Kitabı oku: «The Ashes According to Bumble», sayfa 4

‘Oh, marvellous!’ Colin said, in his archetypal English gent’s voice. ‘Absolutely charming!’

Rooming with PF, as he was subsequently dubbed on that tour, was almost a throwback to the era of gentlemen and players. Although mild-mannered and warm, his record and standing in the English game was slightly intimidating, and there was also some awkward history between us for me to get over when we were thrust together upon his arrival down under. You see, sharing a room with Colin took me back to an incident that had occurred in county cricket a good few years earlier. I had not really engaged with him since this particular occurrence on the field in a match between Lancashire and Kent in the mid-1960s.

Back in that era, county teams did not tend to travel with a twelfth man in tow to away matches. You went with your XI, and, in the event that somebody got injured, you simply borrowed a player from the home team. This role of loanee was one I fulfilled from time to time when Brian Statham was captain of Lancashire – it was not to be sniffed at for an aspiring young cricketer, particularly given the toffee involved. Doing ‘twelfths’ paid a few bob as a match fee, and in most instances, there was sod all to do to earn it. Unfortunately, however, this was not the case when Kent came to Southport for a County Championship match in 1967, and Muggins here was on duty.

Called on to the field as a substitute for what was a relatively short passage of play, I promptly dropped two catches – one at mid-on and one at mid-off – to besmirch my reputation with all and sundry but most notably the esteemed leader of the opposition.

‘Tell me about your twelfth man,’ Cowdrey said to Statham later that evening. ‘What exactly is his role in the game?’

Fair enough question, I suppose. I was a hopeful 20-year-old all-rounder in those days, not that he would have been interested by the actual answer to what effectively was a rhetorical question. Now, seven years on, we were top-order team-mates – human targets at Lillee and Thomson’s coconut shy.

Felled by the Cracker at the WACA

Talking of coconuts reminds me of the most painful experience I ever had on a cricket field. Even if you have not seen the footage in question, you will no doubt be aware of it, so please remember to wince in sympathy in all the right places, and we’ll go through it here for old time’s sake.

Remember this was an era of uncovered pitches and facing some of those great West Indies fast bowlers was like hanging out the washing on the Siegfried Line. But of all the blows I took, never was I in as much discomfort as that day during the second Test in Perth when, sadly, I lost most of my genitals.

Thankfully this loss proved only temporary and they were returned to me some minutes later, having been found in 77 different parts, the other side of my protective box. They had migrated south (and every other compass point imaginable for that matter) the instant that a 3,000 mph Thomson thunderbolt shattered this plastic protector, turning it into some kind of medieval torture implement.

For the particular delivery in question, I got myself too square on and immediately knew there was trouble looming, hoping beyond hope that I would get some bat on ball as it climbed above stump level. Alas, no such luck. One of cricket’s more interesting facts is that the first testicular guard was used in 1874, yet it took another 100 years for the first helmets to be worn. A relatively short time, I guess, for blokes to work out that their brains could also play an important part in their lives.

Of course, we are now so used to seeing blokes head out into the middle for gladiatorial combat with every piece of body armour imaginable. But we certainly didn’t have things like chest guards or arm guards back then. You would have something resembling a thigh pad, although they were nowhere near the thickness of the ones you see in kitbags down your local club these days. These things were a bit flimsy to say the least. But being that way meant you had the chance to slide a Reader’s Digest or your spare socks down there too to provide extra protection.

Yes, the sight of batsmen wearing helmets was still in its infancy, I wasn’t using one, and I might as well not have been sporting anything between my legs either for the good it did. This pink litesome was completely useless for the job it was supposed to do. If you can’t remember what these litesomes looked like, here’s a reminder: you can still see them in use these days in bathrooms up and down the country – you know, those plastic things you keep your soap in.

Nowadays batsmen are much better protected around the groin but this flimsy thing did more harm than good. Because it was full of breath holes it splintered on impact and concertinaed my knackers. Suddenly, everything that was supposed to be on the inside was now on the outside. If you want to get a tad more graphic, imagine a cactus growing the wrong way out of its pot. Then consider for a moment how that might feel … Was it any wonder that I jack-knifed straight onto my head? Talk about being doubled up in pain. I lose my voice every November in memory of that cracker in the knacker.

Number one priority once back in the dressing room was to release my master of ceremonies from its snare: a pretty unforgiving job for Bernard Thomas, who certainly hadn’t signed up for that kind of thing when agreeing to be England team physio. We didn’t have any medical staff travelling with us in those days, though, so suffice to say I was very grateful for Bernard’s delicate handling of the situation. To be frank, such was the stinging sensation, I wouldn’t have minded a personal visit from the Fremantle Doctor but in the end had to settle for an hour or two of ice treatment once back in the dressing room. ‘Can you take the pain away but leave the swelling?’ I’d pleaded with Bernard upon retiring hurt.

You know as an England opener in Australia that you are going to cop some, and the crowd at the WACA turned gladiatorial, egging their evil henchmen on the next morning when I resumed my innings. The hairs stood up on the back of your neck walking to the crease anticipating a serious going over. A combination of Perth’s extra bounce – even these days batsmen can leave the ball on length in the knowledge that slightly short deliveries will sail over the top of the stumps – and eight-ball overs meant there were plenty of bumpers, as Cowdrey was so fond of calling them, to contend with, and although I didn’t score a mountain of runs – there were very few scoring opportunities against a backdrop of chin music – I was quite proud of sticking it out for six hours in that match against such sustained hostility.

There was no getting away from the fact that batting out there was hellish demanding. I would stop short of saying frightening but it was a real challenge facing someone as rapid as Thommo. As a collective, we just couldn’t handle that pace.

Australia were ultra-aggressive with the ball, the tactic of targeting the body of the batsman a good one on such bouncy surfaces. But in one way we only had ourselves to blame. Or, more accurately, one of our own to blame.

No series brings out good cricket tales, or indeed good cricket myths, like an Ashes series, and Dennis Lillee would have you know in playground parlance that ‘it was the Poms what started it.’ One adopted Pom, actually – that lovable giant Tony Greig, whose decision to bounce Lillee in the first innings of that first Test in Brisbane had repercussions for the rest of us over the coming weeks.

As Lillee regained his feet and brushed past Greig, having been caught behind attempting to hook, he told him: ‘Just remember who started this.’ No matter who started it, it is fair to say that the Australians finished it, although, to his immense credit, Greig never took a single backwards step following this confrontation. He always played in the same positive manner and was forever the showman, signalling his own fours whenever he opened those big shoulders of his, much to the chagrin of his Australian adversaries.

Greigy was the one player within our ranks who took them on with success, and what a totally brilliant guy to play with he was. The cricket was always colourful whenever he was one of the protagonists, a fact that Lillee did not seem to appreciate, particularly when he uppercut to the fence and then dropped down or leant forward to wave his right hand to the audience like the conductor of an orchestra.

That he was out there able to antagonise at the Gabba was chiefly down to one man. A chap by the name of Clem Jones. There were all kinds of storms sweeping around Queensland in the build-up to the first Test, and Jones, the mayor of Brisbane, actually doubled up as the groundsman to get the pitch fit for purpose.

The square had been that wet that as the countdown to the first ball being sent down got closer, no-one really knew which strip we were due to play on. Eventually they produced this pitch that became visible the day before, and we practised along from it before attending a mayoral reception that night.

One heck of a surprise was delivered when we did because here was Jones, the same chap that we had witnessed slaving away in a cork hat, pair of shorts and vest by day, now dressed resplendent in chain, robes, the works. Quite a job share was that one. In fact, when it came to Brisbane in the 1970s he was chief cook and bottle washer too. He knew everything and everyone all around the city, it seemed, and his name was to be known around the world to others subsequently thanks to the naming of the Clem Jones Stand.

In defence of Greig’s goading, Lillee could be a feisty bugger at the best of times, and was prone to react to the slightest provocation. Take the time when Pakistan batsman Javed Miandad bumped into him mid-pitch in a Test match at Perth, while taking a single to fine-leg. Lillee’s response was to follow his opponent to the non-striker’s end and administer a kick up the arse.

A number of his contemporaries would no doubt have been lined up behind him and would have put the boot in a good deal harder given half the chance – let’s just say Javed was as popular as gherkin and ice cream sandwiches – but it emphasised that Dennis just could not resist a skirmish.

He was close to wearing Javed’s bat as a cravat in that incident, and might have done but for umpire Tony Crafter’s positioning between the two men. In the end the only damage done was to Lillee’s pocket – he was fined $120 and banned for two matches.

Whichever way you dress it up, a number of us would live to regret Greigy’s bravado. Some of my own words came back to haunt me, too. When I look back I really wish I hadn’t offered the wisecrack that I could play Thomson with my knob end. Obviously I never meant it!

Being struck amidships is not something you forget. There are few things that leave me speechless but that was one of them, and even blows down below from other bowlers cannot compare to one from Thommo. My old mate Mike Selvey did double me over in a county match at Lord’s once, so I thought it only right to pop into the Middlesex dressing room after play to allay fears he might have done any serious damage.

‘Don’t worry, Selve,’ I grinned. ‘Compared to Thommo, you were a pleasure.’

Verbals played their part in that 1974–75 series but mainly away from the ground, believe it or not. Every evening Australian television seemed to be screening interviews with one Aussie player or another in which they would spell out exactly how they were going to crush us Poms. The most memorable was when Thommo came on one night on the eve of the first Test and matter-of-factly exclaimed: ‘I like to see blood on the pitch.’ We were in a team meeting and it is fair to say there was the odd intake of breath as he declared a preference for hitting opponents rather than getting them out.

As an opening batsman I always liked to keep relations with those hurling that leather sphere down at me at the speed of light on an even keel. Dennis Amiss and I tried to maintain a certain friendliness for self-preservation as much as anything else. So I was at odds with the response drawn when Lillee walked into bat one day and got struck on the elbow by a Greig bouncer first ball. ‘Well bowled, give him another,’ squawked Keith Fletcher from gully.

I cringed as Lillee turned 90 degrees and retaliated with: ‘It’ll be your f***ing turn soon!’ Funnily enough, Fletch was given a right working over when he came in. He would have been left in no doubt what lay in store for him, though, following another episode of the Dennis Lillee TV Show that evening. During an interview on the news, he was asked about the progress of the match, and to assess the position Australia found themselves in – most probably answering something such as ‘we’ll bloody crush ’em’ – before finally being quizzed on what the opposition were like.

‘The Poms are a good set of blokes, I get on with all of ’em,’ he said, before looking right into the camera lens. ‘Except that little weasel Fletcher, that is. I know you’re watching, Fletcher, and you might as well know I am going to sort you out tomorrow.’

Fletch would have been forgiven for wishing that tomorrow had never come as Lillee roared into him next day. Picture the scene as Fletch awaited his punishment – no helmet, no visor, no body armour. Just the MCC navy blue cap sat on the top of his head as Lillee sent down the full artillery. Bouncer after bouncer was fended off or dodged in expert fashion until one short one failed to get up as much as the rest and finally located its target, hitting him straight on the head, flooring our number five batsman in the process, and sending the ball bouncing to Ross Edwards at cover.

‘Blimey, he’s only gone and knocked St George off his ’orse,’ gasped Geoff Arnold, in reference to the emblem on the front of the MCC caps, as we sat in the dressing room watching the drama unfold.

One of the weird things in cricket is seeing the pseudo-pleasure people get when a team-mate gets sconned. Sounds vindictive, doesn’t it? But it’s not, really. It’s similar to self-preservation. Quite simply, if someone else is being hit, you’re thankful. Because it means it’s not you.

I’ve never met anyone who likes being hit by a cricket ball. One bloke came close to challenging that theory, actually, although like may still be too strong a word. A certain Brian Close used to chest balls down like a brick outhouse of a centre-half. Trouble was these leather balls were made for cricket not football and were being propelled down the pitch by some of the planet’s most hostile fast bowlers.

The most famous Close combat came in 1976 when, at the age of 45, he stood up to those West Indies firebrands Michael Holding, Wayne Daniel and Andy Roberts for the best part of three hours in a Test match at Old Trafford. It was in the second innings, in a hopeless cause, and proved to be the last of his England career, but what bravery this bloke showed.

Talk about bulldog spirit. Brian was as tough as old boots, and would literally put his body on the line if he thought doing so would enhance the chances of winning the game. And that was not limited to him wearing a few bouncers while batting, either. Here was a man who seemed to have no limit to his pain threshold, one who was brave enough to offer himself up as a human ricochet during that series against the Windies. Legend has it that during that series defeat, Close came up with an unusual and rather masochistic tactic in search of a wicket for England.

‘I will field at short-leg when Derek Underwood is bowling to Clive Lloyd,’ he announced at a team meeting. ‘When Lloyd sweeps, the ball will hit me, and the other close-in fielders can catch the rebounds.’ If you know anything of the man, you will realise he was deadly serious.

Some lads talk a better game than they play. Back in 1989, a number of years after I had retired from first-class cricket, I was still playing for my beloved Accrington in the Lancashire League. We reached the semi-final stage of the Worsley Cup and were drawn away at Todmorden, whose overseas professional at the time was the Sri Lankan all-rounder Ravi Ratnayeke.

He was a handy cricketer was Ratnayeke but had hardly pulled up any trees in the league that summer and we knew it. He was certainly not a player to put the wind up us. So we remained unperturbed about him coming across our path. However, when we arrived at Centre Vale in late morning, Ravi was nowhere to be seen.

His absence was explained a few minutes later when a beanpole West Indian strolled across the ground as our lads knocked up. There was a lot of mouthing of ‘who’s that?’ around our group as he sauntered past with his kit. I had clocked him a long way off. Huge, supremely athletic, he was the new kid on the block as far as fast bowling in the Caribbean went. It was Ian Bishop, who had made his Test debut within the previous 12 months.

It turned out that, with Ratnayeke injured, Todmorden had hired Bishop from Derbyshire for the day. Now as business transactions go, this was a fairly impressive one.

Bishop flew in to the crease and got the ball through at a fair old lick, but our opening pair of Nick Marsh and Andrew Barker, elder brother of Warwickshire’s left-arm swing bowler Keith Barker, resisted manfully to keep him at bay. Todmorden did not make a breakthrough until we had 63 on the board, in fact, and that put our wicketkeeper Billy Rawstron on the verge of going in.

Billy was our number four and confident enough to declare in the privacy of our own dressing room that, in his estimable opinion, this 21-year-old Adonis from Trinidad was not as quick as some others were making out. He even shunned the notion of wearing a helmet, a ploy I believed was unwise when confronted with a paceman of Bishop’s velocity. He upped the ante by declaring if his West Indian adversary had the audacity to bounce him, he would be hooking. Oh dear, Billy.

At 71 for two, it was time for Billy’s boasts to be put to the test. We’d heard the theory; now it was going to be put into practice.

You have probably guessed by this point that our hero was going to get the trouble he was asking for. Some lads reckon the cricket gods will not allow you to get away with saying stuff like that without having your words put to the test, and sure enough Bish obliged by unleashing one of his heat-seeking missiles. It kissed our Billy on the lips just as he was deciding that a cross-bat shot was the order of the day – careering him straight into the wooden stuff behind him in the process.

A sniff of the smelling salts later and Billy declared: ‘Hey, I can’t be out like that. I had completed my shot.’

As captain I thought I’d better put my young charge right as we escorted him from the field: ‘Billy, you hadn’t even started it. Now let’s go and see a man about some teeth.’

Just to prove he was as mad as his pre-match talk suggested, our noble gloveman refused any treatment until our task was completed, so he went out and took his place on the other side of the stumps for the second half of the match, blood oozing from his mouth, looking like the lead character from a 1980s low-budget zombie flick. We won by 51 runs in no small part due to the efforts of our Rawstron. They breed ’em tough in Accrington, you know. Billy and I are living proof.

Exploding the Myth

Despite all of the pain inflicted, being on an Ashes tour was a great experience. The reality was that I was not good enough as an individual and neither was the team collectively, but being a part of a tour like that, travelling all over Australia on Ansett Airlines’ internal flights, getting acquainted with the Australian way of life, and the subtle differences between the cities was a real career high and a great life experience. A tour like that was long and, against superior opposition, provided no respite. I know the current players talk about the length of tours, and the stretch of time they are expected to be away from home, but what you can’t appreciate now is just how tightly the games were shoehorned into the schedule between late October and early February. Physically it was very demanding, particularly given the fact that we were still playing under the old Australian regulation of eight-ball overs.

Those eight-ball overs were an important dynamic in the flow of matches. Australia hit us hard with pace, and with a few deliveries an over sailing past your nose end, it felt as though we were being pinned down. At the start of an over, we knew that if we got through the first couple of deliveries from Lillee or Thomson there were still half-a-dozen more to come. Talk about dispiriting. On our side we only had Bob Willis with genuine speed, but his dodgy knees only allowed him one burst at full tilt. This in itself came with a caveat: if he over-stepped a couple of times he was suddenly looking at 10 balls before he got his breather, and his run-up was one of the longest the game has witnessed.

While aggression was one of the keys, if not the key component, of the captaincy of Ian Chappell – or Chappelli as he is more commonly known – the competitive edge never turned into abuse. Don’t get me wrong, the will to win was unmistakable but you sensed he wanted it to be done fairly, even against the English. As a cricketer, I found him as honest as they came, and I am not sure he would have stood for unbridled nastiness from his players. I certainly respected him, and would call him ‘captain’ or ‘skipper’ as was the common practice towards the figurehead of your opposition in those times.

In fact, he was too generous on occasion, and I might have avoided my crisis in the Balkans had the Australians bothered to appeal when, on 17, I shaped up to a Thomson delivery; the extra bounce meant the ball got too big on me, and ran up the face of my bat on its way through to wicketkeeper Rod Marsh. I immediately went to put the bat under my arm – as English players you walked in those days – only to realise there was no appeal forthcoming. I waited another split second to listen for the ‘HOWZEE?!’ and the ball being thrown up in the air. But it never came. There was nothing, other than a ‘well bowled Thommo’ and so, as I had turned 270 degrees, there was nothing for it but to let out an apologetic cough and begin some phantom pitch prodding.

This respect for Chappell, held by our team collectively, was in no small part for what he had done for Australia since they had lost the urn in 1970–71. In 1972, they had come to England and earned a draw, and now he was going up a level. He had got this team together and it gelled beautifully – you could tell they were playing for their captain too. Didn’t they flippin’ just.

Like any other team during that generation they had financial issues with their governing body; they were not too enamoured with their appearance fees, because of the insubstantial proportion of the revenue generated from the huge crowds of that series ending up in their pockets. Chappelli’s trick was arguably to spend as much time off the field batting for his men – negotiating better rates of remuneration – as he did on it.

Because once they crossed the white line, boy did those eleven men answer to his tune. They were supremely fit and a very well-balanced side. They had guys who carried out unheralded roles such as Max Walker, who, arms and legs akimbo, would run in and bowl all day. Walker possessed great stamina, a facet which allowed Chappell to rotate Lillee and Thomson at the other end. Then there was Ashley Mallett, a wonderfully steady bowler, who offered that spinner’s gold – control. Although some of the edges from the short balls flew just out of reach, the Australian slip cordon caught just about everything that you would deem a chance, and so they were always going to beat us over a six-match series.

Although we had some feisty fighters, most notably Greig and Alan Knott, there was undoubtedly only one team in it, and despite the drawn third match, Melbourne’s Boxing Day Test, going down to the wire with all three results still possible – Australia needed six runs, us two wickets – the only match we won was the last, and one of the two I missed.

Having begun the campaign late following that broken digit, I was forced back onto the sidelines and onto an early flight back to the UK, boarding it shortly after the second MCG match had got underway. The injury, a long-standing one to my neck, was aggravated taking evasive action at short-leg in a game against New South Wales, and although I subsequently played in Adelaide, my pair of single-figure scores there were to be my last in Test cricket. So as I flew back to the UK nursing two damaged vertebrae, my team-mates cashed in. Thomson was ruled out of the series finale through injury and that other menace Lillee lasted half a dozen overs before breaking down. I believe it is called the law of the sod.

There were certainly no regrets, however. I left having experienced one victory over Australia that winter – top-scoring with 49 in the one-off one-day international on New Year’s Day – and having forged some terrific friendships with our opponents. That token win was actually nothing like the limited-overs game as we now know it: there was barely a sole in attendance in the 90,000-capacity MCG, and it felt like a bit of a knockabout despite going down in the record books as a proper one-day international.

I would have to say that the Australians were a terrific set of blokes. Guys like Marsh, Lillee, Thomson, the Chappell brothers and Dougie Walters were all great company.

Walters was a figure of intrigue, and quite incredible for a professional sportsman. He was this kingpin player, talked about as if he was the new Bradman by his fellow countrymen, and with a brilliant record in Australian conditions to give that hyperbole a semblance of justification. He averaged a touch under 58 on home soil but was not so terrific overseas, certainly not in England anyway, and had an average of under 40 to emphasise it. Neither was he the epitome of health, his lifestyle certainly not what you would expect from an international-standard athlete.

Dougie was a chain smoker who worked for Rothmans, a company that was a big player in cricket at that time. Away from the pitch you never saw him without his fags, and that gave me the chance to play a few pranks. Wherever you went in Australia, you would be guaranteed to find a number of joke shops, and one of the items they sold were these exploding cigarette packets which were branded to look like real ones. Everywhere we travelled I would nip down to the nearest shop and stock up on half-a-dozen packets at a time, and then leave them strategically placed around the Australian dressing room.

Doug had a habit of leaving several packs lying around, so that at the end of each day’s play he would come off the field and reach for one as he sat down. However, my trick of mixing in the fake ones with the real created a kind of Russian roulette, spreading them strategically all over the place, so that he would have no idea which were which. More often than not, he would pick up the joke set and they would explode in his hands.

To counter this, he devised a technique of flicking them from underneath rather than picking them up and setting them off. But, as with the best players, the best pranksters adapt and as the series went on, I roped more of their lads into my scheming. My later tactics were to get his real cigarettes and slip bangers into them too. In the end I reduced him to a nervous wreck.

I enjoyed socialising with the Australians and was one of the members of our team who indulged in one of the great established Ashes traditions: the post-match drink. These days it is limited to the actual end of the match, or even the end of the series, dependent on the views of the respective captains and coaches, but back then it was something that took place at the end of each and every day’s play. Granted, some of our lads wouldn’t participate at all, but the majority did.

The argument for not going into the opposition’s changing room was that you were being asked to fraternise with the same blokes that had been trying to knock your block off just a matter of minutes earlier. ‘Why on earth would I want to have a drink with him?’ was the usual response from those hostile towards this after-hours get-together. Fair enough, it wasn’t a three-line whip. But for my part, I enjoyed the chance to have a beer and a yarn for half an hour or so, a period which as much as anything allowed the masses that had filled the ground to get out.

Of course, international sportsmen shouldn’t drink too much alcohol during matches, so we all made sure we had our brown cow (yum!) before knocking the froth off a bottle of VB with great chaps like Ross Edwards, Rick McCosker, Ian Redpath and Wally Edwards, whose entire three-Test career was encapsulated in that series, and who became Cricket Australia’s chairman in late 2011.

I still see another of the group, the quiet off-spinner Mallett, on Ashes tours as he drinks in the same pubs around Adelaide. Then there was Walker, or Tangles as he was known due to his spaghetti junction of limbs on show when bowling, who is taken off so brilliantly in the Billy Birmingham tapes.