Can Anyone Hear Me? (6 page)

The Gabba now is a soulless bowl. Somehow the Melbourne Cricket Ground gets away with being that because of its awe-inspiring size. My first sight of the world's largest cricket arena was from my hotel window at the Hilton, a short walk away across Yarra Park. In 1982 that first experience of the MCG was for England's game with Victoria. The most notable thing about that match was that it was the first time a giant replay screen had been used for cricket. It was evidently a novelty for me.

For most of the time, the screen was acting as a scoreboard, but from time to time it showed television shots of the play, with replays of fine strokes, near misses and wickets. LBWs were noticeably not shown, to avoid too much pressure on the umpires. Picking up the flight of the ball on the screen was anyway virtually impossible, but this is the first time the screen has been used for cricket.
This was something of a dress rehearsal for the Boxing Day Test match. It was a novelty for the players, too, of course, and I do remember on the second day that Vic Marks took a sharp catch at square leg and turned to watch the replay on the big screen, only to find at the vital moment two enormous hands coming over his eyes to block his vision. Ian Botham had crept up behind him.

On Boxing Day I see I made another comment on the screen.

We gradually got used to the fact that every event produced a double reaction from the crowd – first to the happening itself, then, a few seconds later, to the replay. Also the trick for commentators and reporters was to make a very quick note of the score at the fall of a wicket, before the scoreboard was wiped for the replay.

That latter comment was particularly pertinent for me, doing the telephone reports for Radios 2 and 4. I had a position for the Test match on a bench in front of the enclosure in the stand which was our commentary position and with the crowd noise and public address often deafening under the roof it was next to impossible to hear the cue from London. Our ABC engineer, seeing the problem, came up with a big leather equipment case into which I could thrust my head to cut out most of the noise. The obvious drawback was that in the dark inside it I could see neither play, nor scoreboard, nor notebook, so, as I made my opening remarks, I had to be getting my head out again pretty quickly.

I remember on the last morning of that 1982 Test finding every
splinter in that old bench, as I shuffled around anxiously, witnessing the tensest of finishes. It had been my first experience of the Melbourne Boxing Day Test.

Outside the huge MCG stands the queues had formed, even when I arrived two hours before the start. Later in the morning they got so long that some of the commentary team – along with many others – had difficulty getting in. The crowd was given as seventy thousand, amazingly still fifty thousand below capacity for football, but still an incredible sight.

There was a neatness about proceedings over the first three days. Each day contained one completed innings. England were put in and bowled out for 284 on the first day.

After Norman Cowans had shocked Australians by removing John Dyson and Greg Chappell with successive balls, a couple of decent partnerships saw Australia take a first innings lead on the second day. But it was a slender one – just three runs.

England fared only a little better on the third day. Again their innings occupied just the full day, making 294, with Graeme Fowler, the top scorer with 65, having his toe broken by a Thomson yorker along the way.

The fourth day, like the previous three, started with a fresh innings. Australia set off to make 292 to win.

With the match so delicately poised, we decided to take
Test Match Special
through the night, when we had previously only
been doing the last two hours. The greatest fillip was given to night-owls in England by Norman Cowans, snapping up the first two wickets – Wessells and Chappell.

Cowans ended the day with six wickets, having all but bowled England to victory. When Jeff Thomson, the number eleven, came out to join Allan Border, who had been in poor form in the series thus far, Australia still needed 74 to win.

England pushed the field back for Border, despite that form, and concentrated on attacking Thomson – without success on the fourth evening. We would have to come back on the fifth morning, with Australia's last pair now needing 37.

It could have ended with one ball, but ten thousand took advantage of free admission to see a possible miracle on the fifth day.

Far from being one ball, the action went on for an hour and a half, as Border and Thomson played with complete confidence. Dropping the field back to try to give Thomson the strike was not working, particularly when they managed to take twos. At last a sharp piece of fielding by the substitute, Ian Gould, kept Thomson at the business end for the start of a Botham over. But only four were needed to win.

As the ball left the edge of Thomson's bat, I thought for a split second it was going through the slips for four. Tavaré dropped the chance, but Geoff Miller, running behind him, took the catch. England had won by three runs.

One of the Australian journalists drawled that it had, ‘Ruined a good finish.'
Years later Allan Border told me that the start of that over was the first time he had allowed himself to believe that they might win.

The old ABC commentary box was a really tiny hut amongst the seats, a little behind our position in the top tier of the members' stand. Its roof was deliberately low, to avoid impairing the view of too many behind it. I can remember Alan McGilvray emerging at a crouch, desperate for a cigarette after a commentary stint. In the years before I first went there, he would probably have been accompanied by the delightful Lindsay Hassett, the former Australian captain who was an ABC summariser for many years. He was always anxious to get his pipe re-lit, or, as Alan always used to say, ‘I think he only smokes matches.'

That members' stand is no more, as the MCG – ‘the Mighty G' to many Australians and in particular, Victorians – has become one huge continuous circle of stands, principally, of course, with football in mind. Generally I like more character about any cricket ground, but in the case of the MCG, that is its character – just its sheer vastness.

The Boxing Day Test match having become a tradition, touring Christmases in Australia are always in Melbourne. It may be the height of summer there, but it is extraordinary how many of the Christmases I remember there have been cold. Boxing Day 1998 was a case in point, when not a ball was bowled and I saw spectators in thick
British warm
overcoats. Melbourne's locals have learned a thing or two.

In 2006, we arrived in the city to find it shrouded in smoke from bush fires burning in the surrounding country after a prolonged drought. Nevertheless, on Christmas Day my hotel window was rattled by hail, and snow was reported in the nearby hills.

My
first Christmas there, however, was warm enough for our festivities to be held round the hotel pool after the management had informed us that all their restaurants would be closed for the day. ‘People usually go home for Christmas,' I was told rather aggressively by a receptionist, who evidently wished we would do just that.

Thereafter the press had an ongoing agreement with an excellent French restaurant in the city to open just for us on Christmas Day every four years when we were there. Increasingly over the years players and press have come to have their families with them over this period. That can make it a hard day for those who do not.

On a couple of tours I have taken the opportunity to move on from Melbourne to Adelaide by road. More often, though, I have arrived by air, coming in on the final approach, which takes you right over the Adelaide Oval. When I first saw its distinctive long, narrow shape from the air in 1982, it was almost exactly in the condition it had been 50 years earlier, when the Bodyline series erupted at the height of its controversial progress. The only permanent buildings were the long, red-roofed stand stretching down the western side of the ground and the elaborate old scoreboard on its grassy bank in front of St Peter's Cathedral.

The ABC and BBC radio boxes were temporary cabins on scaffolding at the Cathedral end, with the Channel Nine television boxes similarly perched on the turf ‘hill' at the Torrens River end. It was there that I had to go every day of the 1982 Test to negotiate with the celebrated producer David Hill for the release of Fred Trueman to come to our end of the ground to join the
Test Match Special
team for a bit. Hill was quite grumpy about it, clearly despising radio and any organisation as ‘establishment' as the BBC.

By
the next time I toured Australia a new stand had been built at the Torrens River end, inevitably called the Bradman stand. That housed all the media, which is good for the press, who used to be on open desks in the stand at square leg.

More than any of the other Test grounds, the authorities here have always been keen to preserve the traditional look of the elegant ground. But considerations other than cricket have had to be taken into account. Two stands appeared opposite the main one and in front of the Vic Richardson gates in time for the 2003 Rugby World Cup and when the BBC asked me to conduct a facilities reconnaissance before the 2010-11 Ashes series, I found that even the famous sweep of the red-roofed George Giffen Stand was no more. Not that its much larger replacement was not elegant in itself. Again, the driving force was not cricket, but AFL.

Back in 1982 I see I was quite enthusiastic about our
TMS
cabin.

The box itself is easily the best placed of the tour so far, between ABC Radio and Television positions, in a purpose-built hut on scaffolding behind the sight screen. There is only one problem. Without leaning out of the window, you can't see the scoreboard.

This problem had clearly been noticed, as it was resolved by the installation of a closed circuit camera trained on the board, with a monitor provided in each box.

The spectators were entertained during the day by one splendid public address announcement, asking the owner of
a particular car to go to the car park. ‘He's left the hand brake off and the attendant can only hold it so long.'

In those days we still had rest days in Test matches. In Adelaide the tradition was for the players, press and an assortment of others associated with the match to enjoy the hospitality of Wyndham Hill-Smith's Yalumba vineyards in the Barossa Valley. The teams would fraternise, which meant the unfortunate intrusion of photographers and television cameras, looking for the candid shot, but otherwise my one experience of this was thoroughly enjoyable. The food – and of course the wine – were wonderful and it was extraordinary to find myself in a group of people including Don Bradman himself. He started an enthusiastic conversation with Fred Trueman, who was a big hero worshipper of the truly great players.

Bradman somehow seemed to be able to keep away from the television cameras that hunted down the players at these sorts of gatherings. Most of the radio and television coverage in Australia is locally based, so I remember that in each post- or pre-match scrum Greg Chappell, the Australian captain, looking round for a familiar face, would light on me – the man from the BBC – as the one constant factor among the radio reporters on the tour. Eight years later I was to find myself commentating alongside him for ABC radio.

These media scrums also made me realise the necessity for an identifying microphone collar, which the BBC did not use at that stage. I pressed to have one made up for my next tour. Nowadays you see them in every press conference and interview situation. Though the BBC are always keen to brand them for a particular network, when for overseas use at least, you just want a big ‘BBC' on show.

The 1982 Adelaide Test was infamous for England's
decision to put Australia in – and to lose by an innings. That left me with the afternoon of the fifth day completely clear and my wife Sue and I decided to walk along the Torrens River to the zoo. We had a very enjoyable late afternoon strolling round its peaceful surroundings. Suspiciously peaceful, in fact. As we made our way to the exit at about 6 o'clock we found out why – it had been closed for an hour. Luckily a keeper who was cleaning out a nearby cage was able to let us out.

Not all memories of Adelaide are as peaceful. In January 1999 England met Sri Lanka in the triangular series of one-day internationals. Muttiah Muralitharan's relationship with Australia had always been a little strained over the question of his bowling action. He had been no-balled for throwing by the Australian umpire, Ross Emerson, three years before and in the run-up to this particular match there were rumours that something similar might be in the air, with Emerson standing again.

It turned out to be an extraordinary day. In the eighteenth over – Muralitharan's second – he was called for throwing by the umpire, Ross Emerson, from square leg.

A huge row blew up on the field. Ranatunga was there, prodding the umpire in the chest and then leading his team to the pavilion rails, where he was given a mobile phone and apparently called Colombo for instructions.

The match referee, Peter van der Merwe, got involved and after a quarter of an hour we got going again. Murali finished his over and changed ends, having another row with Emerson, as he got him to stand right up to the stumps.

Later
we found that the floodlights in one of the four pylons had failed. (I heard after the game that the Sri Lankans claimed that this was a plot and said they wouldn't carry on, but the umpires and referee rated the light good enough.)

The rest of the game became a very bad-tempered affair. The umpires made mistakes and there was acrimony on the field, with Alec Stewart overheard by the pitch microphones telling Ranatunga that he was a disgrace as an international captain. Stewart later described it as the least enjoyable day's cricket he had ever had. It could not have helped that Sri Lanka won by one wicket with two balls to spare.