Can Anyone Hear Me?

by Peter Baxter

I now had a good story to report at the close of play and so I made my way up to the AIR commentary box on the floor above the press box. For half an hour we tried unsuccessfully to raise London. After that time the engineers suggested that we would be better off trying from their studios at the radio station.

  Arriving at the AIR bungalow I was proudly told, ‘We have allocated you our best studio. This is our music studio.’ However, when I saw this jewel in their crown it became apparent that I would not have any two-way communication from the studio itself, but only from the control room telephone before I went in. The first part of the line to London had just been established, that being the rather shaky microwave link to Delhi. The operator there enjoyed an over-indulgence of their habitual ‘hello, hello’ routine and then, when I was at last speaking to London, interrupted several times with the command, ‘Speak to London,’ until he received a good blast of Anglo Saxon from me, which hugely amused the engineers at my end and shut him up for good. After this I was taken into the pride of AIR Indore – the Music Studio.

  I was shown into a large, square, heavily carpeted room. It had not a stick of furniture in it, save for a microphone on a short stand in the middle of the floor. The intention was that I should sit on the floor – presumably cross-legged, as if playing the sitar – to deliver my reports. I described the scene to the London studio, before embarking on my accounts of Botham’s remarkable innings.

  As soon as we arrived in Jammu, up in India’s north-west, close to the border with Pakistan, I went with a party of journalists to locate the central telegraph office in the town.

  Tuesday 15 December 1981

  The CTO was a remarkably small office with bat-wing doors like a Wild West saloon. Even the browbeating given to the staff by the Press Association’s man looked unlikely to bear much fruit.

  Wednesday 16 December 1981

  At the huge, wide-open concrete saucer of the Maulana Azad Stadium, things looked a little more promising. In the open compound of the stand set aside for the press there were a couple of telephones. The newspaper correspondents were less impressed. There were telex operators, but no telex machines. The press’s tour leader is Peter Smith.

  ‘We were promised three machines,’ he complained.

  ‘Oh sir, there are three machines. One telex three kilometres away and two men with bicycles.’

  I may have chuckled at that, but I was in just as bad a position. Those telephones flattered to deceive and we two from the BBC went for four days without ever making contact with London. It was only later that I discovered that London had been kept up-to-date by reports from the celebrated Delhi correspondent, Mark Tully. One writer’s copy did get through – to a clothing factory in Lancashire, where it was discovered when the staff returned after the weekend.

  I did have one moment of excitement when the press box phone rang on the second afternoon. The operator handed me the receiver and a faint voice asked me to record a report. I did so rapidly, terrified of losing the line, but when I asked to speak to the editor afterwards, the voice at the other end told me I was getting faint in a way that made me suspicious. I looked round the press box and saw the Daily Mirror’s seat empty. Sure enough within a minute, emerging from the pavilion on the far side of the ground and whistling in triumph, came their correspondent, Peter Laker. In fairness, he had done pretty well to get a call through over even that short distance.

  Following that match, an all-day coach journey in convoy with the players’ bus and police vehicles took us to Jullunder in the Punjab for the second one-day international. Even with a police escort and the supposed high status of a visiting national cricket team, negotiating the dues to be paid at the state border we had to cross caused a major hold-up.

  Jullunder raised further transport-related problems. These started early on the morning of the match, as I set off for the ground, which I had not had the chance to inspect the day before.

  Sunday 20 December 1981

  In the rather foggy dawn I left the hotel on, in the absence of any taxis, the back of a cycle rickshaw propelled – slowly – by an emaciated old chap. ‘To the cricket stadium, please,’ I placed my request.

  Half an hour later I was a little surprised, therefore, when we arrived at the bus station. Thankfully a women waiting there spoke good enough English to understand me and translated my desired destination to the rider.

  Unfortunately it became apparent that the bus station is on the opposite side of town from the Bishen Bedi Stadium, just recently renamed from having been known as Burlton Park.

  I was beginning to feel concerned about my frail driver, as well as feeling that I wouldn’t mind a go on the pedals to warm myself up on that distinctly chilly morning. We did cause considerable amusement, though, for the occupants of the England team bus as it overtook us en route for the ground. At least it was an indication that we were now on the right road.

  At the ground I found our commentary position on an open concrete platform, which looked to be half constructed (or half demolished – it was difficult to tell which). At least if the chilly mist lifted we would have a good view. Its main drawback was that a ten-foot ladder was required to get to it and there was no such piece of equipment in sight.

  After a long wait, a bamboo ladder was requisitioned from the builders (or demolition workers) and I was able to gain access to the commentary point with the AIR engineers who were to look after us. They were puzzled that I was asking for headphones, as they insisted that we would not be able to hear anything from London. The fact that we might need to hear from London to get on the air in the first place did not seem to have occurred to them.

  While they wrestled with that conundrum, I went to book my telephone calls for Radio 2 on a phone kindly lent by the local television service and situated just below their platform, which was next to ours and sharing the service of the bamboo ladder. Though the calls all came through on time, the summoning of the ladder wallah every time I needed to get down to the phone provided some delay.

  The return circuit from London did appear – to the astonishment of our engineers – and we were able to have a rare conversation with the studio, as well as hear the cue to get on the air.

  Each new location on the tour brought with it tales of doom and gloom from those members of the press party who had been there before, usually concerning the hotel. In Jullunder it was the wholly inappropriately named Skylark Hotel, where I shared a large and very shabby room with the correspondent of the Evening Standard, the late John Thicknesse, who was to become, over several tours, my most regular room-mate, whenever it was required. On this occasion I can remember drifting off to sleep after our arrival to the sound of the card school he had set up with Mike Gatting and others.

  Our time in Jullunder had come after Jammu, where the winter chill necessitated electric fires in the rooms. You had to ask for these at reception, after which one would be obligingly provided in your room by the evening. However, there were not enough to go round, so the next day you would find that your fire had been removed to the room of someone else who had asked.

  Later on, the Hotel Suhag in Indore was plagued by power cuts, frequent enough to make the use of the lift something of a lottery and by the end of our time there we were all resisting the blandishments of the hotel staff as they beckoned us towards it.

  The third one-day international was staged in the eastern city of Cuttack, which apparently had no suitable hotel accommodation. So we all stayed an hour’s drive away in Bhubaneswar, where we had to be spread over a selection of hotels. It was here in Cuttack that the Indian batsmen easily disposed of a fairly average target to secure the one-day series two-one.

  Wednesday 27 January 1982

  After the press party had got through the problems of repeated power cuts in the telex office, our return journey to Bhubaneswar was enlivened when our police escort decided on a short cut through the b
ack streets of Cuttack. The small jeep leading us shot below a very low railway bridge, which our bus was quite clearly never going to get under. This fact only dawned on our driver at a frighteningly late stage in our rapid progress towards it – and a long time after his passengers were aware of the danger. The failed short cut added about three-quarters of an hour to the trip.

  Arriving back in the bigger centres for Test matches was always something of a relief, both on the comfort front and because of the chance to unpack completely. This has become more of a problem in recent years for those involved in one-day series, when the routine of travelling, sorting out the logistics and then covering the game before moving on again leaves little time for settling in and often stretches laundry arrangements.

  Bangalore’s West End Hotel is spread through delightful gardens, in which my ground floor room was to prove handy for Tony Lewis, whose hotel had run out of hot water. He was able to climb over my balcony railing of a morning to come for a shower. He repaid me with dinner at his hotel. ‘You must come and hear the world’s worst saxophonist,’ was his invitation. This judgement turned out to be completely accurate.

  In Bangalore the frustration of the England team started to surface on-field, as India determined to sit on their one Test lead through the last five matches. England might be able to make 400 in a first innings, but, with no minimum number of overs to be bowled in those days, India were going to make sure it took them a very long time to get there. Dilip Doshi, bowling off about three paces, could nonetheless take eight minutes to deliver an over. The captain, Sunil Gavaskar, would often stroll from first slip before each ball to consult with his bowler and adjust the field.

  The umpiring occasionally raised eyebrows, too – there were no neutral country umpires then. On the second day, after being given out caught behind, the England captain, Keith Fletcher, tapped a bail off with his bat. In the commentary box at the time, our view had been obstructed by the wicket-keeper, but back at the hotel in the evening I found it was all the talk of the press. The BBC news cameraman showed me a replay on his camera, which left me still wondering if it was an act of dissent or disappointment. I put a call in to the BBC in London to record a new piece, as I was sure that this was going to be the headline story in most of the papers – and so it proved.

  The third Test in Delhi followed the same sort of pattern – a large England first innings followed by a similar Indian reply occupying most of the five days. But in Calcutta for the fourth Test, the frustration was slightly different. In a comparatively low scoring game, England came out on the fifth morning with a chance of bowling India out to win the match.

  Wednesday 6 January 1982

  We have all become well aware that Calcutta is one of the world’s most polluted cities. All the residents seem to cough as a matter of course and most of us have picked up sore throats in our week here. In the morning it is quite normal to find smog settled over the city. On the rest day it was well past midday before the sun pierced the gloom, so the England camp was always afraid of this halting their progress. In the event, this morning’s mist was comparatively light and the Sun was able to cast shadows.

  However, Sunil Gavaskar, as captain of India, is a powerful figure and again he convinced the umpires that the light was completely unplayable, although we did have the farce, after his initial appeal, of one ball being bowled, which was perfectly middled, before the umpires decided to come off for bad light for an hour and a quarter.

  The England players registered their own protest at the decision by staying on the outfield to sunbathe ostentatiously, before they were summoned in by a more diplomatically-minded manager.

  Whether England could have won if they had had a full day’s play is of course uncertain, but the delay had also taken any chance of an Indian victory out of the equation.

  Calcutta also saw the end of the Test career of Geoffrey Boycott. In Derek Underwood’s words at the time, it was the end of an era.

  At the third Test in Delhi, Boycott had become the highest scoring Test batsman in history at that time. With a four through mid-wicket on the first day he had overtaken Gary Sobers’ total of 8,032. On the second day – Christmas Eve, incidentally – he went on to an inevitable century.

  I made no diary entry about the fact that Boycott declared himself unfit to field for the last day of the Calcutta Test match. And I did not know until much later that, to the fury of many of his team-mates, he went off to play golf during this period of injury. I can forgive myself a little for the omission, when I see that Wisden’s account of the match also makes no mention of this, though, perhaps significantly, it notes that Boycott began his innings ‘with unfamiliar levity’.

  Generally, knowing what I later knew, I see that I missed a few clues along the way, which will become clear. The day after the Test, having agreed with Don Mosey that we would each take an up-country match off during the tour, I was setting off with my wife for a three-day break in Kathmandu. The team and press had left early in the morning by train for Jamshedpur, where England were to play a game against the East Zone.

  Before we left for the airport, I was aware of the captain, Keith Fletcher, and the manager, Raman Subba Row (neither of whom had accompanied the team to Jamshedpur) in earnest conversation. The subject of their discussion became apparent three days later when we returned to Calcutta shortly before the bulk of the press arrived. I got a shock when the first of them turned up.

  Sunday 10 January 1982

  A reference was made to ‘the Boycott story’. Gradually I discovered that I had missed the biggest news story of the tour. At about the time we were landing in Kathmandu on Thursday, Geoff Boycott had been leaving India for England.

  I gathered that the official version was that it was ‘by mutual agreement’ with the tour management, though his decision to play golf when he had declared himself unfit to field appeared to have been the final decider.

  I felt bad about having been away when this story broke, particularly when I was regaled with tales of the press – Don amongst them – trying to file pieces late into the night in the central telegraph office in Jamshedpur, with rats running round their feet. In reality, of course, I knew that there was nothing extra I could have done.

  The real reasons for Boycott’s departure were to emerge at the end of the tour, but for now it just seemed sad that so many of the team appeared glad to see him go.

  My wife, Sue, had joined us on the tour just in time for Christmas in Delhi, which fell on the rest day of the third Test match. This was the first of my eleven Christmases on tour. For three others I managed to slip back home just in time.

  Coming from an army family, Christmas in a warmer climate was not a completely novel experience for me, but I never got entirely used to the slightly bleak feeling of celebrating the day in a foreign hotel. There was usually a relaxed air about the press party, with no papers on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. There were also few BBC outlets, as most of the programmes – at least until the arrival of Radio 5 Live – were recorded.

  Friday 25 December 1981

  The day started with a call from Frank Keating of the Guardian to join him for buck’s fizz in his room. Most of the press were there and we moved on in due time to the traditional press drinks party for the team. That broke up when the players went to change into fancy dress for their lunch. The theme had been set as ‘my hero’ and we had glimpses of Geoff Boycott in a commissionaire’s uniform as Ranjitsinjhi, Keith Fletcher and Graham Dilley as two of the cast from ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum’ and Raman Subba Row (the manager) as Kermit the Frog, which has become the team’s nickname for Mr Wankhede, the President of the Indian Cricket Board.

  We in the press party were joined for our Christmas lunch by two team wives – Anne Subba Row and Dawn Underwood, who were excluded from the team-only lunch.

  After the festive meal, Sue and I slipped away for a guided sight-se
eing tour of Delhi. It may be the only time I shall spend Christmas Day visiting a Hindu temple and a Muslim mausoleum – Humayun’s tomb.

  Saturday 26 December 1981

  Back to work after the holiday. Our Indian colleagues were most felicitous with their wishes for a happy Christmas, although I got a bit bogged down explaining a few times what Boxing Day meant.

  On the whole the hotels we were installed in for Test matches were clean and comfortable and sometimes more than that, but our time in India ended in Kanpur, which was something of an unpleasant exception.

  Thursday 28 January 1982

  In the early evening we landed at Lucknow, from where we were expecting a two-hour bus ride to Kanpur. Press and players were crammed together on one bus, with the Indian team following behind in another. First we were held up by a succession of road works and then because a public bus overtaking the convoy scraped along the Indian team coach. Our police escort gave chase, stopped the bus and dragged the driver from his cab by the hair, to subject him to a sustained beating with their batons. One of his passengers then had to be recruited to drive the bus before we could all move on towards the fairly modest charm of the Meghdoot Hotel in Kanpur.

  Friday 29 January 1982

  Well before dawn I was woken by a bellowing, rumbling, shouting cacophony, which, when I peered out of the ill-fitting and now rattling windows, turned out to be a herd of buffalo being steered along the main road into town. At breakfast I discovered that my colleagues billeted on the other side of the hotel had a different wake-up call to deal with, as a minaret immediately outside their windows delivered the sound of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer at 5 a.m.