Cricket XXXX Cricket

by Frances Edmonds

  Back at the pontoon, the last of the Samurai were busily puking their hearts out. No matter, it was all good biodegradable stuff, quite a well-balanced and finely masticated diet of first-rate protein and carbohydrates, and the fish were lapping it up. It is, however, very difficult to be properly sick whilst trying to maintain ‘face’, to hang on to a pontoon in a twenty-five knot wind, to empty the ‘Fairisle’ chunder from your mask and mouthpiece, to balance two heavy oxygen tanks on your back, and to look interested in what the semi-Anglophone interpreter is giving you by way of advice from the instructor. The unblemished white porcelain complexions of the ladies incidentally had sprouted a distinct green willow pattern design . . .

  It was not a very large shark, about five feet from toothy-looking jaws to tail, but then again I am not a very fast swimmer. Story of my life. All style and no stamina. I had heard stories about divers thumping sharks in the eye, but on the other hand I thought it better to let him make the first move. No point aggravating him unnecessarily. It was nice to think still in terms of ‘other’ hands. Perhaps soon I would not have that luxury.

  My life flashed before me in a second. It seemed to contain an awful lot of empty bottles, and a couple of unfinished books. Not much for the obit columns to work on there. I wondered whether Phil would demand a refund on the return half of my chopper fare. I did not feel the cold fingers of panic grip my stomach, just the dreadful sense of irony that I should be sloughing off the mortal coil to feed a fucking fish.

  Suddenly, as if from nowhere, our instructor appeared, and the shark turned its belligerently carnivorous attentions on him. Now, I am as full of the milk of human kindness for my fellow man as the next woman, but I could not help but see this as anything other than a very definite step in the right direction. The two were within inches of one another, seasoned diver and five-foot sharkette, when the instructor lifted his arm. Whoopee! Perhaps a swift right hook to the snout, that would teach the blighter a lesson . . .

  The next thing was the perfectly incredible spectacle of the black be-latexed diver and the white-tipped coral reef shark muzzling one another affectionately. The pet shark, Sophie, was completely harmless, and even if she wasn’t, she had so much to eat on the reef that she certainly wouldn’t be bothered with tough old boots like me. Or so they assured me, a full thirty seconds later, as, traumatised, I reached the pontoon in true Dawn Fraser style, not to be enticed into the water again that day.

  12 / Pillow Talk

  There comes a time in every married woman’s life when she feels the need to do something totally out of character, something she would subsequently rather forget, something she might be too ashamed to admit even to her best friend. It is more than often due to the not uncommon sentiments of frustration, loneliness and boredom. Modern psychologists sometimes refer to this phenomenon as the ‘Talking to the Husband Syndrome’ or THS for short.

  Perhaps it was simply a case of delayed shock. Loquacious at the best of times, the confrontation with the shark had thrown me into severe verbal overdrive. So bad did it become one day that I was even moved to talk to Philippe-Henri. I had to. He was the only person in bed with me at the time . . .

  The Derby and Joan of the England team, we are, by now, old hands at this touring lark: the joys of success in India, the mortification of defeat in the West Indies, the phoenix-like renaissance of the team in Australia, we have seen it all.

  More than anything, of course, it was interesting to discuss the essential differences between the disastrous Windies tour last year, and the triumphant march through Oz less than twelve months later. There can be no doubt that Australia proved much tamer opposition than the West Indies, especially in the bowling department. In the Windies there were the likes of Marshall, Garner, Holding, Courtney Walsh and (particularly in Jamaica) Patrick Patterson, constantly assailing the England batsmen with ‘throat balls’ and giving the Windies a marked psychological dominance from the outset. Even as early as the island match against Jamaica, before the First Test, their pace-men were out to undermine England’s confidence. We both remembered the spectacle of Walsh coming in to bowl against David Gower, and visibly moving up several gears in a definite attempt to frighten England’s prize scalp. In the dressing room everyone took heed of the warning so clearly being issued: there was to be plenty more of this to come.

  The effect of this on England, apart from completely understandable bouts of the Caribbean equivalent of Montezuma’s Revenge, was an almost immediate disintegration in morale. As a consequence of anticipating the worst, batters, even top batters, got it firmly lodged into their heads that they would inevitably receive the unplayable ball at some stage. They therefore felt that they absolutely had to play shots in between those unplayable balls. Nobody was prepared to play ‘à la Boycott’, to hang around, to stay there, to wear the fast bowlers down, and to try to hit any bad ball that came their way.

  The rest is history. In the First Test in Jamaica, playing on a variable wicket, the fast boys just annihilated England, most of the English batsmen going down playing shots. That, along with Gatting being smacked in the face in the one-dayer, reinforced the general apprehension for the rest of the tour.

  Therein, if anywhere, lies the major difference between the two tours – the state of the Englishmen’s minds. In Australia, despite some very lacklustre performances in the State matches, particularly against the Aussie left-armers, it was obvious that the Australians were never going to dominate England psychologically, and neither were the English batsmen ever going to feel uncomfortable against the sort of pace they could generate.

  From then on there were various lucky windshifts which served to pull England out of their doldrums. Gower being dropped on nought in the first innings in the First Test was perhaps the most crucial turning point. He went on to make fifty-odd, which overnight lifted him out of his own personal crisis. And then, of course, there was Botham’s blistering 138 in the same match which completely restored England’s shattered confidence in their own abilities, and engendered the general feeling that 400 runs should always be possible against that sort of attack.

  A few inspired pieces of advice had also helped matters along. Until then, I had never known that it had been Phil’s idea in Brisbane for Gatt to move himself up the batting order to number three. Early on in the tour, the opening batsmen were looking a bit dicey, and David was struggling at that position. Phil argued that Mike had always done a good job for Middlesex at number three, and should in the circumstances be trying to do the same here in Australia, with David at number five. The new permutation worked wonderfully well, helped by the fact that the opening partnership, the combination England had striven so hard to find, also came good.

  Here again the difference between England and Australia was fundamental. Broad and Athey soon melded together to form an extremely solid opening pair, and their stability provided an excellent platform on which other stroke-makers could build. The Aussies, on the contrary, were in trouble for most of the series, with Boon so badly out of nick. The Australians were constantly chopping and changing in increasingly more desperate efforts to find an acceptable batting line-up, whilst England had the luxury of consolidating into a well-balanced squad.

  This line-up was in marked contrast to last tour’s hokey-cokey style team. Because the batting was so positive in Australia, England could afford to play five genuine bowlers, with a balanced attack of three seamers and two spinners. The two spin-twins, Edmonds and Emburey, accounted for a good fifty per cent of all the bowling, which meant that England had long periods of control in the field. In the West Indies, on the other hand, England, in ever more frantic attempts to shorten a tail which refused to wag, were obliged to slot in the extra batsman at the expense of a specialist bowler, and the mere memory of Viv Richards smashing a century in about half an hour at Antigua is sufficient commentary on the wisdom of such a four-bowler approach.

  Success, naturally, feeds upon success in the same way defeat feeds up
on defeat. Moods and attitudes, for better or for worse, tend to infiltrate the entire team. The England batsmen were feeling good and this rubbed off on the bowlers. Dilley in particular went from strength to strength. He started off with five wickets in Brisbane, and gradually perfected those outswingers to become a genuinely top-class bowler. DeFreitas too did well in Brisbane, and when Gladstone was suddenly given his chance in Melbourne, he grasped it with alacrity.

  Man-management, too, has undergone a welcome change since last year’s tour. In fairness to England’s management in the Windies, it is clearly easier to manage a buoyant and successful team than it is to manage a disheartened, disaffected side. The unfortunate Tony Brown was trying to deal with a team who were being massacred on the pitch and flagellated in the press, and half of whom were making no secret of the fact that they did not want to be on tour in the first place. At least there was none of that kind of nonsense for management to contend with this time.

  It would be quite wrong, however, to suggest that this management team did better merely because external circumstances were easier. In effect, even in absolute terms, they did a far more professional job. This was probably due, in no small measure, to the fact that every member of the management in Australia had a specific job, a well-defined remit, and an awareness of the confines and the boundaries of his competence. Micky Stewart, for instance, was ‘cricket manager’; he dealt specifically with everything appertaining to cricket. Last year Bob Willis’ job was always completely vague, and it was difficult not to feel a trifle sorry for him when he ended up as little more than a glorified baggage manager.

  Micky has certainly played a major role in the team’s organisation. When England lost in Brisbane in the State match before the Test, for example, it was he, not the captain Gatt, who led the short postmortem. If David had had that sort of counsel and support in his day, there is little doubt he would still be captain of England now.

  Good old Fender. He certainly was never one to go overboard about the value of externals. When hammered by the press in Antigua for failing to insist that the team should practise in unplayable conditions (the ‘cow patch’ was the woefully apt appellation of the nets), his reply was quite simply, ‘If you want cosmetics, go to Boots.’

  At the time, I had thought that an inspired bon mot: smoke presumably emanating from his ears. P. B. H. May had not.

  No, David never really saw the value of public relations, a discipline based more not on doing the right things, but on being seen to do them. Micky on the contrary had a very shrewd idea of the value of externals. In Australia the team was always on the field at 10 am for an 11 am start, ostentatiously running, sprinting and stretching while the spectators and press were supposed to be filtering in. (I use the word ‘supposed’ because most of the press would in fact be watching proceedings on the television from the comfort of their hotel rooms until TV coverage stopped, when they were positively obliged to go to the ground.) The point is that De Freitas, Dilley and Botham had already been in the nets bowling their hearts out since 9.15 am, a patented recipe for pulling a muscle – bowling first and stretching later. Nevertheless, it was imperative to do the physical jerks whilst everyone was at least thought to be watching.

  Of course, it is easy to act the overtly professional part at Australian grounds, where facilities are second to none. Although the early morning aerobics were basically for public consumption only, practice arrangements, with plenty of enthusiastic club players and excellent net bowlers putting the team through their paces, were extremely useful. Subsequently, when the team was on a winning streak, and everyone was trying one hundred per cent, just about everything on the field looked good. England’s catching and fielding, for example, were never better.

  The greatest triumph of the entire tour, however, and for once Phil and I were in total agreement, would have to be the unsung hero, manager Peter Lush. His personality and common sense have been the bulwark of the team’s success. I, for one, shall certainly treat the next ‘scoop’ he gives me with the deepest suspicion, but when the bouquets are being handed out for this Grand Slam victory, he deserves the largest.

  By this stage, Phil had started to give me yet another ball-by-ball account of his five Allan Border wickets, and his strained groin muscle in Sydney. I fell asleep instantly. Meanwhile, somewhere over Heathrow, a British Airways flight from Sydney was stacking to land, and England’s victorious cricket team were preparing for a rapturous welcome.

  Epilogue

  1. England retained the Ashes and won the series 2–1

  2. England won the Benson and Hedges Challenge

  3. England won the Benson and Hedges World Series Cup

  4. Dennis Conner and Stars and Stripes won the America’s Cup

  5. Alan Bond took over Kerry Packers’s Channel 9

  6. Rupert Murdoch took over the Herald and Weekly Times

  7. William Heinemann Australia were granted permission to publish Peter Wright’s memoirs. The decision went to appeal

  8. Malcom Fraser never did find those trousers

  This ebook edition published 2015 by

  Elliott and Thompson Limited

  27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX

  www.eandtbooks.com

  First published 1987 by The Kingswood Press

  Epub 978-1-78396-169-6

  Mobi 978-1-78396-170-2

  Text copyright © 1987 Frances Edmonds

  Preface © 2015 Frances Edmonds

  Cover artwork by Tony Brooks

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.