Can Anyone Hear Me?

by Peter Baxter

  The Zimbabwe captain, Alistair Campbell, seemed to realise quite early on that there was a public relations advantage to be gained over the old colonial power. And he was shrewd enough to grasp it, with an early informal chat with the British journalists in which he subtly played on the relative approaches, implying a heavy-handedness about the England camp in contrast with his own side’s more casual attitude. There were some on-field gifts presented to him, with England losing a couple of games in the run-up to the first international encounters. England’s management did at least succeed in warning photographers off capturing their image in the team bus in Bulawayo, which bore the legend ‘BULAWAYO GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL’.

  The nadir for England came with the coach’s notorious reaction to the end of the first Test in Bulawayo – what was then a unique outcome in Test cricket, being a draw with the scores level. ‘We murdered ’em,’ declared Bumble, over and over again. He supposedly went on to have an angry spat with a member of the club hosting the match.

  David Lloyd had at that time only recently left the Test Match Special team to become England coach and therefore was a good friend. This had the potential to make the situation difficult. I was also doing a book on this tour with him and Jonathan Agnew (the latter was covering the second half of the trip, which was to New Zealand). Some issues did need careful handling, but we got through without any personal rancour, even though Out of the Rough may not have entered the bestsellers lists.

  On the fourth day of what turned out to be a rain-ruined second Test in Harare, there was a visit from the patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union – none other than the president, Robert Mugabe. The presidential palace is just across the narrow lane off which the Harare Sports Club opens.

  The teams were presented to him on the outfield in the lunch interval and then the word came that he would like to meet the British press. I asked, more in hope than expectation, if we would be allowed to interview him. To my surprise, the request was approved. Henry Blofeld immediately said that he would like to do the interview. ‘How do you think I should address him?’ he asked.

  ‘How about “My dear old Excellency”?’ I suggested. As I say, relations with the UK were not quite as strained as they were to become.

  By the end of the decade I doubt that Henry would either have made that request or have conducted such an amiable chat if he had. But at that time much was being made of a quote from Mugabe on the subject of cricket. He had said that, ‘It civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe.’ It was felt by some that this might mean that he was not such a bad fellow after all. The world would soon learn otherwise.

  I had cousins living in Zimbabwe and was able to enjoy a Christmas dinner in a farmhouse 50 miles from Harare, surrounded by family. Then, when a grumpy England team had departed for New Zealand, I had a wonderful driving tour with my wife, Sue, round what is a very beautiful country.

  When I returned to Zimbabwe five years later – for a tour consisting only of five one-day internationals, which England won comfortably enough – I naively tried to hire a car again to go out to the farm. I discovered that to do that I would virtually have to buy the vehicle. I struck a deal with the taxi driver who was ferrying us to and from the ground each day, part of which was that I had to start the journey by getting his cab filled with petrol.

  On that trip I was appalled to find, on walking round Harare, how little there was in the shops that had been quite well stocked only five years earlier. On my cousin’s farm I was shown the so-called ‘war veterans’ who were recruited to start the occupation of land, scuttling round the edge of the fields. In due course, like so many others, my cousin was forced off the farm he had put so much of his life into.

  In 2001, as in 2004, press visas had to be bought, a fact that only came to our notice the day after the first match.

  Thursday 4 October 2001

  During yesterday’s match apparently Mavis Gumbo, of the Ministry of Information, had visited the TV trucks demanding to see visas. The Sky crew had been told to report to her office. At breakfast today came word that the BBC team must report to her today as well, or be thrown out of the country.

  So, at ten o’clock, we six all pitched up at the ministry. Our presence was reported to Ms Gumbo, but we were of course made to wait for an hour – her way of getting her own back for our failure to do things by the book.

  When we did arrive at her office she was in a fierce mood, demanding to know how we had been given 30-day visas in our passports. Still, she eventually made up our press cards before leading us to the accounts department where we had to hand over US$100 each. As we left the building we saw her scuttling out of it. Could our dollars have been funding a shopping spree?

  Despite the oppressive regime in Zimbabwe, I never felt at all uncomfortable in the streets of Harare or Bulawayo, with individual Zimbabweans being very friendly, whatever their race. By contrast, South Africa could seem threatening in places.

  England, of course, did not tour South Africa from 1965 until 1995, while that country languished under the apartheid regime, so it was a real voyage of discovery when I first went there. I arrived in November 1995, to find the country in something of a 1960s time warp in many areas. That feeling may have been accentuated by the fact of my first port of call being Kimberly, where the taxi driver at the airport told me disarmingly that I was lucky to get him, as his was one of only two taxis in town. It became a valuable lesson for future South African tours that you always needed to hire cars.

  Everywhere on that 1995 tour was a new experience, of course, though the dawn landing in Johannesburg that started each trip was to become extraordinarily familiar over the next ten years. On each tour, we stayed in the sanitised Johannesburg suburb of Sandton, even for matches at Centurion, an hour’s drive up the motorway, on the southern edge of Pretoria, where the first Test of that tour took place.

  That Test match was probably Graeme Hick’s finest hour, as he made an excellent century under a considerable amount of pressure, but the rain that washed the match out after two days meant that few remember it. Unfortunately, rain is an abiding memory for me of that ground, which in good weather is a splendid place to watch cricket. The main stand is in a crescent at the northern end of the ground, while the other two-thirds of the circle is made up of grass banks with a few huts on stilts for corporate sponsors to look over the heads of the picnickers with their barbecues (the ubiquitous South African ‘braais’).

  The elevated stand, which affords a view over the High Veldt towards Johannesburg, often gives you the chance to watch the next spectacular thunderstorm marching towards you at speed.

  My first arrival in the rather more picturesque city of Cape Town was fraught with local difficulties. England’s game was to be at Paarl, in the Cape wine region, and most of the press contingent would be commuting from Cape Town. To this end, our travel agent had made elaborate car sharing arrangements which didn’t work out particularly well.

  Tuesday 5 December 1995

  As it was the first visit to Cape Town for most of us, Jack Bannister, a frequent visitor, had offered to lead a convoy of hire cars from the airport to our hotel in the suburb of Claremont. My position in the column, with two other press men as my passengers, was behind Jack and in front of Mr and Mrs Agnew.

  After a few hundred yards I became aware of Aggers flashing me and I stopped, to be told that one of my wheels was wobbling alarmingly. The convoy moved on, while my passengers and I returned to the airport.

  The car was changed. All the luggage for three people was moved from one vehicle to the other. And then we found that the boot could not be closed. It looked as if the replacement car had had a shunt recently and damaged the catch. Out came all the luggage again and a rather nicer car was produced. It had only one problem – all four tyres were flat. It was a twenty-minute wait for it to be taken away and inflated
.

  That first introduction to the Cape area saw us commuting to the vineyards of Paarl, which is overlooked dramatically by the Drakenstein Mountains. The dusty ground and perfect batting pitch set the match on course for an inevitable high-scoring draw, which meant that – uniquely in my experience – a first class match was abandoned after three days at the suggestion of the tour manager, Ray Illingworth, due to lack of interest. Instead a one-day game was arranged for the scheduled fourth day.

  Generally my first impression of South Africa was duller than I expected it to be. On hearing that we were off to his home town of Bloemfontein for the best part of a week, Allan Donald remarked, ‘I hope you’ve got a good book’. On subsequent visits I found that the place had become a great deal more lively, so I attribute the subdued nature of that first visit to the fact that the country was still recovering from the dead hand of apartheid.

  In Bloemfontein I was doing a Radio 5 report, which ended with the presenter asking what the local papers were saying about events. I had to tell her that no English language papers reached the town until the afternoon and that my Afrikaans was not good enough to enlighten her. (However, I did discover to my delight, that runs are ‘lopies’.)

  A great friend in the South African Broadcasting Corporation team was their technical producer, Gawie Swart, who I had met first in England. His family came from Bloemfontein and so he invited me to a party at his uncle’s large house. When I arrived there I found him working at the fish braai, preparing a robust sea fish with spices, before sewing it up and putting it on the flames. He recommended a peppery South African Shiraz to accompany it. Fish and red wine is a combination that I would not usually make, but on this occasion I found that he was quite right.

  Christmas on that tour was celebrated in a particularly bleak hotel, set back from the sand dunes on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth. We usually have to work a bit on Christmas morning, with a Test match starting next day. In 1995, returning from duties at St George’s Park, we were dismayed to find that most of the hotel’s buffet Christmas lunch had been consumed by the influx of England supporters.

  There was something of the air of a prison compound about that hotel, which is a pity, because there are things about Port Elizabeth to recommend it, not least the Test ground, St George’s Park, which I rather like. It is good to be able to refer to ‘the Duck Pond End’, in commentary and we also rather took to the raucous brass band which would periodically strike up in one of the stands.

  The BBC is usually placed in a ground level conservatory, which is right alongside the brick path which leads off the field to the dressing room staircase. Thus we were in an almost dangerously perfect position to witness a furious Mike Atherton storming off after a particularly poor decision and taking a swipe at a plastic armchair, placed there for the security guard (who fortunately had temporarily vacated it). A leg was sheered off the chair with a single swing of the bat.

  Christmas 1995 saw the team entourage swelled by the arrival of players’ wives and children, along with nannies and grandparents. This was a source of some disaffection for the coach/manager, Ray Illingworth, who was inevitably finding things rather different from his day. The party that had to be moved by the team management from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town after the Test match numbered around 90. The logistical nightmare that ensued probably had a great deal to do with the decision to ban players’ wives from the next winter’s tour.

  Nearly a month later, the tour would actually end in Port Elizabeth as well, with the seventh one-day international, which South Africa won to complete a 6-1 series victory.

  Sunday 21 January 1996

  Nelson Mandela had arrived to see the final rites and, as I gathered he was going to speak, I got myself near a loudspeaker with recorder in hand.

  There was a praise singer first, but then came the great man. He was heavily protected by security guards, all armed, and there was a sniper helicopter overhead, so I decided to make no sudden movements.

  Even though there was a wall of guards between me and him, I was close enough to be able to appreciate the aura of the man and what he means to this country today.

  Christmas 1995 was in Port Elizabeth, but subsequently it seems to have become traditional for the Boxing Day Test to be played in Durban. In 1999 I was lucky enough to have my children join me for the week to enjoy the strange experience of a touring Christmas, which on this occasion included a midnight service where some of the carols on the hymn sheet were printed in Zulu.

  They also rather enjoyed the Barmy Army at the Test match and especially one rather embittered reaction to one of their songs. To the tune of ‘The Whole World in His Hands’, the song started with, ‘You get one rand to the pound’, building by a rand each time to a rallentando final verse of ‘You get ten rand to the pound.’ At that point a large man sitting in front of them commented in a clipped Afrikaner accent, ‘Nine point six, actually.’ Incidentally, the last time I looked, it was nearer twelve. (Eleven point eight, actually.)

  On my last tour of South Africa it became apparent that the local officials’ reaction to the Barmy Army was to try to develop their own version. But, like Graeme Smith aping moves that Michael Vaughan might make in the field, it just did not quite work.

  Durban’s sea front rather flatters to deceive, with its broad esplanade and piers. A stroll along it in daylight is very pleasant, but the advice on my later tours there was to avoid going out on foot at night. It was considered far too dangerous. The Durban weather, too, can be surprisingly unpleasant and has affected England’s cricket on more than one occasion. The 1995 Test there was ruined by rain, and several one-day internationals have been as well.

  Following the 1995 Test, England were playing a match against the South African Universities at Pietermaritzberg, about 50 miles up the road from Durban. Aggers and I were sharing reporting duties on the match, but I got a commission from a Radio 4 programme to record some players on the subject of being away on tour for Christmas. I had tapped up a few of them in advance and they had agreed to talk during what promised to be a fairly relaxed game.

  Maybe the rain had got into my system, because I had developed a bad cold which made the drive through the wet even more of a trial. At the game, play was being severely disrupted by the weather, which should have been good for my chances of getting my recordings done quickly – with the players twiddling their fingers in the pavilion it was an ideal opportunity to do the interviews. This was obvious to me, but not to the militaristic security guards.

  Wednesday 20 December 1995

  Turned away from approaching the front of the pavilion, I went round the back, where two security men in dark glasses – very obviously Afrikaner – were posted. I showed my press pass.

  ‘Is your name on the list?’ I was asked.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Then you can’t come in.’

  I explained my mission and that I already had the agreement of the players concerned.

  ‘You can’t come in.’

  I asked if they could take a message in.

  ‘No.’

  I tried again but was told, ‘You are making the mistake of thinking you are speaking to someone who cares.’

  I assured the man that I had fully appreciated the level of his concern.

  Fortunately, late in the day, I found some of the relevant players away from that protected fortress and was able to take my hard-won recording back to Durban.

  After my earlier ride in 50 per cent of the taxi strength of Kimberley, I took to driving myself from place to place in South Africa whenever time allowed. South African Airways were never very sympathetic on the question of excess baggage, which was a major problem given all the broadcasting equipment I necessarily had to have with me, so it usually made economic sense, too. It had the great advantage of giving me the chance to see more of the country. Having been ad
vised that the direct drive between Port Elizabeth and Durban, through the Transkei, was hazardous – generally, it must be said, by people who had not done it – I was given more encouraging descriptions by some who had and, taking to that road in 2004, found it a delightful journey.

  In the course of covering the huge distances involved in getting around South Africa, I have to confess that I have twice been stopped for minor infringements of the speed limit.

  Friday 17 December 1999

  Approaching Johannesburg on the motorway from Bloemfontein, I was stopped by a charming and diminutive policewoman with a huge pistol on her hip. I was 10 kph over the 120 limit. I was surprised she had bothered, as huge Mercedes had been thundering past me all the way.

  ‘They going too fast to stop,’ she said. ‘Can you get to a police station?’ she asked, when she had seen my British driving licence and consulted her sergeant.

  ‘Can’t I just give you the 50 rand?’ I offered.

  She thought that was a good idea and smiled hugely as I handed her the equivalent of £5. We wished each other a Happy Christmas very cheerily.

  During the 2003 World Cup, on the road from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth I was again pulled over in the middle of nowhere, by a police unit that was strategically placed at the bottom of a long hill. This time there was paperwork and, having established in conversation what I was doing in the country, the policeman watched my face when he had written his name on the form. He was PC Cronje. He obviously expected me to ask.