Cricket XXXX Cricket

by Frances Edmonds

  Sydney! This has got to be the most exhilarating city in Australia: the palpable buzz of business and commerce, the cosmopolitan zest of the place. Looking out over the harbour at the bridge and the Opera House, watching the myriad hordes of laser-boats, yachts, cruisers, ferries and hydrofoils, and hearing weather reports of Big Ben freezing up in London, it is not difficult to think in terms of emigrating.

  The Australian selectors, now under quite intolerable pressure to produce a winning team overnight, have named a hitherto unknown New South Wales off-spinner, a certain P. Taylor, for the fifth and final Test, in ever more desperate efforts to salvage some pride out of the series. ‘Peter who?’ the headlines read the next morning. Suggestions abounded that the selectors had patently given up all hope of winning, decided to cut their losses and to save on airfares by selecting any local lad. The British press had a field day, implying that the selectors had probably been at the Australian equivalent of the pink gin, and had made a mistake by naming the wrong Taylor, Peter instead of Mark. In the press box people wondered out loud whether they had not gone for A. J. P. Taylor, although not all were sure whether this eminent historian was still alive. Aberrant though Australian selectorial policy had clearly become, selection from the land of the living was still thought to be the bottom line.

  Former Test great Neil Harvey had already started calling for the removal of ‘unqualified’ selectors from the panel a few weeks prior. He claimed that none of them, with the exception of Greg Chappell, had been through the mill as cricketers. ‘Jim Higgs went through a tour of England without scoring a run,’ he claimed in a newspaper interview. ‘How on earth could he be a good judge of a batsman? Dick Guy played only a handful of games as a leg-spinner for NSW, and I remember Lawrie Sawle as a batsman for Western Australia who struggled to hit the ball back past the bowler.’

  Harsh stuff indeed, although one assumes that a man who has himself served time as a selector, between 1967 and 1978, must know more or less what he is talking about.

  The Test match, however, was going to be the least of my worries that week, for this was the week I was to co-host Channel 10’s Good Morning Australia breakfast television show with resident anchorman Gordon Elliot, as the regular hostess, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, was away on holiday in Europe. The whole idea had originally seemed like quite a wheeze.

  Doing breakfast TV is a killer. I had never done anything like this before in my life, and in retrospect should have insisted on a minimum of a couple of hours’ training before going national. After a week’s experience I am sure that looking at camera X, reading autocue Y and doing interview Z becomes a piece of cake. At any rate it cannot be more difficult than trying to unravel the linguistic macramé of a President Mitterrand when he is trying to obfuscate, the sort of hoop through which we conference interpreters are regularly obliged to jump.

  The first problem to contend with is getting up in the morning at about 4.30 am. Bad enough though this may be when living in a normal household configuration, with an upstairs, a downstairs, rooms to eat in, rooms to work in, and rooms to watch the television in, it becomes virtually impossible if you happen to be sharing a hotel bedroom with the most selfish man in the world.

  The Sebel was full, thanks to the Elton John travelling circus, and the Lionel ‘dancing on the ceiling’ Richie entourage, otherwise I should most certainly have moved into another room to get some sleep at night. As it was, Phil insisted on watching those educationally subnormal productions they broadcast until midnight here on hotel television, and then reading until about 3 am for good measure. When I left at 4.30 am, heady with lack of sleep, I would tiptoe around in the dark, clothes all neatly laid out beforehand, lest I should wake him. And to cap it all, Phil, who normally watches breakfast TV from its inception at 7 am, never bothered to watch it even once that entire week. Do you wonder I laugh when I hear accusations of failing to be a supportive wife? The only thing that ten years of marriage has taught me is that all this being supportive nonsense works in one direction only.

  Gordon Elliot is a very large, very gifted, very talented man with a commensurately large ego. I like him a lot. It is rare to find genuinely funny people. He has hosted the show for almost six years now, and is moving on in two weeks’ time to greater, more glorious things than breakfast TV. Anyone’s private and social life must be seriously curtailed when a 4.30 am start is mandatory, and he openly admits that he is leaving with few regrets.

  The first morning we chatted about the larceny perpetrated in England’s dressing room at the Sydney Cricket Ground, where, amongst other things, Ian Botham’s custom-built three-pound bats had been liberated. Fortunately bat-maker and Worcestershire County Cricket Club Committee member, Duncan Fearnley, was on hand, both to organise Botham’s new county contract, and to replenish the lacunae in the bat situation.

  ‘It’s a special bat, with a three-black-condom grip handle,’ Duncan explained to me one evening. I repeated this knowledgeably to Gordon the next morning.

  ‘The sort teams use in Barbados, I assume,’ he rejoined, blue eyes twinkling behind steel-framed spectacles. He never missed a trick.

  I have never fully understood who watches breakfast television. Certainly I only ever watch it when closeted in a hotel room, where the range of the radio is restricted to some dreadful demi-classical muzak and the inanities of the local radio station. Surely if people are on their way to work, they do not have time to sit and watch the box? And if they are not on their way to work, why bother to get up at 7 am to watch two hours of trivial tales and enforcedly jovial chat? I, of course, am perfectly at liberty to think what I like. The statistics show that an estimated five million people get up every morning, switch on the telly, and watch Good Morning Australia. In a country as sparsely populated as Australia, that is one helluva lot of people.

  Dear Matthew Engel rang up surreptitiously to say ‘well done’ after the first programme. I say surreptitiously, because the received wisdom is that no cricket correspondent worth his media medal should see the light of day before 10 am. When England captain Mike Gatting overslept for the State game against Victoria the tabloid furore knew no bounds, but there were in fact no more than half a dozen journalists in the press box who had actually arrived at the ground in time to eyewitness his non-arrival. The degree of outrage expressed, however, was in general terms inversely proportional to the track record of punctuality demonstrated by any named correspondent. Oh, what a comatosely unsensational tour this has been! Last year in the West Indies, the press seemed almost pleasantly surprised when eleven Englishmen bothered to pitch up for the Test matches, let alone other matches, and the attendance level at ‘optional nets’ became synonymous with absolute laissez-faire.

  Anyway, Engel had been awake and watching. We both had a quiet giggle. The unknown Peter Taylor, who two days prior was deemed to have been the unknowing victim of selectorial homonomoeia, was by now a national hero, having picked up six wickets in an uncompromisingly mediocre batting performance from the English. He had been enjoined to chat to me on the programme, but when the producer rang in the morning he slammed the phone down. The pressures of instant stardom were apparently so great that he had even felt the need to go walkabout. Talk about overnight success! He does seem a very pleasant sort of fellow, though, and I do hope he does not end up, as so many do, just another three-day wonder.

  Fortunately we managed to catch Australian wicketkeeper, Tim Zoehrer, instead, he of the limerick interchange with Phil. I heard through the grapevine that the producer had tried about four of the Aussies, and they had all refused. The general feeling was that I would give them a very rough time, and that this was a pain they could do without. They need not have worried. I am conscious of Australian cricketers’ proclivities for bursting into tears, and would not have chanced so distressing a performance so early in the morning. Besides, at 7 am, I am a fairly harmless sort of creature, and it would certainly never have occurred to me, for example, to ask them whether they perceiv
ed themselves as a bunch of wimps for calling off their 1988 planned tour of the West Indies. At all events, interfacing with the West Indies and with La Edmonds appeared to rate equally highly on Australian cricketers’ list of traumas to be avoided.

  I believe, from Phil, that Tim was quite astounded that I could be so nice. Hell! Why on earth should I haul some poor blighter over the coals when he has been good enough to get out of bed to fill a colleague’s spot? He made a few deprecating comments about Phil’s ability to spin the ball, and we laughed about the limerick saga, a minor incident which the press, even serious broadsheets such as the Melbourne Age, are trying to turn into a miniseries; all in all it was fairly tame stuff.

  ‘Yes, tame,’ said old Engel. ‘Most of the stories and interviews are so tame and trivial. And the stories are so trite.’

  Engel, as usual, was incontrovertibly right. Stories on seals being weighed in after Christmas, interviews which give folk three minutes to explain their life’s work, or to expound on extremely complicated issues, cross-chat with half-witted actresses who are semi-speechless without a script – this is the stuff of which breakfast TV is made.

  There were a few real gems that week, however, as for example an interview with the brilliant Spanish flamenco virtuoso Paco Peña, whom I have adulated since I first heard him in a one-man concert in Cambridge. But basically Engel was right. The good folk of Australia do not want to be hit with anything other than the anodyne at that time of the day.

  It is almost inevitable, however (and the same goes for the chit-chat in the interpreters’ booth once the microphones are switched off), that the conversation off-air – the asides, the commentary and the jokes – is far more entertaining than anything ever broadcast. The never-heard gloss that would be appended to stories on the set was far better value for money than the same old dreary autocue introductions. As I said, Gordon Elliot is a very funny man.

  On the Wednesday of the week I was introduced to the astounding gastronomic phenomenon of the great Australian ginger-nut biscuit. These ginger-nut biscuits have been keeping Australian orthodontists and dentists in earphones, skiing holidays in Gstaad, and houses in Double Bay for generations. It is impossible to break one with your bare hands. These small, round, brown discs could easily be used as an alternative to those heat-resistant tiles on space shuttles, or incorporated as one of the more lethal elements in a ninja’s armoury. Plated together, they could easily be marketed as protective clothing for cricketers in the West Indies, or used by the building industry to provide indestructible high-rises along the San Andreas Fault. Strong men have been known to weep trying to crunch them, and it is common knowledge that black-belt karate experts would rather break a couple of hundred bricks than one Australian ginger-nut biscuit.

  There is only one recognised mode of ingestion for the Australian ginger-nut. First it must be ceremoniously dunked in something hot, preferably a television station’s inimitable machine-produced tea or coffee, soused for a few minutes until it becomes soft, and then quickly swallowed before the entire soggy mess disintegrates, like a heap of confectioner’s mulch on your lap. Packets of the things were strewn ubiquitously throughout the set. The camera crew, who had been up since all hours, would use them for a quick sugar-fix. Gordon, who would choose a calorie-conscious lunch of Caesar’s salad and soda water, would scrunch the dreaded ginger-nuts as if there were no arteriosclerotic tomorrow. I never mustered the guts to experience one in between clips. As Gordon said, it was bad enough when I concentrated.

  Bored with tales of hand-made doll’s houses, and with people plugging themselves, we decided it was high time to make some mention of this great Aussie tradition, as quintessentially Australian as Vegemite, as imperturbably hard as Crocodile Dundee. On the Thursday therefore I composed an ‘Ode to the Great Australian Ginger-Nut’, and read it to Gordon before the programme.

  ‘We’ll do it,’ he agreed conspiratorially.

  ‘Shouldn’t I square it first with the producer?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Gordon. ‘He’ll stop us.’

  I, after all, was leaving the country shortly, and Gordon was leaving the show within ten days.

  Fade-out came at 8.55 am, the scheduled item a musical snippet from Lionel Richie, who had already been interviewed on the programme.

  Despite frantic signals from the floor manager we moved, as unstoppable as juggernauts into our own ‘nut’ finale.

  All over the country, good middle-class Australians, the ‘disgusteds’ from Mooney Ponds, the ‘horrifieds’ from Hamilton, and the ‘speechless’ from Sydney erupted in a self-righteous orgy of myocardial infarcts.

  By one minute past nine Channel 10’s switchboard was in meltdown situation. The watchdog of Antipodean morals, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, was on the blower immediately, giving producer John Barton ‘the worst day in my television career’. That is saying something. Barton was the unfortunate investigative film-maker who had been sacked by Alan Bond after his Channel 7 documentary on Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen, which eventually resulted in libel damages of half a million dollars.

  What was it, well may you ask, that so incensed the population of a country whose projected image abroad is embodied by the Sir Les Pattersons, the Dame Edna Everidges, the Paul Hogans, the Pamela Stevensons and the Dennis Lillees? Here, in unexpurgated form, unbowdlerised by a single syllable and brought to you by the unqualified broad-mindedness of William Heinemann publishers, is the verse:

  Our GMA* anchor-man, Gordon,

  Kept dunking his nuts on the programme, When quite flaccid and soft

  He held them aloft

  Saying ‘No man can cope with a hard ’un’.

  Later, that evening, during a moment’s respite from the incoming calls, John phoned me to say it might be better if I did not bother to turn up for the final day. I was quite staggered at such a reaction to what was, when all was said and done, a piece of puerile double entendre. Let’s face it, the limerick could have been taken either way. It taught me a few salutary lessons, however. Never underestimate the prudery of a country that we Poms, often mocked for being the conservative ones, have always perceived as a trifle brash and outrageous.† And never, ever, ever sidestep a producer.

  The team left to spend the weekend in Brisbane, and I invited two of the distaff team, Lindsay and Vicky to Double Bay for lunch to celebrate my being banned from Channel 10.

  Afterwards we said goodbye to Vicki, who was returning to sub-zero temperatures in England to help organise David’s benefit season, and I returned to the Sebel to move the ever-increasing volumes of luggage into our next team abode, a block of self-catering service flats at Bondi Junction. There was a message waiting for me at the hotel. It was from Channel 9’s top-rating programme Willesee. Could they come and film a day in the life of Frances Edmonds (all copyright on poetry reserved)? I suddenly remembered that this is the country where Jean Shrimpton scandalised the good burghers of the city by wearing a miniskirt to the Melbourne Cup, and, what was worse, failing to wear gloves and a hat.

  And I recalled with a wry smile where that bit of controversy got her . . .

  Two days later a huge floral arrangement arrived from Gordon, all pink proteas, carnations and, metaphorically, tortured willow, with a message entitled ‘The Ginger-Nut Crunch’.

  There once was a boy called Gordy,

  Whose remarks were exceedingly bawdy.

  Till his mate got the sack

  And he got a smack

  And the lawyers from Arnotts* said ‘Tawdry’.

  Dear old Gordon. I remember him with great gratitude and affection. His new programme, an amalgam of hard news and current affairs, all melded together by Gordon’s own irrepressible personality, is bound to be the success he made of GMA. It was all great fun while it lasted.

  As luck would have it, my literary agent Mark Lucas, of Fraser and Dunlop, was at the time on business in Sydney from London. He assured me that this minor debacle, which had me
rely shocked the entire Australian nation, was really nothing to worry about and we could probably turn it into an ‘earner’. I had already been to the first day of the Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground with a group of his suitably iconoclastic mates. It is wonderfully soothing to be with people whose vaguely outrageous, undergrad sense of humour is consonant with your own.

  Mark, of course, had been immediately swept off to R. M. Williams, the men’s outfitters, by his schooldays buddy Mark Hopkinson, and kitted out with all the basic Crocodile Dundee gear, including the Akubra hat, the sort of hat for fanning the fire, watering the dog, staving off the dingoes and cornering the odd snake; the moleskins; and the kangaroo-skin boots. All this gear, and indeed anything Australian is currently the absolute rage in the States, thanks to the phenomenal box office success of the film. Apparently all you have to do to get laid in LA is get off your Qantas flight and say ‘G’day’. No letters, please.

  Mark Hopkinson is a whizz-kid merchant banker here at Schroders, Australia. He reminds me of my second brother, Brendan: extremely bright, a very dry wit, encyclopaedic knowledge on all sorts of unlikely esoteric subjects, constitutionally incapable of suffering fools gladly. We have now all decided that the only ‘corporate-yuppy’ way to communicate is over the carphone in the BMW, preferably in a traffic jam on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, whilst letting whomsoever you happen to be talking to know that you just have to hop out for a minute to pay the twenty-cent toll. I was suitably impressed to learn that Mark had swiftly sold all his New Zealand stock upon hearing the early morning weather forecast one day on the car radio. The winds in Fremantle were about to favour Dennis Conner’s Stars and Stripes against the Kiwis, who were fighting a last-ditch attempt to stay in the Louis Vuitton challengers final for the America’s Cup. Sure enough, big bad Dennis romped home, and sure enough, the stock exchange in Auckland plummeted immediately. Until then the mystique of the money markets had always fascinated me. Suddenly I realised that such things are merely based on the way the wind blows.