Can Anyone Hear Me?

by Peter Baxter

  The presentations that followed seemed to involve a competition to see how many people you could cram onto a small platform. But somewhere in the middle of it the Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, handed Arjuna Ranatunga the Wills World Cup trophy.

  Three years later the World Cup – now taken over by the ICC, rather than commercial sponsorship – was staged again in England, with games in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Holland. But in 2003 South Africa had their first chance to stage the event.

  It was bigger than ever. Now there were fourteen teams involved, to be resolved from two pools in the first stage to a ‘Super Six’ league for the second part, before semi-finals and a final. But again it was politics that dominated the lead-in to the opening matches.

  This time it was England refusing to go to Zimbabwe after various threats had been received, a crisis that continued to rumble on after the extravagant opening ceremony and the opening match. It overshadowed New Zealand’s refusal to go to Kenya to play a match because of security fears.

  Our coverage of the tournament was based on what we had done for the 1999 World Cup at home, bolstered by the fact that we were in the midst of the period when so many rights for overseas tours were being lost to Talk Sport. Thus we had a team of engineers with us and an operations centre at the Wanderers in Johannesburg.

  For a few days in Cape Town, following on from the opening game there, our attention was on the diplomatic arguments over the question of Zimbabwe. England’s game there was to be their first in the tournament. Aggers and I hung around the team hotel, outside which I found a patch of grass from which we could get a signal via the satellite. We covered two press conferences live for Radio 5 Live, both of which they took for granted, not knowing the short-notice scramble that had to be gone through to set them up.

  The second of these was in the centre of the city, where I had to borrow a drum of cable from television news to run down a fire escape and across a street to a ledge from which the satellite dish could be aimed between the skyscrapers. I had to hire a security guard to watch the equipment in the street.

  Tuesday 11 February 2003 – Cape Town

  The press conference upstairs at the Cape Sun announced England’s definite withdrawal from the trip to Zimbabwe. We broadcast it live by the skin of our teeth. Then Aggers and I set about re-arranging our plans.

  The competition had started with the West Indies beating South Africa in Cape Town, in a match on which we mounted a full commentary, as we did for several selected matches in the group stage. It became our practice for me to handle a newsy interval session whenever we were doing commentary on a match, wherever it was and wherever I was. Thus, for instance, after arriving in East London for England’s game against Holland, I was doing the programme from the commentary box there, as Australia were playing India at Centurion.

  It meant that we could have all the England news and interviews the day before their game against Holland. And the news on that day was that England had officially been docked the points for refusing to go to Zimbabwe and that Nasser Hussain was contemplating resigning the one-day captaincy.

  Sunday 16 February – East London

  The security check here turned out to be the silliest yet. Although the ground is not far from the hotel, I had decided to take the car, just to reduce the length of the carry for getting the equipment to the box. So I drove the long way round to the vehicle entry.

  There I had to get out of the car and stand in a cage, while a large dog sniffed the vehicle. ‘He is trained for sniffing and for attack and he might forget which he’s doing,’ said the policeman.

  Then I had to drive up a very high inspection ramp and open the bonnet and boot.

  Then I was directed to the traffic lights back on the road I had just turned off. I went past the hotel and back to the ground. I wondered why. And the security man on the gate also wondered why.

  At least after that, England’s win over Holland was fairly straightforward. In Port Elizabeth three days later they were given a bit of a scare by one of three Burgers in the Namibian side. This one made 85 and was christened ‘the Burger King’ by Henry Blofeld.

  Back in Cape Town they had a good win against Pakistan, in which the young Jimmy Anderson announced himself with a fine four for 29.

  Sadly, this World Cup was partly memorable for me for various thefts. I had a bag of bits and pieces stolen from the Cape Town commentary box during the opening game and my mobile phone lifted in the security check at Durban airport. My laptop was very effectively sabotaged by someone with a can of Coca-Cola. Not much effort was made to make it look like an accident, either.

  But the most spectacular theft was the portable satellite dish. Aggers and I were staying in neighbouring hotels in Durban for England’s game against India. He needed to do various preview pieces before the match while I was busy with other duties, so he took the kit back to his hotel.

  The next morning, after India’s comfortable win and with our paths about to separate again, he came round, as I was having breakfast, to return the dish. As he handed me the black case I knew that something was wrong. It was a different case, stuffed with magazines to give it the weight of a laptop. He could not work out where the switch had been done. As we talked to the local police, I tried to imagine the reaction of the criminal opening the case. What would he make of a ‘World Communicator’ satellite dish?

  England’s game against Australia in Port Elizabeth was something of a crunch and it turned out to be exciting, too, with Australia only sneaking home in a remarkable ninth-wicket stand, with two balls to spare. Still, England were not quite out of the competition yet.

  The next evening, in Johannesburg, Aggers and I were able to watch on a restaurant television as South Africa went out of their own World Cup in the Durban rain, after misunderstanding the requirements of the Duckworth-Lewis system. They had settled for a tie under that method against Sri Lanka, not appreciating that that was not enough.

  England’s failure to qualify for the next stage of the tournament – the ‘Super Six’ – was sealed by rain in Bulawayo, where Zimbabwe gained the points from an abandonment against Pakistan that took them through with the same number of wins – three – as England.

  It meant that the ‘Super Six’ had a rather odd look. Kenya were second in the starting table, credited with four wins, two of them against other qualifiers – Sri Lanka, who had contrived to fall to Collins Obuya’s leg spin, and New Zealand, who had forfeited the points by refusing to go to Nairobi. New Zealand themselves and Zimbabwe were both there with very few points, as their wins had been against non-qualifiers and were therefore more lightly weighted.

  Re-drawing the plans for the extensive coverage we were committed to for this phase, without my irreparably damaged laptop, was an interesting exercise. My own participation seemed to involve all too many of the long drives between Johannesburg and Bloemfontein. It was there that I saw Kenya secure a remarkable semi-final place, which they did by overwhelming Zimbabwe.

  At least sanity prevailed in the resolving of the finalists – Australia and India – but as we came to the 54th and final match of the 2003 World Cup, at least for neutral observers the prevailing feeling was just a desire for the threatening weather in Johannesburg to hold off long enough for the match to be completed on the scheduled date.

  Sunday 23 March – Johannesburg

  I woke to wet streets, having apparently slept through a thunderstorm. But it was fine as we arrived early at the Wanderers and when India put Australia in, only to see them run up a massive 359 for five, with Gilchrist and Ponting to the fore. There was an interruption for rain, but only for half an hour.

  India, though, were slaughtered and in the evening we toasted Jim Maxwell as the eighth commentator to commentate on a World Cup win in as many tournaments.

  For Aggers, like the rest of us, keen to get home after two
months, the final sting in the tail of the trip came from a dodgy oyster, which laid him low and forced him to delay departure for 24 hours.

  If we felt that the eighth World Cup had been too long, the ICC must have had other ideas, because for 2007 they increased the number of teams to sixteen. They were organised into four groups of four for the first stage, this time to go into a ‘Super Eight’.

  Several years before I had been talking to an experienced West Indian administrator and had expressed the view that a World Cup in the Caribbean could be great fun. He reckoned that it could never be done for economic and logistic reasons. In 2007 it was done.

  It was only three weeks after the last game of England’s tour of Australia that I arrived in Jamaica in advance of an opening ceremony held at a remote ground – the romantically named ‘Trelawny Multi-Purpose Stadium’, on the north coast.

  Sunday 11 March 2007

  Aggers and I went to the hotel where all the teams are staying in the morning, for a conveyor belt of captains’ press conferences. We recorded Michael Vaughan’s one and also managed to beat the system enough to get a proper interview with him.

  His appearance was due to be followed by Inzamam and a charming press man from Pakistan told us with a smile that Inzamam and the rest of the team would only be giving press conferences in Urdu, ‘To avoid misunderstanding’.

  The opening ceremony was a concert until the entry of the teams. Then there were some speeches and a carnival party on the outfield.

  We then had to make the drive back through the mountains to Kingston in the south.

  Monday 12 March

  When we were through Kingston and heading for the hotel at Port Royal, we were stopped by a random police check. The man saw the World Cup car park sticker.

  ‘You runnin’ the ICC team?’

  ‘No, I’m running the BBC.’

  ‘Who you, den?’

  I told him.

  ‘Oh, you de big man!’

  I said that I had an even bigger man beside me – Jonathan Agnew. This really got them going. The sergeant was summoned and there were handshakes all round.

  ‘Have we done anything wrong?’ asked Aggers.

  ‘No, man. We jus’ checkin’. Respec’, Jonathan man.’

  And we were on our way.

  The 2007 World Cup has had a bad press, not helped by the shambolic way in which it finished, nor by the way it seemed to go on for ever. After that opening ceremony on 11 March, the final was played on 28 April. Seven weeks – and that does not include the warm-up matches during the fortnight before.

  But one thing they did organise quite well was the reduction of travel, which might have been much more arduous.

  England’s early base was St Lucia, where we covered a match on alternate days and mounted interval programmes for commentaries from games elsewhere on the days in between. A broadcast line had been installed in one of the rooms at our hotel and so for these interval programmes our studio would be a balcony with a stunning view over the Caribbean, belying the usual panic involved in putting the programme together.

  Such was the security on match days that I would then drive the equipment back to the ground to set up for the following day. No engineers for us on this trip.

  The day after England had been beaten by New Zealand in their opening game, our interval programme included early reports on two possible upsets that might set the tournament alight.

  Saturday 17 March

  Ireland had dismissed Pakistan cheaply in Jamaica and Bangladesh had done the same to India in Trinidad. So there was plenty to talk about, though the technical preparations were a bit of a scramble.

  Again I returned the equipment to the commentary box in the afternoon and when I got back to the hotel, news was starting to filter through that there had been some sort of incident with England players out on the town last night.

  Sunday 18 March

  As we were setting up for the England vs. Canada game, we heard that the News of the World at home was claiming that Flintoff had been one of those involved in the late-night binge and that he had then got into trouble on a pedalo off the beach at the team hotel. Scanning the England warm-ups, it seemed that he was missing. At the toss, Michael Vaughan confirmed that he had been left out ‘for disciplinary reasons’. During the day we heard that he had had the vice captaincy removed as well.

  But worse news was beginning to break. We were hearing from Jamaica that after Pakistan’s defeat by Ireland, Bob Woolmer, their coach, had been found unconscious in his room.

  A couple of hours later it was being reported that he was dead. It was stunning news.

  Everyone on the TMS team had known Bob Woolmer well, some of us since his time as an England player, but all of us as coach of Warwickshire, South Africa and Pakistan. Indeed, on the last tour of Pakistan, little more than a year earlier, I remember setting up a live broadcast with him for the World Service from a hotel garden in Faisalabad. He had been keen to stay on the line to listen to the rugby commentary they were carrying afterwards.

  Two days later, the word from Jamaica was that Woolmer’s death had been ‘suspicious’ and all sorts of rumours started flying round of various members of the Pakistan team being told not to leave the country. It was a long time after the World Cup finished that it was ruled just to have been natural causes.

  On the morning after England’s rather lacklustre win against Canada, we were at the team hotel to see Andrew Flintoff compelled to front up to a press conference. Afterwards he spoke to Aggers, whose interview started with, ‘Well, Freddie, what have you been up to?’

  England still had to beat Kenya to ensure their progress into the Super Eight and, with Flintoff bowling well on his return, they did just that.

  Now my next base was in Antigua, though England had first to fly off to Guyana to play Ireland. When Aggers returned from there, he was to report on a small BBC party billeted in some discomfort. In Antigua, meanwhile, we were getting to grips with a hotel entirely made for all-inclusive package holidays, in which we were very much the exception, being there to work.

  The new Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, built in the middle of nowhere to replace the intense, noisy centre-of-town Recreation Ground, made its debut with West Indies vs. Australia, but, to the huge disappointment of the man after whom the ground was named, the home side did not put up much of a show. And, also to his disgust, the ground was not a quarter full, as access from St Johns had not been made easy. Subsequently, of course, that stadium had the embarrassment of having a Test Match abandoned after ten balls in 2009 because of its dangerously loose sand-based turf.

  When England arrived from Guyana, they lost very narrowly to Sri Lanka and rather more heavily to Australia, despite a Pietersen century. That meant that when we moved on to Barbados they had to win all their remaining three games.

  Bangladesh were comparatively easy prey, but South Africa blew them away, winning by nine wickets with over 30 overs to spare. Barbados is always graced by a large British contingent in the crowd and they made their displeasure known.

  So the last game of the Super Eights, West Indies vs. England, involved two teams already eliminated. Nonetheless it was a sell-out and one of the best games of the tournament. After a blazing start, the West Indies ran up 300, but another Pietersen hundred saw England to victory by one wicket, with one ball to spare.

  It was a game of farewells. Brian Lara played his last match for the West Indies – and was run out for eighteen. And two days before that we had been summoned to the England team hotel for a press conference, which I rigged up to broadcast live, as Duncan Fletcher announced his resignation from the job of England coach.

  The semi-finals, in Jamaica and St Lucia, were both one-sided, leaving Sri Lanka and Australia to return to Barbados for the final.

  That match is remembered for the farci
cal end, when bad light brought the players off in a situation where Sri Lanka were in a hopeless position. The Duckworth-Lewis rules should have given Australia the game anyway, but the players returned in the gloom for some anti-climactic pat-ball. What the game should be remembered for is Adam Gilchrist’s onslaught of 149 from 104 balls, which determined that the trophy stayed with Australia.

  It was a poignant time for me. Having worked on every cricket World Cup, this was my last. And this was the last time I would produce the programme overseas. In two months’ time I would be leaving Test Match Special after 34 years of running it.

  The Cricket Highlights (x)

  Calcutta 1987

  That England and Australia made it to the first World Cup final outside England at all was not written into the hosts’ plan. Everything had been nicely set up for an India–Pakistan final. But over the course of two days, it all went awry.

  Wednesday 4 November 1987

  I spent a great deal of time at the Wankhede Stadium, trying to get an interview with Sonny Gavaskar in advance of tomorrow’s semi-final here. I eventually succeeded, before returning to watch television coverage of the first semi-final in Lahore. The outcome never seemed in doubt and the reaction from all the Pakistanis, as Australia ran out comfortable winners, was stunned silence. Part one of the script written in advance seems to have gone badly wrong.

  Australia had run up a substantial 267 for eight, with David Boon the top scorer, making 65. And, though Javed Miandad made 70, Craig McDermott’s five wickets made sure Pakistan finished eighteen runs adrift.

  The second part of the plot came, appropriately enough, on 5 November in Bombay and that plot was to sweep the Indian left-arm spinners out of the game, after England were not disappointed to have been put in. That was what Graham Gooch achieved, making 115. Mike Gatting joined in the assault and the pair put on 117 for the third wicket, with Gatting making 56. 254 was not necessarily an impregnable score, though.