An Evening with Johnners

by Brian Johnston

  The landlord said, ‘Why?’

  ‘He can play the piano.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said the landlord.

  ‘He can,’ he said. ‘You try him out.’

  So he put the mouse down at the pub piano and it tore off a bit of Rachmaninov and some Bach and was absolutely brilliant.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said the landlord. ‘I’ll give you fifty quid for him. He can entertain the customers.’

  So the man went away and came back the next day with another white mouse. The landlord said, ‘Well, what can this one do?’

  He said, ‘This mouse sings.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ said the landlord. ‘No mouse can sing.’

  ‘Well, you try it.’

  There was the other white mouse playing piano, so they put this little mouse alongside the first one and they went through all the Lloyd Webber songs together and sang them beautifully.

  The landlord said, ‘That’s incredible. I’ll give you fifty quid for him too.’

  Next morning the man arrived again and the landlord said, ‘What have you got for me today?’

  The chap said, ‘Nothing. My conscience is pricking me. You know that mouse I brought you yesterday that I said could sing?’

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ said the landlord. ‘He’s very good.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said the man, ‘the first mouse is a ventriloquist!’

  So these letters keep me in touch with the young, which I think is great.

  Now you can learn an awful lot from cricket. I’ve learnt a tremendous amount and I’ll give you some examples. The first example concerns a loveable character and it’s to do with drink. It’s always dangerous drinking and, in my job, you shouldn’t have too much. Although I am very much in favour of drink, because I think it is sociable, but you mustn’t have too much.

  Of course, this applies to cricket and dear old ‘Hopper’ Levett – W.H.V. Levett. I’m sure most of you know this story, but I love telling it.

  ‘Hopper’ Levett, a great wicket-keeper, kept wicket once for England against India, but mainly he used to keep for Kent when Les Ames or Godfrey Evans were playing for England. A very good wicket-keeper indeed, he stood up marvellously on the leg side. A great chap. He liked a glass of beer and I think he still does, and he smokes a foul-smelling pipe, but he’s a lovely person.

  One night, in 1947, he did have rather a heavy night and the next morning he had a most ghastly hangover. He went into the Kent dressing room and they helped him on with his socks and his boots, his pads, his box and his shirt. Kent were fielding, so they pushed him out on to the field, and a young Kent bowler called Harding – who sadly died, I think, shortly after – quite a fast bowler, was bowling.

  So they put Levett down eighteen yards behind the stumps. He got down – he couldn’t get any lower, his head was throbbing – and the first ball went pheewww past his right ear. He hadn’t moved. Four byes. The next one went pheewww past his left ear. Four byes. That’s eight byes in two balls and he hadn’t moved.

  The third ball, though, was outside the leg stump and the batsman reached forward and got an outside edge. The ball went very low on the leg side and old ‘Hopper’ took off and held a most brilliant catch, inches from the ground.

  He threw the ball up in the air, went across to the slips and said, ‘Do you know, gentlemen, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever caught a batsman off the first ball of the day!’

  Now I have checked that story with ‘Hopper’ and he says there’s a basis of truth in it!

  Anyhow, I think an awful lot of rot is talked about drink. A chap went to a temperance meeting the other day and a man was talking about the dangers of drink. He got two glasses and put water in one, whisky in another. Then he got some worms, put them in the glass of water, and they swam around and had a lovely time.

  He got some other worms and put them in the whisky, and they shrivelled up and died at the bottom of the glass. He held this glass of whisky up to the chap in the front row and said, ‘What, sir, is the conclusion you draw from that?’

  The chap thought for a moment, and then said, ‘If you’ve got worms, drink whisky!’

  Now humility. I think humility is very important and I learnt the hard way. I wasn’t a bad wicket-keeper and I wasn’t a good one. I was just so-so in club cricket, but I loved it and I played an awful lot. After the war – again, how lucky could I be – when I was in the BBC, there was no John Player, Refuge Assurance, Sunday League, or whatever it’s called now. So you could get all the Test players, and all the visiting teams, to play charity matches on a Sunday.

  I kept wicket for fifteen years after the war to all the great bowlers – Lindwall, Laker, Lock, Trueman, Miller, Bedser – you think of anyone, I kept wicket to them. Great fun for me, not much fun for them!

  But they were very kind to me. I remember once Jim Laker was bowling, he was absolutely marvellous, you didn’t realise what a great bowler he was until you kept wicket to him. Every ball had tremendous bounce.

  So he bowled a ball and the batsman went right down the pitch and I thought, Ah, off-spin bowler – Johnston, get outside the leg stump for a leg-side stumping.

  There I was, waiting, and of course, it was the one which went to the arm and went for four byes, but he didn’t mind.

  People were kind, but I came down to earth with a bump. I began to think I was getting rather good, playing in these matches, and we went to the Dragon School at Oxford where Richie Benaud, the Australian captain, was playing and I was keeping wicket. He was bowling his flipper and his googly and his top spinner and his leg break. I was reading them all well … they all went for four byes, but I read them well!

  Then the last chap came in and Richie bowled him a tremendous leg break. This chap went right down the pitch, missed the ball by that much, and it came into my gloves. With all my old speed, so I thought, I flicked off the bails, just like that, and the umpire said, ‘Out!’

  A great moment for me, a club cricketer, stumping someone off the Australian captain. So I was looking a bit pleased with myself when I walked off the field and the bursar of the school came up and said, ‘Jolly well stumped.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘I’d also like to congratulate you n the sporting way you tried to give him time to get back!’

  Of course, in cricket, if you are a captain you have to have a lot of tact, and being tactful isn’t very easy. You have to think very quickly sometimes. A chap the other day was talking to another man and they got on to the subject of Brazil and the first man said, ‘Oh, Brazil! It’s just a nation of prostitutes and footballers.’

  ‘I’ll have you know, sir,’ said the other chap, ‘my wife was born in Rio de Janeiro and she’s a Brazilian.’

  The first man thought very quickly and said, ‘I was just about to ask, which football team did she play for?’

  So that is tact, which you must have as a captain, and leadership is so vital. I’ve been lucky to commentate with some great captains and two of the great ones, certainly, came from Australia – Bradman, who had a very good side to captain admittedly, except in 1938 – and Richie Benaud, one of the best.

  If I pick English captains – Norman Yardley was just too nice to be a great captain, but he was a very good tactician and got the best out of his people and was a great reader of pitches.

  Ray Illingworth is my choice for the best all-round captain – determined to win, a great tactician and the men would follow him. He was great.

  In later years we’ve had Mike Brearley; and Graham Gooch, leading from the front – not a great tactician but leading by example, and he certainly worked wonders.

  But take Mike Brearley. You see, everybody’s different and Mike Brearley, a psychoanalyst, studied the character of each member of his side, to get the best out of them. Tough with one, more gentle with another, so he got the best out of his side. There’s a great example of this.

  In 198
1, that famous match – ‘Botham’s Match’ at Headingley – England had to follow on. Botham hit one hundred and forty-nine not out. Graham Dilley went in and made his first fifty in first-class cricket, in a Test match, and Chris Old made thirty odd. In the end, England recovered so that Australia had to make only one hundred and thirty to win. Still, they had to make it.

  Godfrey Evans, on behalf of Ladbroke’s, offered five hundred to one against England, and two people took it. Lillee and Marsh of Australia!

  At the beginning of that innings at Headingley, Botham bowled downhill, downwind from the Kirkstall Lane end, took a wicket and was off after about five overs. And trundling upwind and uphill from the Football Stand end was Bob Willis, aged thirty-two then, the fastest man in the side.

  Botham came off and Chris Old took over from him. Willis was relieved after about half an hour, and a quarter of an hour later was switched round, came in downhill, downwind and bowled faster and fiercer than I’ve ever seen him. He took eight for forty-three and England won by eighteen runs.

  I remember going up to him afterwards and I said, ‘Look, Bob, why did you have to bowl uphill, upwind?’

  He said, ‘I wondered the same thing. So I went up to Mike Brearley and I said, “Skipper, why am I bowling uphill, upwind?” And Brearley said, “To make you angry.”’

  Now that is captaincy – and it worked!

  But there’s a different sort of captain I rather like – Keith Miller, the jovial chap from Australia. A marvellous figure of a man. He loved hitting sixes, bowling bouncers and backing horses. He loved women and they loved him. He didn’t worry much about tactics or laws, but he just enjoyed playing with his friends on, and off, the field.

  There’s a lovely story about him. He didn’t captain Australia, but he captained New South Wales once and he was leading them out, walking twenty yards in front, a majestic figure, tossing his hair – I can’t toss my hair, but he did.

  A chap called Jimmy Burke who, alas, is no longer with us, ran up and tugged his sweater and said, ‘Nugget!’ (He used to call him ‘Nugget’) ‘Nugget, Nugget, we’ve got twelve men on the field!’

  Miller didn’t pause. He went walking on and said, ‘Well, tell one of them to bugger off then!’

  Umpires! I support umpires more than one hundred per cent, if one can do such a thing. I think they do a wonderful job. It’s a very difficult one and they have a rotten time these days, especially on television. I hope not so much in club cricket. The dissent shown is awful and the appealing, when it obviously isn’t ‘out’, but they are very much handicapped by this awful thing – the action replay.

  In Australia, and they tried it once at Headingley, they show the match on a big screen, and after a decision has been made you can see it replayed on the screen. The wretched umpire has to give a decision in a split second – well, he might take a bit longer, but not much – while the commentators can say, ‘Let’s have a look at that replay. Hmmm, I’m not sure. Let’s have a look from another angle.’

  They take about three looks before they can decide, so it is unfair on the umpires and I think it makes their task very difficult.

  Incidentally, talking about action replays. Did you hear about the Irishman? Caught a brilliant catch at third slip.

  Missed it on the action replay!

  Seriously, I’m in favour of having a third chap in the pavilion for run-outs only. Because I was talking to one of our first-class umpires, who actually made a very bad run-out decision last year, which he knows he made.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘it is very, very difficult. You’re standing at square leg, the batsman is coming and you’ve got to watch for his bat and the popping crease. You’ve also got to be slightly cross-eyed and watch the stumps to see that the wicket-keeper doesn’t mishandle it or that it actually hits the stumps and you’ve got to know, when it hits the stumps, where the bat is!’

  It is very, very difficult and mistakes are often made, so I’m in favour of run-outs being done on the action replay.

  But umpires are treated very badly. I’ll tell you two stories which should never have happened. The first one concerns Gilbert Harding. Many older people may remember Gilbert Harding on the television programme What’s My Line – crusty, a brilliant brain, but very intolerant of other people’s ignorance. He was a bit rude to them, but he used to send them flowers the next day!

  When he was at Ampleforth School he was very short-sighted and very fat, so his headmaster said, ‘All right, Harding, you can go for walks instead of playing cricket.’

  Now this infuriated the young master, just down from Oxford, who took the cricket. He thought he would get his own back, which is always dangerous, and when he put the teams up on the board for the Masters against the Boys, underneath he put: Umpire – Gilbert Harding.

  So Gilbert had to go and umpire and he was not too pleased about it at all. The master went in and hit the boys all around the field. He was ninety-eight not out when a boy, bowling from Gilbert’s end, hit him high in the chest and stifled an appeal for leg before wicket. But not before Gilbert had said, ‘Out!’

  This infuriated the young master who, as he went past Gilbert, said, ‘Harding! I wasn’t out! You weren’t paying attention.’

  Gilbert thought for a moment and said, ‘On the contrary, sir. I was paying attention, and you weren’t out!’

  Then there’s the dreadful story that dear old Jim Laker used to tell about the Commonwealth tour in India in the fifties, under Richie Benaud. There was himself, Bruce Dooland and George Tribe of Northants, an Australian, who bowled the chinaman – the left arm off-break.

  George was getting the batsmen, time and time again, right up against the stumps, palpably out.

  ‘Howzat!’

  ‘Very close, Mr Tribe.’

  ‘Howzat!!’

  ‘Another inch and I’d have had to raise the finger, Mr Tribe.’

  ‘Howzat!!!’

  ‘Nearly, I had to give him the benefit of the doubt, Mr Tribe. Very difficult.’

  George was getting fed up with this and off the sixth ball he more or less yorked the chap, who was right in front of his stumps. It must have hit the stumps and he turned round and said, ‘What about that?’

  The man began, ‘Mr …’ and he got no further than that. George turned round, took him by the throat and said, ‘Have another look!’

  He said, ‘You’re right, Mr Tribe. He’s out!’

  Well, of course, that shouldn’t happen. Then, I always like the original umpire story of village cricket, where the home umpire, as they were always called, was umpiring against the visiting side. Their best batsman was hit somewhere high up on the chest, there was an appeal for lbw and the local umpire gave ‘out’ to the home side.

  As he went past, this distinguished-looking batsman said, ‘I wasn’t out, umpire.’

  The umpire gave the traditional reply, ‘Well, you look in Wednesday’s Gazette and see.’

  This chap said, ‘You look. I’m the editor!’

  I think kindness is very important. But sometimes it doesn’t work out. A lovely story is told about Brian Close. He was the youngest person ever to represent England – eighteen in 1949 – and then he went out to Australia with Freddie Brown as the junior member of the side in 1950/51. He made a hundred in the first match and hardly any runs after that – not a great tour for him.

  But they were going up by train from Sydney to Newcastle, as they did in those days; it was in the evening and there was a girl sitting in the carriage, nursing a baby.

  The chap opposite her kept looking at the baby and she said, ‘What are you looking at my baby for?’

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she went on, and in the end he said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you. It’s the ugliest looking baby I’ve ever seen in my life!’

  Well, she rose and burst into tears and she was standing out in the corridor, weeping her eyes out and holding her baby, when the MCC team came along on
the way to supper. Bringing up the rear was the junior man, Brian Close, who saw this girl and said, ‘What’s wrong, dear. Can I help?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been insulted by that man in the carriage,’ she said and burst into tears again.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Brian said. ‘Before I have supper, I’ll go along to the restaurant car and bring you back a cup of tea to cheer you up.’

  She said, ‘Oh, please,’ and burst into tears again.

  He came back two minutes later and she was still crying. ‘There you are, dear,’ he said, ‘a cup of tea to cheer you up. And what’s more, I’ve also brought a banana for the monkey!’

  Brian Close was undoubtedly one of the bravest cricketers I’ve ever seen. Remember him batting against the West Indies in 1963, against Hall and Griffith? Rather than risk giving a catch, he bared his breast at them and let the ball hit him. You could see the maker’s name all over him. He was very brave and, of course, he always fielded near in at short leg.

  There’s a story about when Yorkshire were playing Gloucestershire and Martin Young was batting; Ray Illingworth was bowling and Close was right in there at forward short leg.

  For once, Ray bowled a bit of a short ball outside the off stump, which Martin Young pulled and he got Close above his right eye. The ball ballooned up over Jimmy Binks, the wicket-keeper, and into the hands of Phil Sharpe at first slip – caught!

  Blood was pouring down Close’s face. It didn’t worry him, he just wiped it away, and fielded for about another ten minutes. Then the lunch interval came and he walked back – blood still pouring down – and as he went in, one of the members said, ‘Mr Close, you mustn’t stand as near as that. It’s very dangerous. What would have happened if it had hit you slap between the eyes?’