled till the middle of the afternoon, I found a none-too-flashy hotel near the airport.

  After a reasonable sleep, I made my way to the domestic terminal to check that all was well with my flight, only to be told that it had left at seven o’clock in the morning. ‘The change was well publicised,’ I was told.

  ‘Not in Hertfordshire,’ I informed the lady at the desk. She agreed to book me on the next morning’s flight.

  I checked back into my hotel (where travellers experiencing such problems seemed to come as no surprise) for an extra night. After trying unsuccessfully to raise my colleague Don Mosey, already in Baroda, on the phone, I sent him a telex message to explain my delayed arrival, though the hotel operator helping me held out little hope. ‘The lines are unclear,’ was his technical explanation. (When I did eventually catch up with Don, he showed me a completely incomprehensible message he had been delivered, which certainly fulfilled the description ‘unclear’, though it had at least given him a clue that I might have arrived in the country.)

  Saturday 21 November 1981

  Six a.m. found me at the airport, confronting an enquiry desk, where I was told that there was a two-and-a-half hour delay to my flight to Baroda. Would I ever get there?

  More doubts were raised when I was informed that my reservation was only on a standby basis. I was 29th on the waiting list and it was not promised to be a very large aircraft.

  Fortunately my determination to get on that flight got me to the front of the rowdy crowd around the check-in counter as a very softly-spoken Indian Airlines official read swiftly down the list, and at my name I gave a loud ‘Yes!’ and thrust my case onto the scales.

  It was the first time the BBC had sent a producer on a cricket tour, but it was not principally production that had been the instigator of my being dispatched to India.

  The decision to send me had come after what had been a momentous year for cricket. Probably until England’s Ashes victory in 2005, 1981 was the pre-eminent year for cricket gaining the attention of the wider public. It had started with Ian Botham in command in the Caribbean, where his tour was blighted by a succession of
troubles. Two players had to return home early with medical problems and the replacement for one of them was to cause a Test match to be cancelled.

  When Bob Willis pulled out after the first Test, the Surrey bowler, Robin Jackman, was sent out to take his place. These were the days of South Africa’s sporting isolation over the evils of apartheid and Jackman, with a South African wife, spent most of his English winters in that country. He had warned the Test and County Cricket Board of this situation when he was put on the reserve list for the tour and had been told that it was not a problem. But, as he headed for Guyana to join the team, politicians in the region started to stir the pot.

  Don Mosey, the often irascible ‘Cock of the North’ (as he liked to describe his position as North of England outside broadcasts producer in the BBC’s Manchester office) had been the BBC’s man on the tour. He was not officially the cricket correspondent, but, since Christopher Martin-Jenkins had left to edit the Cricketer magazine, he had fulfilled much of that role.

  A Yorkshireman, Don had come to the BBC in the sixties from being the northern cricket correspondent of the Daily Mail. He had been on the staff for ten years when he at last got the chance to join the commentary team on Test Match Special. His bombast meant that on the whole his London-based colleagues would avoid trespassing on ‘his patch’ as much as possible, a state of affairs which suited Don, who professed a disdain of ‘southern softies’ in general and, as I was to find to my cost, public school educated ones in particular. A journalist of the old school, he relished the English language, a trait that was to manifest itself when I got him to do close-of-play summaries, which he accomplished brilliantly. For all his grumbling, he also relished touring.

  When the Guyanese government refused to allow Jackman to play in their country in 1981 because of those South African connections, and with England stating their position as ‘accept the team as a whole or we don’t take part’, Mosey found himself in the most difficult part of the Caribbean for communications, making his coverage of the unfolding news story difficult.