Can Anyone Hear Me? (28 page)

One other moment I remember rather poignantly about that match in Rawalpindi was getting a call through to my father on his 80th birthday. It was to be the last time that I spoke to him. A couple of weeks later, just as I returned to the hotel in Lahore at the end of a day's play in the first Test Match, I received a call from my mother to say that he had died in his sleep. She had – typically not wanting to be a nuisance – waited until the end of the day's play to tell me.

Naturally, I flew home, finding the local Pakistani travel agents with whom we were dealing immensely kind and understanding, as they helped me to rearrange plans.

The BBC team had a council of war before I left, to decide who we might best request as a replacement for the different roles I had to perform. The technical side threatened to cause the
most problems, so we asked for our regular senior engineer on
Test Match Special
in England, Andy Leslie.

Fortunately, all the teething troubles we had been having with the satellite dish seemed to have been sorted out and our usual mode of operation for the
TMS Report
programme was now to set up a little group in some open area of the hotel premises where we could get power and light. A digital editing machine carried the commentary highlights and interviews.

Thus I was at home in England a fortnight later when I received a call from Christopher Martin-Jenkins in Karachi. ‘There's a scene in front of me you would be very familiar with,' he said. ‘Andy Leslie is surrounded by about ten Pakistani telecom engineers trying to sort out the problem with the line.'

‘So where's Aggers reporting from?' I asked.

‘Oh, he's had to go and sit by the boundary rope so he can get a line on the satellite.'

And, while I could have a little chuckle at missing that performance, I was sorry only to be able to watch on television England's dramatic win in the dark in that Test Match. Though I gather I would not have been able to see it so well, had I been there in the flesh.

Rather like the South African board, the Sri Lankans, who were England's hosts for the second tour of that winter, had simply refused to discuss rights with us, for fear that Talk Sport would, as they threatened, withdraw their offer.

This time the Sri Lankan customs were a bit more sticky about the satellite dish, but their original demand for a bond of £5,000 in cash came gradually down to just needing my business card, which I found much more reasonable. I had to promise to come and see them when I left at the end of March, to prove that I was taking the equipment home.

After
a couple of games in Colombo, we headed down the west coast to Galle, where the first Test was to be played, through a coastal area that would be devastated a little less than four years later by the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004.

There was another warm-up game at Matara, a little further along the road that curves round Sri Lanka's south coast. For this a number of us in the press party were staying at a quirky hotel on a promontory overlooking a magnificent beach at Weligama. It had a terrace, which was to prove very valuable as a broadcasting point when a tropical downpour washed out play at Matara one day.

Aggers had a room overlooking what looked like a tempting swimming pool. From his window he watched CMJ take his regular morning swim and then, as soon as he had left the water, he was replaced by a troupe of monkeys, who preferred to use the pool as a lavatory.

It was at Matara that the Talk Sport team turned up in order to have a full dress rehearsal before the first Test. It also provided the only instance I have ever seen of a large monitor lizard holding up play when it wandered across the ground and the players decided to give it a fairly wide berth.

During the course of the day, the hitherto much admired Vrai, one of the media managers of the Sri Lankan board, came to tell me that during the Test Matches we would be allowed to do reports totalling no more than two minutes an hour.

I told her that our reciprocal agreement with Talk allowed for eight minutes an hour. She said that she would need a letter from Talk to that effect. Fortunately the Talk Sport producer,
Jim Brown, was happy to oblige, but the board seem to be getting a little bullish about our presence.

At an official reception before the Test, in talking to various officials, including the president of the Sri Lankan board, Thilanka Sumathipala, I was left in no doubt that they felt they might have missed a trick by not demanding rights money from us as well as Talk Sport. Media managers who had previously been friendly were now being a little stand-offish.

As in Pakistan, to put together our highlights for each day we had to record a commentary on every ball, known in the business as ‘stop/start' commentary. If nothing happens, you can delete the recording on the digital machine immediately. If a wicket falls, or significant runs are scored, you have to make sure you catalogue it so that you can find it later.

For the Test Match, we moved our hotel to a resort – Hikkaduwa – where we had the sort of problems we encounter in the Caribbean of working out of a holiday hotel. At least the time difference did give me the chance to get back there and set up the equipment in the grounds – in the case of Hikkaduwa this meant some pleasant gardens by the sea. The west coast of Sri Lanka is very conveniently situated to lock onto the appropriate satellite for a broadcast signal.

After a little bit of reluctance to co-operate from the board officials, we were allocated a rooftop position at Galle's International Stadium from which we could report and record our snippets of commentary.

On the first morning of the Test there was a muttered remark from one of the media managers about agreeing an ‘access fee' for the BBC. I started to get the impression that they were spoiling for a fight.

‘We need to talk about this,' I said to Vrai, but she carried on sorting through tickets, ignoring me. After five minutes of that, her boss, Shaan, appeared and I tried him. But he, too, looked through me as if I wasn't there.

After a minute or two of that I said, ‘Well, I've got a job to do. You know where I am.'

And, apart from Vrai stalking past our point a couple of times, that was the last I saw of them for the day. Maybe sanity has prevailed.

We arrived at the ground in the morning at 8.30 and unloaded the kit from the car under the gaze of four security guards, one of whom showed us that he had a letter, which apparently told him not to allow any BBC personnel through the gates.

There followed some unseemly scenes, in which Shaan and Vrai informed us that we had done more than two minutes an hour the previous day (which we hadn't) and that we had not paid an access fee (which they had refused to discuss the previous morning). They refused to listen to any counter argument.

So we were left in the dust outside the gates.

Tim Lamb [then chief executive of the ECB] had offered a few days earlier to provide any help if we needed it, so I rang him, but his mobile was switched off. It seemed to be an impasse.

I
despatched Aggers, Pat Murphy and Radio Wales' Edward Bevan to the walls of the Dutch-built Fort, which overlooks the far end of the ground. We loaded the kit into the boot of the car and our driver, ‘Simmons', took them round there.

I told Aggers to be meticulous about keeping it to two minutes an hour, even though he would now be outside the ground. He could set up a position on the battlements from where he could see the middle and the scoreboard, and I just hoped he would have enough battery in the mixer and the satellite dish. Of course, I told him, he could go to town on describing the scene outside the ground.

I settled down outside the gates to await developments and to try to talk to someone. The England media manager, Andrew Walpole, brought me drinks and a chocolate bar from the dressing room and I made friends with the security guards who were keeping us out. They – unlike their masters – were courtesy and charm personified and one even shared a sandwich that he said his wife had made, filled with vegetable curry. Another found me a stool to sit on.

Press photographers took pictures of my predicament and then went off to snap Aggers in operation on the fort walls.

The crucial point was the arrival of Tim Lamb, shortly before the lunch interval, after a morning spent negotiating a change of hotels. He suggested to the Sri Lankan board that this spectacle did not reflect well on cricket and got them to let me in.

Tim then pulled together a meeting, which involved the Sri Lankan officials and the television rights holders for the series, Nimbus. They spoke to their boss in India and it was
decided that we could carry on for this Test Match and discuss it further before the next. Faces have been saved all round, I suppose.

Tim was rightly pleased with his intervention. ‘The ECB gets something right – for once!' he declared.

The Sri Lankan Board then offered me lunch in the VIP box, which, with a reporting position to set up, I had to decline, but Tim's wife, Denise, handed me her binoculars. ‘Look,' she said, ‘you can see Aggers up there on the battlements.'

I reported to Five Live from our position and heard Aggers do his last piece from the ramparts, before we were reunited.

We had to decide for the evening how to handle
TMS Report
, particularly having managed to collect only one recorded highlight. So I opted for a tabloid man – Mike Walters of the
Mirror
– and Patrick Eagar, as a senior snapper and former chairman of the Cricket Writers' Club, to set our row in context and Vic Marks to deal with the cricket.

For the rest of the Test Match the board officials ignored us completely, though my friends the security guards gave us a huge smiling welcome every morning and even helped with the unloading of the kit.

As I was going in to breakfast, I got a call to say that Don Bradman had died during the night. I got onto the sportsroom in London immediately to tell them where to find all the pre-prepared obituary material.

Despite
England losing the Test that day by an innings, a large part of our evening programme was naturally devoted to the passing of the great man.

In the days before the next Test Match in Kandy, our rights man in London did his stuff with WSG, the firm holding the broadcast rights on behalf of the Sri Lankan board, and all was confirmed as being in order, a state of affairs that was still not accepted by the board's own media people.

Late on the afternoon before the Test they seemed to have been told that they had no option but to accept us and their final throw was to get me to re-do our accreditation forms, which had originally been submitted from London months before.

One plus was that, as we were staying in the team hotel and broadcasting our
TMS Report
programme from a terrace of the rambling hillside buildings, we had the chance to get players live on the programme occasionally.

During the day a man came to our reporting position above the press box and introduced himself as the marketing manager of the Sri Lankan Cricket Board. He was almost apologetic about what had happened to us. Could there be a change of strategy and a realisation that their public relations had been appalling?

For the evening's programme we had Duncan Fletcher on. He was very good with Aggers and possibly even better, because, as we were starting, so did the world's worst bagpiper on a terrace below us. Duncan, normally famous for being so taciturn, got the giggles.

With
England winning the Test in Kandy to square the three-match series, we wanted to get the captain, Nasser Hussain, on
TMS Report
in the evening live. However, with a fairly early finish, the team decided to set off for the drive down to Colombo immediately. So Aggers recorded him as if it was live, leaving spaces for other interviews and highlights to be played in. I took everything back to the hotel to edit it all together, with the sound of the birds round the gardens there mixed in and was quite pleased with the relaxed sound it made.

Ever since the visit from the marketing manager, everyone from the Sri Lankan board had been surprisingly friendly again. And so it continued for the final Test in Colombo, which England won, to take the series.

On the day before the match I ran into one of the media managers.

I was anxious and so I asked Vrai, ‘Are we going to have any problems this time?'

‘Only,' she said, ‘in the matter of …', and my heart started to sink, ‘… location.' It seemed the spot she had selected was not the one the club had earmarked for us.

We have ended up on a precarious platform above a stairwell, which allows little space, but I have certainly worked in worse.

The three one-day internationals followed the Test series. The first of these was at a ground which had taken six months to build from virgin jungle. This was at Dambulla, in the centre of
the island and was very much the brainchild of the board president. It seemed the day before the game that, with builders still busy, it could not possibly be ready.

I was allocated a broadcasting booth which was completely sealed in, so, to avoid it sounding like a basement bathroom, I had to find a way to worm a cable through the air conditioning duct to deploy an effects microphone.

A great deal of effort went into making the ground look good for television. Extra spectators were bussed in and an elephant was spotted casually grazing in the jungle beyond the boundary. The fact that it was in the same spot several hours later suggested that it just might be tethered.

Unfortunately, when a difficult day came to an end with Sri Lanka winning the day-night game, the power for the stadium was turned off shortly afterwards. Completing the
TMS Report
in total darkness was an interesting exercise, but luckily experience had taught me always to have a torch in my kit bag.