Can Anyone Hear Me? (27 page)

Peter Lush, who had the unenviable job of handling the fall-out from the Gatting/Shakoor Rana row in Pakistan in 1987, was someone I had dealt with in his role at the Test and County Cricket Board, which involved media matters in the days before there was any liaison person specifically appointed. He was an old friend, but in the circumstances of that
tour a heavyweight ex-player or administrator might just have made a difference then and there.

In later years it became the coach, rather than the manager, who was the principal figure in leading the team. Ray Illingworth probably started that trend in South Africa in 1995. I think he had come to the job a decade too late for him, but he had the enthusiastic John Barclay as his minder there, with the title of assistant manager. By the next winter Barclay was the manager, with David Lloyd – our old friend Bumble – as the coach. Those were two very different but very interesting situations for Johnny Barclay to handle, but then he had had some interesting characters under his command at Sussex. He tackled it all with cheerfulness, enthusiasm and his trademark encouragement, ‘On, on'.

There seemed no doubt who was in charge when Duncan Fletcher was the England coach, even if he seemed to try to blend into the background. To a certain extent, that seems to have continued under the auspices of Andy Flower.

Both men captained Zimbabwe and both would know the importance of getting the right man as captain, not just for the obvious on-the-field decisions, but for the whole presentation of the team.

When Andrew Flintoff took over in the crisis in India in 2006, he was probably the right man for the moment – the talisman of the team. But the following English summer, it was Andrew Strauss, the stand-in for the stand-in, who secured a three-nil victory over Pakistan. To my mind, he was the man to take the side to Australia to defend the Ashes.

I thought that at the time and not as a result of subsequent events and revelations. I do not think he would have been able to retain the Ashes, but he might have moderated the disaster. Of course, we would not have known the outcome of the
alternative course, so it might be just as well for him that he was not appointed for that series.

Like Michael Vaughan before him, Andrew Strauss conducts himself in a way that makes those of us who care about the way our team is perceived abroad – on and off the field – feel confident. And if they're winning as well, that is wonderful.

There was about the England side that went to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka at the end of 2003 the feeling of a new regimen. Fitness was a priority embraced by all and ice baths appeared for the first time. The new captain, Michael Vaughan, had taken over during the previous summer and his predecessor, Nasser Hussain, was now to be found under the helmet at short leg.

The win in Bangladesh was expected, but they lost one-nil in Sri Lanka. In the new year they would be off to the Caribbean.

There was no hint over the first three days of the first Test in Jamaica of the way things would eventually go. Devon Smith made a hundred for West Indies, but England, with no one making more than 58 (though there were 60 extras), managed a slender lead of 28 on first innings.

My close of play interview with Nasser Hussain, who, like Mark Butcher, had made 58, was about what a close battle it is.

Then on the fourth morning Steve Harmison just swept the home
side away. Starting the day at eight for no wicket, they were dismissed for 47 in an hour and 50 minutes. Harmison took seven for twelve, to leave Trescothick and Vaughan only twenty runs to knock off for a ten-wicket win.

Six days later Harmison was at the West Indies again, this time in Trinidad, where on the first morning he changed ends after a bit of a pasting from Chris Gayle and from being 100 for no wicket, bowled them out for 208 and figures of six for 61. England took a lead of 111 and then it was Simon Jones' turn to get at the opposition. His five for 57 left England needing 99 and they got them with three wickets down.

After two Tests of the four-match series, the Wisden Trophy was retained, but there was still the series to win. Next came Barbados.

I have a newspaper cutting from the Barbados paper,
The
Nation
, on 2 April 2004 in my notebook. Under the headline ‘What home advantage?', it first bemoans the domination of English supporters and then the West Indian batting: ‘Home advantage isn't home advantage these days. And March Madness is now April Foolery.'

On 1 April, the first day of the Test, Andrew Flintoff had bowled them out for 224, taking five for 58, with Harmison taking another three. In fact,
The
Nation
should have been happy with the second day. Only 119 from Graham Thorpe stood between the West Indies taking a big lead and England's eventual advantage of a paltry two runs.

Again, it was the second innings that was decisive. So far in the series, Harmison, Jones and Flintoff had each had a moment in the spotlight. On the third day, bowling the 21st over of the innings, Matthew Hoggard gave the match its decisive push towards England. In three consecutive balls he had Sarwan caught at gully, Chanderpaul lbw and Ryan
Hinds, obviously caught completely on the hop by the clatter of wickets, as he had to finish dressing at the crease, caught at second slip. Hoggard had become the tenth England bowler to take a Test hat-trick.

There was no comeback from 45 for five and we looked down on the ironically unfamiliar sight of England fast bowlers setting umbrella fields behind the West Indies batsmen. The world order was turned on its head. The West Indies were all out for 94 and England won by eight wickets on the third day.

There was one more Test to come and in that Brian Lara was to take it on himself to restore the region's pride with his unbeaten 400. It is possible that an earlier declaration in Antigua might have embarrassed England, but much succour was taken from his innings.

Back in Barbados, as the England players celebrated their series win on the outfield, I watched a liner putting out to sea from the deep water harbour just beyond the stands of Kensington, sailing towards the setting sun. It seemed almost symbolic of the end of an era.

For England, the building blocks had been laid for the side that would recapture the Ashes in England the following year.

In
the spring of 1999, I was working hard on preparations for the Cricket World Cup to be held in England that year. But, as always, I was keeping an eye on the planning to be done further ahead and so, early one morning in the office, when I ran into the man who dealt with all our rights issues, I asked if the deal was concluded with South Africa for the coming winter's tour there.

The broadcasting rights have to be negotiated for each tour separately with that country's cricket board and, until this point, it had only ever been a question of bargaining over how much we would have to pay.

I was told that the South African board seemed to be dragging their feet in responding in an extraordinary way. I agreed to ring Ali Bacher, the managing director of the board, immediately. He sounded evasive, but, when I pushed him, eventually admitted that they had sold the UK radio rights to a commercial station called Talk Radio. He further admitted that they had not sought to find out if we would better Talk's bid and I discovered later that keeping the deal quiet from the BBC was a crucial part of the offer.

BBC Television had just lost the rights to broadcast Test cricket in England and this seemed like a moment of crisis.

I felt that we must be in South Africa to make our presence felt as the brand name for cricket coverage on the radio and so
I proposed a round-up on each day, to be called
Test Match Special Report
. I established that we could use the recorded commentaries of SABC, who would be happy to include one of our commentators in their team. And we would still be able to get interviews – particularly with an England management who were sympathetic to our cause. Our live updates during play itself were restricted to a total of two minutes in each hour.

The first-ever
TMS Report
was done at the end of the first day of the series on a day at the Wanderers in Johannesburg when England, after being two for four, had been bowled out for 122.

We were aware that that frantic start to the Test had caused some chaos with the Talk team, for whom Geoff Boycott (loudly), Chris Cowdrey and Mark Nicholas were operating. I did feel some sympathy for their producer, Claire, who, when I met her the day before, had told me that she had never produced any outside broadcast before.

Jonathan Agnew, after reporting all day for Radio 5, hosted the programme. Pat Murphy, while somewhat miffed to have had to surrender his usual reporting duties, provided crucial interviews with Allan Donald and Chris Adams, just in time for me to tidy them up for broadcast. To make it sound as much like
Test Match
Special
as possible, I got our regulars, Mike Selvey and Vic Marks, in for the discussion of the day and with a hastily prepared script for the commentary highlights, we were in business. I had decided we needed a signature tune and had selected the opening bars of Toto's ‘Africa', which seemed appropriate.

I think it's going to be all right. There were calls from London after the programme from several management people,
including the controller of Radio 4, Andrew Boyle. They must all have been as anxious about it as I was!

It's been a knackering day.

We had certainly had drama to report on. In the third over England lost their fourth wicket with only two runs on the board. That was the moment when Michael Vaughan had walked in for his first Test innings. There was something about the way he handled the crisis, although he only made 33, that gave onlookers the feeling that he belonged at this level.

Unlike the dramatic escape led by Mike Atherton four years before, there was to be none this time. South Africa won by an innings and Atherton, returning to the scene of his finest hour, bagged a pair.

As time went on, of course, our operation became slicker. It was always quite tense, putting together a programme within an hour of the close of play, so bad light ending play early was a popular occurrence.

Test Match Special
had previously been something of a pariah with Radio 4, but, as I suppose that congratulatory phone call from James Boyle indicated, in the face of a threat from a usurper, we now had all the political support we could want. That never overcame the frustration of not being able to do a proper commentary – a frustration that was probably most keenly felt by Aggers, who became quite grumpy on occasions.

We had varying degrees of co-operation in our endeavours. The England and Wales Cricket Board and the South African Broadcasting Corporation were organisations with which we had close ties, but the press officer of the United Cricket
Board of South Africa, Chris Day, seemed on a mission to make our lives as difficult as possible, usually allocating us seats in thoroughly inappropriate places. Happily, the local ground authorities were almost always more helpful.

I had come across Mr Day on the previous tour, when he had been similarly difficult with us. It may have been that he was just one of those old-style journalists who resents radio. And I've come across plenty of those.

Press boxes were not generally ideal locations for our live
Test Match Special
Report
programmes anyway, though we were given no other choice in Cape Town or at Centurion Park. In Durban, we set up a table on an untenanted seating area in the stand and on one evening had to broadcast by torchlight, when the stand lights were turned off just before we went on the air.

That Millennium tour ended with a unique event in the final Test at Centurion Park. Like all the Tests I have seen at that ground on the southern side of Pretoria, it was dogged by rain.

After that South African win in Johannesburg, England had hung on for a draw in Port Elizabeth and South Africa had had to do the same in Durban. Cape Town, though, had given South Africa a second win by an innings. The series was theirs.

The weather at Centurion was not promising from the outset and Hussain put South Africa in. On a truncated day they made 155 for six. For the next two days it rained and on the fourth the ground was too wet for any play to be possible. With one day left, there seemed hardly any point in turning up. Discussions were even rumoured about putting on a one-day game.

But the fifth day went ahead, with South Africa still continuing their first innings. During the morning we saw Nasser
Hussain running off the ground to have talks in the dressing room. Then, after nearly two hours' play, South Africa declared at 248 for eight. To our amazement it was announced that England had forfeited their first innings (pedantically it was 0 for no wicket declared, but no one took the field for it) and South Africa their second innings. England had been set 249 to win in 76 overs.

The story gradually filled in. Hansie Cronje had made the offer to Hussain before the start of play, but Hussain wanted to see how the pitch was behaving after three days under cover before he committed himself. When he had done so, he ran off to strike the deal with his opposite number.

Subsequently we know of the involvement of Cronje with match-fixing for bookmakers, but then most of us were innocents.
Test Match Special Report
even awarded the ‘Champagne Moment' to both captains for their initiative. Only Michael Atherton in the England dressing room, who knows the betting world, was uneasy. Cronje's job for the bookies was to make sure that, even after so much play had been lost, there was a positive result either way.

I believe that he was not fixing the match to the extent of handing it to England. I think that he reckoned South Africa could win. What he had to avoid for his bookmaking masters, though, was England shutting up shop to secure a draw if things started going badly for them. That meant a few risky ploys had to be tried.

South Africa had gone into the match without an injured Allan Donald and they lost the services of Paul Adams' left-arm spin before it had been used. Nonetheless at 102 for four, a draw looked like England's best option. Michael Vaughan joined Alec Stewart and their fluent stand of 126 put England in sight of victory. There was a nervy little clatter of wickets as
the last twenty runs were gathered, but with five balls to spare, Darren Gough despatched Nantie Hayward for four and the match was won by England by two wickets.

In the post-match euphoria, Hussain paid tribute to Cronje. Not many months were to go by before he was to feel that the win was severely tainted, as the depth of the match-fixing corruption began to emerge.

Naturally, we hoped that that tour would be a one-off as far as commentary rights were concerned, but it later transpired that the deal that Talk – now known as Talk Sport – had done with South Africa was for two tours and also that they had concluded similar agreements with Pakistan and Sri Lanka for England's tours there the following winter.

To compound the problem of covering a tour without commentary rights, the day before my scheduled departure for Karachi in the autumn of 2000, I got a call from my office to say that my Pakistan visa had been refused. It seemed in the end to be just someone in the Pakistan High Commission objecting to a travel agent's courier bringing in a stack of passports for rubber stamping and preferring to vet applicants – particularly journalists – face-to-face, but it meant postponing my flight to Karachi for 24 hours.

This trip, setting off in October 2000, was the first time we had taken the Nera ‘World Communicator' satellite dish, which was to change our touring lives. While not being our main route for covering matches, because it is expensive to use, it provides us with the ability to deliver unscheduled pieces from places not otherwise equipped for broadcasting.

A couple of years before, I had asked our engineers to tell me how news correspondents could report in perfect quality from refugee camps in Africa and they had explained the satellite system, but had said that the equipment was the size of
a fridge and frequently not permitted to be used. Evidently it had been refined, because I was issued with something the size of a heavy laptop. I was a little apprehensive of getting it through Pakistan customs, but they didn't turn a hair.

As in South Africa, the first problem at any ground was trying to establish the best place from which we could broadcast our reports and the
TMS Report
at the close of play. Before the arrival of Aggers on the tour, I would be doing those programmes solo for the one-day internationals, as presenter and producer, with interviews supplied by Pat Murphy.

The first floodlit game in Karachi was certainly a harsh test, with a late finish and difficult working conditions in an open stand. The noise was deafening and, when I came to pack up all the equipment, I discovered that someone – even in the area where we were sitting, which I was told was occupied by police officers' families – had cut through the cable to steal the effects microphone.

Happily, after that, the match referee for the series, Barry Jarman, decided that the dew was having too much of an adverse effect on these floodlit games and that therefore there would be earlier starts for the rest of the series. That obviously made my deadline a great deal easier.

Relations with Talk Sport on these tours were never antagonistic. These were, after all, in many cases old colleagues. I see one note from my diary on the day of the second one-day international in Lahore.

As I was setting up our position on the balcony, Chris Cowdrey sportingly pointed out that an advertising banner hung across the railings in front of us would mask the
outfield to a large extent. So, when I was deploying the effects mic., I also re-hung the banner for them.

The Talk Sport engineer was very helpful too. Though I had often called on the host broadcaster's engineering assistance at the matches themselves – at least in the early days – I had never at that stage been granted the luxury of travelling abroad with an engineer, a situation that had always tested my rudimentary grasp of the technical side of things. But, when it came, for instance, to replacing the connection on the end of the cable that had been cut in Karachi, Talk's man, Nick, came up trumps. He was, as he pointed out, a freelance anyway.

His production team, however, did almost gloat over one problem that we had in the early stages of the tour, when the satellite equipment developed a fault.

The three one-day internationals done – and won three-nil by Pakistan – England were playing their first first-class match of the tour, a four-day game in Rawalpindi. As the game was starting, a report into the currently hot topic of match-fixing was released in India. In the report an Indian bookmaker claimed to have paid Alec Stewart for information. After 48 hours of speculation and rumour and the England press officer's statement of denial, Stewart called a press conference.

It was to be held back at the hotel after the day's play and inevitably Radio 5 Live were keen to broadcast it live. Unable to rely on the faulty satellite dish, I was put on the spot when the request from London came.

I took a snap decision that, provided I could get hold of a phone, I could do it. Back at the hotel I asked the staff if there was a phone in the conference room. ‘No,' I was told.

So
I had to gauge whether I could reach the reception desk with the leads I had. However, while I was trying to work that out, they found a cordless phone for me to use. I was a bit nervous of it, but a test with London seemed to sound all right. So I was able to run a microphone from the desk at the front, another for Pat Murphy to put his questions and a third to catch any other questions I could reach in the body of the room. Then I patched the mixer into the cordless phone.

It was all a bit Heath Robinson, but, remarkably, it worked and the quality was evidently good enough for Five Live to stay with it for twenty minutes. Just after I'd had a very pleased editor on the line from London, one of the Talk Sport people commiserated with me, thinking that we had not been able to broadcast it. It turned out that we had carried a good deal more of it than they had.