Can Anyone Hear Me?

by Peter Baxter

  On my first visit to Sydney, the team for England’s game against New South Wales was announced 36 hours before the game, to help the newspapers. But I had it too, so that was the report I sent over for the morning sports bulletins. The following evening I sent over something else, including an interview with Bob Willis, the captain.

  As I was preparing for bed, the sports room in London rang. ‘All the papers have gone on the team for tomorrow’s game,’ I was told.

  ‘That’s what I did yesterday,’ I said.

  ‘Well, that’s what we want.’

  I said that the script was still there in the wastepaper basket and if they really wanted it, I would do it again. That was what the minion on the phone had been told by the editor to demand, so I fished it out and delivered it again. The editor in question was not with us for long.

  My first sight of Sydney had been from an aeroplane window as we descended over the harbour, flying in from Perth. It was a classic view, with the harbour bridge and opera house sitting there in all their glory, startlingly like a tourist poster. On my first two tours to Australia, the press contingent stayed in the notorious King’s Cross area, which was certainly an eye-opener, with its opportunities for distraction of almost any nature. Another first-time visitor with the press party was convinced by his mischievous colleagues that if he got up early he could go down to see the harbour bridge open to let large ships in and out. The bridge doesn’t open, of course. Whether the poor fellow discovered this in time to avoid getting up at the crack of dawn on a fool’s errand, I don’t know.

  There was one other iconic Sydney landmark to visit, during a comparatively low-key tour match at the SCG.

  Saturday 20 November 1982

  During the day I fulfilled a lifetime ambition to go and sit on the famous Sydney Hill, under the old scoreboard (now a protected building). I took my tape recorder to try to record some of the typical Hillites’ abrasive comments and I sat with some of them to talk about the game in general and about the match at hand. It was a very enjoyable hour and I was provided with a beer, but I found them so civilised and friendly that the idea had largely lost its point as far as being an example of the bawdiness of the Hill went.

  Taxi drivers, however, were more likely to express a pithy view and I see that that evening one of them asked, ‘Haven’t you Poms got the bloke who bats for five days and doesn’t score a run?’ He obviously was not aware that outside Tests Chris Tavaré had been hitting sixes.

  The Sydney Cricket Ground Trust used to operate a policy, not unlike that of the MCC at Lord’s, by which they did not accept the Australian Cricket Board’s passes for the media. For the fifth Test at the start of 1983, I had put in my requests well in advance for what was a rather augmented commentary team. Brian Johnston had just arrived, as had Trevor Bailey and I had been using Mike Denness as well.

  Friday 31 December 1982

  The man behind the desk was not impressed as I tried to pick up my passes. ‘You should have one for Trevor Bailey,’ I tried.

  He looked blank.

  ‘The great old England all-rounder?’ I suggested, feeling that he was of a vintage to remember.

  Nothing.

  ‘Mike Denness?’ I said. ‘England captain here eight years ago? We lost,’ I added, thinking that might help.

  Still nothing.

  I was desperate. ‘Brian Johnston,’ I offered. ‘Music hall entertainer.’

  The Sun came out. ‘Aw, she’ll be right,’ he said and all the passes I had ordered were forthcoming.

  It was a good day for Johnners, as my diary entry from earlier that same day recalls.

  Friday 31 December 1982

  The best thing to wake up to on the last day of 1982 was the news that BJ had received an OBE in the New Year’s Honours. He had arrived in Sydney two days before, so I was able to ring my congratulations.

  The next morning, my phone rang. ‘The thing to do on New Year’s Day is to go to Bondi Beach!’ declared the unmistakable voice of Johnners. And he was round within the hour, piloting a borrowed Mini and sporting a remarkable Hawaiian shirt.

  Two days later, the second day of the Sydney Test, Brian had something more to celebrate. A phone call via our studio in London told me that he had just become a grandfather for the first time. His daughter, Clare, had given birth to Nicholas. Champagne was immediately sent for.

  This first tour of Australia was the first time we had mounted our own separate commentary there. As a result there was a certain amount of bemusement from local ABC people and from the ground authorities themselves.

  In Brisbane, the secretary of the Queensland Cricket Association said he had heard nothing of us coming at all. It was a combination of help from ABC Television and a photograph I remembered of CMJ and Blowers reporting during an Australia v West Indies match a few years before that helped me identify a position on camera scaffolding above the press box. It was a slightly ramshackle set-up, but I became rather fond of it over several tours.

  In those days the Gabba in Brisbane was a bit of a hotch-potch, with a dog track running round the ground, which players had to cross on a little bridge to take the field. But it did have character. There was a grassy hill below the old scoreboard, beyond which could be seen the bright orange flowers of the poinciana trees around the practice area. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, arriving at the Gabba one Test match morning, thought he had better check that he had got the identification of the trees correct.

  ‘Are they poincianas?’ he asked the taxi driver.

  He apparently had not picked an expert on botany. ‘They’re buggered-if-I-know trees,’ was the answer.

  When they started the redevelopment of the Gabba, driven not by cricket, but by the expansion of Australian Football League (AFL) – never really a Queensland game originally – we found ourselves in a sealed-in box at the top of a towering stand. From there in 1998, Jeff Thomson said that he could see the storm that eventually saved England in that Test coming ‘over Boggo Road Gaol’. Now the skyline is all but invisible, with the towering stands forming a complete circle. The old scoreboard that told you everything – once you could work it out – has been replaced by a giant screen which frequently, thanks to replays and advertisements, shows no score at all for up to four minutes. That is a nightmare for someone doing a live radio report.

  While I think I preferred the old al fresco scaffolding commentary position at the Gabba, I am not sure that it would have been ideal for all today’s demands. My diary from 1982 has several references to being in a stiff breeze. Our Australian engineer rigged up a tarpaulin behind us against the traditional evening thunderstorms and it would billow alarmingly in the prevailing wind from the east.

  Saturday 27 November 1982

  The telephone installed for my frequent reports for Radios 2 and 4 was handily placed by the television cameras on the gantry next to our commentary position. But in the teeth of the gale, hanging onto notes, stopwatch and phone – which had to be pressed against my ear to hear the hand-over from London – proved to be difficult.

  It was in Brisbane in 1994 that I first became aware of the Barmy Army. Indeed it may well have been their first ever campaign, though the seeds were sown by the supporters who followed the England team during the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 1992.

  I remember thinking that some Australians and certainly some Australian stadium stewards, who are not celebrated for their sense of humour and tolerance, might lose patience with the Barmies. But that has not proved the case. Their eccentric charm – usually cheering England on in the face of inevitable defeat – seems to have endeared them to natives of other cricketing countries.

  Generally I have always enjoyed the company of the journalists I have shared so many tours with, but the Gabba did witness the start of one spat that lasted a few weeks. In 1990 Mike Gatting was under suspension, followi
ng his ‘rebel’ tour of South Africa. However, he was in Brisbane to see the first Test. After being fairly evenly poised, that game ended in a rush with Australia winning by ten wickets on the third day. So there were days spare for extra practice.

  Tuesday 27 November 1990

  Much in evidence was Mike Gatting, limbering up to help in the practice session. But after a bit questions were asked by some of our number of the manager, Peter Lush, about the wisdom of using Gatt while he was banned from international cricket. Gatt himself left, ostensibly for a lunch appointment, though we inevitably reckoned it to be more to do with the fuss.

  The following day, by which time we had moved on to Adelaide, the story – in the absence of any other – was still rumbling on. As we talked it over in the bar in the evening, one tabloid writer rounded on me for refusing to share his pretended moral outrage. He became even more incensed when I suggested that when Mike Gatting had appeared, it had inevitably become a story either way. ‘England reject Gatting’s help’ or ‘England use rebel Gatting’. While his colleague fulminated, quietly and with a chuckle, the man from the Sun said to me, ‘You’re quite right.’

  The Gabba now is a soulless bowl. Somehow the Melbourne Cricket Ground gets away with being that because of its awe-inspiring size. My first sight of the world’s largest cricket arena was from my hotel window at the Hilton, a short walk away across Yarra Park. In 1982 that first experience of the MCG was for England’s game with Victoria. The most notable thing about that match was that it was the first time a giant replay screen had been used for cricket. It was evidently a novelty for me.

  Saturday 4 December 1982

  For most of the time, the screen was acting as a scoreboard, but from time to time it showed television shots of the play, with replays of fine strokes, near misses and wickets. LBWs were noticeably not shown, to avoid too much pressure on the umpires. Picking up the flight of the ball on the screen was anyway virtually impossible, but this is the first time the screen has been used for cricket.This was something of a dress rehearsal for the Boxing Day Test match. It was a novelty for the players, too, of course, and I do remember on the second day that Vic Marks took a sharp catch at square leg and turned to watch the replay on the big screen, only to find at the vital moment two enormous hands coming over his eyes to block his vision. Ian Botham had crept up behind him.

  On Boxing Day I see I made another comment on the screen.

  Sunday 26 December 1982

  We gradually got used to the fact that every event produced a double reaction from the crowd – first to the happening itself, then, a few seconds later, to the replay. Also the trick for commentators and reporters was to make a very quick note of the score at the fall of a wicket, before the scoreboard was wiped for the replay.

  That latter comment was particularly pertinent for me, doing the telephone reports for Radios 2 and 4. I had a position for the Test match on a bench in front of the enclosure in the stand which was our commentary position and with the crowd noise and public address often deafening under the roof it was next to impossible to hear the cue from London. Our ABC engineer, seeing the problem, came up with a big leather equipment case into which I could thrust my head to cut out most of the noise. The obvious drawback was that in the dark inside it I could see neither play, nor scoreboard, nor notebook, so, as I made my opening remarks, I had to be getting my head out again pretty quickly.

  I remember on the last morning of that 1982 Test finding every splinter in that old bench, as I shuffled around anxiously, witnessing the tensest of finishes. It had been my first experience of the Melbourne Boxing Day Test.

  Sunday 26 December 1982

  Outside the huge MCG stands the queues had formed, even when I arrived two hours before the start. Later in the morning they got so long that some of the commentary team – along with many others – had difficulty getting in. The crowd was given as seventy thousand, amazingly still fifty thousand below capacity for football, but still an incredible sight.

  There was a neatness about proceedings over the first three days. Each day contained one completed innings. England were put in and bowled out for 284 on the first day.

  After Norman Cowans had shocked Australians by removing John Dyson and Greg Chappell with successive balls, a couple of decent partnerships saw Australia take a first innings lead on the second day. But it was a slender one – just three runs.

  England fared only a little better on the third day. Again their innings occupied just the full day, making 294, with Graeme Fowler, the top scorer with 65, having his toe broken by a Thomson yorker along the way.

  The fourth day, like the previous three, started with a fresh innings. Australia set off to make 292 to win.

  Wednesday 29 December 1982

  With the match so delicately poised, we decided to take Test Match Special through the night, when we had previously only been doing the last two hours. The greatest fillip was given to night-owls in England by Norman Cowans, snapping up the first two wickets – Wessells and Chappell.

  Cowans ended the day with six wickets, having all but bowled England to victory. When Jeff Thomson, the number eleven, came out to join Allan Border, who had been in poor form in the series thus far, Australia still needed 74 to win.

  England pushed the field back for Border, despite that form, and concentrated on attacking Thomson – without success on the fourth evening. We would have to come back on the fifth morning, with Australia’s last pair now needing 37.

  It could have ended with one ball, but ten thousand took advantage of free admission to see a possible miracle on the fifth day.

  Thursday 30 December 1982

  Far from being one ball, the action went on for an hour and a half, as Border and Thomson played with complete confidence. Dropping the field back to try to give Thomson the strike was not working, particularly when they managed to take twos. At last a sharp piece of fielding by the substitute, Ian Gould, kept Thomson at the business end for the start of a Botham over. But only four were needed to win.

  As the ball left the edge of Thomson’s bat, I thought for a split second it was going through the slips for four. Tavaré dropped the chance, but Geoff Miller, running behind him, took the catch. England had won by three runs.

  One of the Australian journalists drawled that it had, ‘Ruined a good finish.’Years later Allan Border told me that the start of that over was the first time he had allowed himself to believe that they might win.

  The old ABC commentary box was a really tiny hut amongst the seats, a little behind our position in the top tier of the members’ stand. Its roof was deliberately low, to avoid impairing the view of too many behind it. I can remember Alan McGilvray emerging at a crouch, desperate for a cigarette after a commentary stint. In the years before I first went there, he would probably have been accompanied by the delightful Lindsay Hassett, the former Australian captain who was an ABC summariser for many years. He was always anxious to get his pipe re-lit, or, as Alan always used to say, ‘I think he only smokes matches.’

  That members’ stand is no more, as the MCG – ‘the Mighty G’ to many Australians and in particular, Victorians – has become one huge continuous circle of stands, principally, of course, with football in mind. Generally I like more character about any cricket ground, but in the case of the MCG, that is its character – just its sheer vastness.

  The Boxing Day Test match having become a tradition, touring Christmases in Australia are always in Melbourne. It may be the height of summer there, but it is extraordinary how many of the Christmases I remember there have been cold. Boxing Day 1998 was a case in point, when not a ball was bowled and I saw spectators in thick British warm overcoats. Melbourne’s locals have learned a thing or two.

  In 2006, we arrived in the city to find it shrouded in smoke from bush fires burning in the surrounding country after a prolonged drought. Nevertheless, on Christmas Da
y my hotel window was rattled by hail, and snow was reported in the nearby hills.

  My first Christmas there, however, was warm enough for our festivities to be held round the hotel pool after the management had informed us that all their restaurants would be closed for the day. ‘People usually go home for Christmas,’ I was told rather aggressively by a receptionist, who evidently wished we would do just that.

  Thereafter the press had an ongoing agreement with an excellent French restaurant in the city to open just for us on Christmas Day every four years when we were there. Increasingly over the years players and press have come to have their families with them over this period. That can make it a hard day for those who do not.

  On a couple of tours I have taken the opportunity to move on from Melbourne to Adelaide by road. More often, though, I have arrived by air, coming in on the final approach, which takes you right over the Adelaide Oval. When I first saw its distinctive long, narrow shape from the air in 1982, it was almost exactly in the condition it had been 50 years earlier, when the Bodyline series erupted at the height of its controversial progress. The only permanent buildings were the long, red-roofed stand stretching down the western side of the ground and the elaborate old scoreboard on its grassy bank in front of St Peter’s Cathedral.

  The ABC and BBC radio boxes were temporary cabins on scaffolding at the Cathedral end, with the Channel Nine television boxes similarly perched on the turf ‘hill’ at the Torrens River end. It was there that I had to go every day of the 1982 Test to negotiate with the celebrated producer David Hill for the release of Fred Trueman to come to our end of the ground to join the Test Match Special team for a bit. Hill was quite grumpy about it, clearly despising radio and any organisation as ‘establishment’ as the BBC.