CMJ

by Christopher Martin Jenkins

  Their attitude was typical of Australian sportsmen. They hate losing and will sacrifice much to win, but if they are bettered they are gracious. I wish I could say the same about their prime ministers. John Howard, whom I had first met at a dinner party with Colin Cowdrey, given by the Australian manager of Barclays Bank in a beautiful apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour, badly let himself down when he presented World Cup winning medals to England’s rugby team in 2003 with all the grace of a gaoler handing meals through prison bars to criminals he despised.

  An equally poor example had been set, albeit less publicly, by Bob Hawke when England won the Ashes at Melbourne in 1986/7. I had been asked to a make a brief appearance at lunch in a large function room in the great Southern Stand (so great that it holds more spectators in one area than the whole of Lord’s) at a time when it had become obvious that England were about to win the fourth Test and, with it, the series. Speaking to the 3000 or so people in the room, Hawke actually uttered the words: ‘If there’s anything worse than a whingeing Pom, it’s a winning Pom.’ He did not appear to be joking.

  16

  INDIA

  No one forgets his or her first experience of India, even if it comes in a bowl of mulligatawny. It is smell as much as taste that brings back my first visit to the subcontinent in 1976. At 4.30 on a dark November morning there was something in the air of India that has lingered ever since.

  It was the sharp, damp smell of dew-laden air mixed with the tang of smoke from dung and wood fires, often experienced on this and subsequent visits during bus-rides to airports to catch flights ridiculously scheduled a little after dawn. To me that early morning smell, repeated in the cool evenings of the Indian winter, is even more characteristic than the odour of drains or sewage which, in the cities, often underlies and mingles with spices and petrol fumes during the hotter hours of sunlight. By contrast, the sweet scent of jasmine in public or hotel gardens often beguiles those who are privileged to remain separated from the incredible rush and bustle of daily life.

  Gosh, that bustle! For most Indians I dare say, even now that the vast nation is bursting forward into one of the two great economic powers of the 21st century, life is still a frenetic rush to earn a living. Thirty-five years ago the rickshaw puller in Calcutta, bare-footed on the side of one of those wide, chaotic streets with all manner of faster transport pressing him towards the pavement, had little time for self-pity or to compare his lot with that of anyone else, but to see him was to sense his affinity with peasant life in any city of any country throughout most of human history. The poor are always with us.

  On cricket tours one was generally up amongst the middle-classes at least, insulated from this daily struggle for life, but one had to be very insensitive not to notice it, or not to thank one’s lucky stars that, whatever the frustrations of a broadcaster or journalist in those days before the internet, there was usually going to be a decent meal and a comfortable bed at the end of the day.

  The term ‘decent meal’ is relative. I discovered many years after that first visit, following an endoscopy to investigate my chronic indigestion, that I have a hiatus hernia. It is both a very minor and a common condition but it could explain why garlic and chilli, two of the staple ingredients of most Indian dishes, simply do not agree with my constitution. So, while others around me tucked into their curries with delight, I picked my way around them, wimpish as a bather reluctant to step into the shallows of a cold sea. No doubt as much because of this reluctance to embrace the local fare as because of any lack of hygiene I have never completed a tour of the subcontinent without getting a serious tummy upset.

  Once, on the ill-fated England tour of 1992/3, when Graham Gooch and others fell ill after eating prawns in Madras, I managed to get through more or less unscathed until the last port of call, Bombay. I had been looking forward to staying once again at the country’s most famous hotel, the Taj Mahal at Apollo Bunder, opposite the Gateway of India.

  The ‘Taj’, scene of ghastly terrorist murders in 2008, was a haven when first experienced by me in 1976. Judy and I rapidly changed our plans and stayed there later on the tour, having originally accepted the kind invitation of a shipping friend of my father’s to stay at his empty beach house in Juhu. That was an unfortunate decision, despite an interesting meeting there with a wise old man who told me that the stars were predicting a sudden fall from grace for Mrs Gandhi at the forthcoming elections. The stars proved much more accurate than the opinion polls, because she lost heavily.

  We had arrived at the beach house – in fact a very large, fusty old place with a single elderly servant – with our infant sons, late at night. Poor James, not yet four, was put in a large room by himself and was terrified when a large rat scurried across the floor. That was just the start. Judy and I were just getting to sleep when the house shook and a thunderous sound revealed the fact that, although beautifully placed in one respect beside a sandy beach, the house was also just off the runway of Bombay airport. Our decision to move back to the comfort of the hotel sooner rather than later was made the next morning. I had got out of bed bursting with the anticipated pleasure of breathing in the ozone from the Indian Ocean and having my customary swim before breakfast. There at the water’s edge were scores of male figures, all squatting on their haunches. Even from a distance and with their clothes covering their activity as best they could it was all too evident that they were defecating.

  So, back to the Taj! Ever since it was built it has been recognised by all the swanky hotel guides as one of the great hotels of the world, although its Marlburian architect threw himself off a balcony to his death when it was first opened because it had been constructed the wrong way round. The top-floor restaurant at the hotel, like the beautiful old building itself, with its high ceilings, lovingly polished wood and abundance of marble, is five-star.

  Rewarding myself with a meal there in the company of friends, after several weeks of self-denial, I selected the lobster bisque as my starter. You may or may not believe it, but I promise you that the last mouthful had barely passed my lips before my face whitened, perspiration beaded my forehead and my stomach began to churn. For two days, possibly more, I was a prisoner in the bathroom.

  Lightning is not supposed to strike twice, but it did when I returned to Bombay, now Mumbai, at the end of England’s tour in 2005/6. The circumstances, alas, illustrate the accident-proneness that has besieged me all my life.

  It had been an enjoyable and relatively short tour, starting with a rousing drawn Test in Nagpur after Andrew Flintoff had taken over the England captaincy from the injured Michael Vaughan. England capped three new Test players in that game – Alastair Cook, who started with sixty and a second-innings century, Monty Panesar and Ian Blackwell. By the last match in what was now called Mumbai they had introduced a fourth, Owais Shah, who played a prominent part in a victory that was also memorable for the success of the Hampshire off-spinner Shaun Udal, one of those seasoned journeymen county cricketers who would no doubt have done the same many times over the years if ever they had been given the chance.

  On the evening after my last day of reporting I had suggested a particular restaurant, which had been recommended to me, for an end of tour get-together for the BBC commentary team but, as usual, I had more work to do than any of them because of my primary responsibility to The Times. This is how the events of that evening unfolded:

  20.15: Nearly finished the third (quotes) piece for the paper. Receive text message from Aggers (Jonathan Agnew) – ‘See you there’ – acknowledge it and assure him of imminent departure, unaware battery is low, despite recent recharge. 20.40: Leave hotel in breezy mood with work done looking forward to some r and r and a very, very fine bottle of Indian red. Tell doorman to make sure that driver understands destination – the Copper Chimney at Worli, as recommended to me by the amiable Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle and passed on to Aggers as the ideal place.

  20.41. Enter super-comfortable (old and battered) black and yellow t
axi and ring office to check that my copy has safely landed. Speak for fifteen minutes to the ever enthusiastic, professional but sometimes rather loquacious Marcus Williams, not realising that this is further running down the battery to a fatal degree.

  21.00: ‘Are you sure we are going to Copper Chimney?

  ‘Worli, Sir.’

  ‘Copper Chimney?’

  (With frown) ‘Copper Chimney, Sir’

  ‘Much further?’

  Big frown.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’

  ‘Ten minutes, Sir.

  Send message to Aggers asking what’s for pudding and suggesting that the driver appeared to be lost.

  21.20: Triumphant shout: ‘Copper Chimney, Sir.’

  Fork out 300 rupees. Driver, looking doubtful, insists on waiting.

  21.21. Restaurant manager has no record of a booking by Mr. Agnew. Or by Mr. Jonathan. Or the BBC. They have not seen Mr. Bishen Bedi. Nor Mr. Geoffrey Boycott. Nor do they give the impression that in any case they would distinguish them from Adam.

  Quick inspection of entire room reveals no one familiar.

  ‘Jonathan, Sir? Upstairs Johnson and Johnson.’

  ‘Ah. That must be it. Thank you.’

  Up the stairs like Basil Fawlty and open door to find I have stepped into the middle of some lecture, or marketing meeting of the aforementioned Johnson and Johnson. All heads turn.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Down the stairs, again like Basil.

  ‘I think it must be another Copper Chimney. Can you please ring your other restaurants to find out which has the BBC party? About ten people probably. Bishen Bedi and Geoff Boycott might be there. Old cricketers.’

  21.30–22.00: Distracted phone-calls by the manager, whilst customers come in and out.

  I text Aggers again. No response. Text anyone else I can think of who would be there.

  Phone starts to warn of low battery. Goes blank.

  ‘Have you got a Nokia recharger, please?’

  Joy. They have.

  ‘Can you find the restaurant where the BBC party is?’

  ‘No, Sir. Please sit. I will try again.’

  ‘Please ring the Taj Mahal hotel and let me speak to them.’

  Long wait for reception to answer. Eventually get message through at third attempt. Which Copper Chimney had they booked the table for Mr. Agnew?

  ‘When was booking made?’

  ‘Yesterday, I think.’

  ‘Sir, it will be different receptionist. I will try to locate and ring you back.’

  22.30. Taj return call. Cannot find receptionist. Off duty now. All spirit deflated.

  ‘Can I have the Nokia phone please. I must go.’

  Locate driver and begin to return to the Taj. More attempts to text everyone. Finally make contact with Peter Baxter.

  23.00. Arrive as everyone is longing to go to bed after a merry party.

  Mike Selvey kindly agrees to stay on to share a bottle. Food apparently very good. I would be happy with soup or bread but ask if anything is recommended?

  Stephen Fry, a surprising but most witty and welcome addition to the original party, in India making a TV programme, says that the chicken was good. I order ‘boneless chicken’. It looks very red and tastes like raw garlic which I know will do me no good but I am too tired to care.

  23.45 approx. Arrive back at hotel room. Ah well, only one piece to do tomorrow; some shopping; a chance at last to lie by the pool and read, then a delightful daytime flight home in a Virgin ‘Upper Class’ seat on Friday afternoon.

  23.45 and 30 seconds: Urgent need to go straight to bathroom. Very urgent indeed, in fact.

  Five miserable days later, after being given many pills by the hotel doctor and suffering a most uncomfortable journey home, an analysis revealed that I had had E.coli poisoning. By then my normal eleven stone and a bit had become ten and a half stone.

  If the food seldom attracted me in India, most other aspects of life there did, not least, naturally, the cricket. There has never been an England tour there to match my first in 1976/7. John Lever, popularly known as J.K., was the star as England swept to an unassailable lead in the first three Tests with a bowling attack of high quality that also included Bob Willis, Chris Old and Derek Underwood.

  The impact made by Lever’s success in Delhi was reflected in a decision to set up ball-by-ball commentary on the closing stages of the first Test, only the fourth time that this had been attempted. To my delight the experiment was repeated in Madras and the last two Tests. We used a mainly English team but there has never been any shortage of knowledgeable commentators from India, including the plummy voiced Pearson Surita, who sounded like a Maharajah, and ‘Jackie’ Baroda, who actually was one. He was introduced each morning on Radio Three as ‘Fatasingh Gaekwad, the former Maharajah of Baroda’, but Bob Hudson’s suggestion was that his fellow commentators should call him ‘Prince’. I always thought that sounded rather as if one were addressing a dog.

  English bowlers were not supposed, according to past England touring teams, to get lbw decisions from Indian umpires but Lever got several in the first Test at Delhi with his late inswingers, a fact that might have had something to do with Greig’s statement, at his opening press conference on the morning of the team’s arrival, that ‘in my view Indian umpires are the best in the world’.

  Apart from Richie Benaud no one appreciated the importance and practical value of the media more than Greig. He was always happy to talk, did so with passion and intelligence if not always profound care and, so far as I was concerned anyway, did not change post-Packer.

  In India, generally speaking, he charmed both the media and public. He had a real flair for PR and conveyed both his belligerence and his sense of fun. On reflection I dare say that, like many others, he under-estimated the intelligence of many Indians.

  Things changed later on that tour when, at Bangalore, it became clear that one of the umpires had been appointed by an embarrassed home Board to make absolutely sure that the home team won. ‘That was a very surprising decision’, I suggested diplomatically during ball-by-ball commentary as Mohammad Ghouse lifted his finger to send another England batsman back to the pavilion. ‘Surprising?’ thundered my temporary summariser, the lovably outspoken Robin Marlar: ‘it was a ghastly decision, outrageous! That ball wouldn’t have hit another set of stumps. You know it and I know it.’

  India duly went on to win that game and in the last at Bombay England only just managed a draw, thanks to fine defensive batting against the spinners, but the overall honours had already gone to England. They were helped by internal divisions in the home dressing-room, notably between their two finest players, the fiery captain, Bishen Singh Bedi, the most beautifully balanced spin bowler of them all, and the more calculating Sunil Gavaskar, second only to Sachin Tendulkar among the many marvellous Indian batsmen since Partition in 1947.

  No previous BBC cricket correspondent had been to India and I was feeling my way for much of the time, a heavy reporting schedule depending on the quality of telephone lines that frequently failed, to my hair-tearing frustration. For longer broadcasts I would have to travel to studios to confirm line bookings, a long-winded business requiring the drinking of copious amounts of very sweet tea. The amount of paperwork required to get anything done was unbelievable. (Cashing a traveller’s cheque was often a day-long experience.)

  One Saturday I had to dash to a local studio after play, hoping to give a live report of the day’s cricket for Sports Report. Unfortunately the studio was being ‘modernised’. There were wires everywhere and for several frustrating hours the engineer in the studio tried in vain to get through to London. I could imagine the producers in London wondering where their idle correspondent was. Relaxing in a bar somewhere, probably. At last, at about 10.30 pm in Jullunder and with only some thirty minutes of Sports Report left, he made contact on a thin sounding line, with an echo. I dashed into the studio to give my report and play down an interview with one of the play
ers, whereupon the studio door opened again and the engineer came back, accompanied by a very important looking Sikh, dressed in a smartly tailored navy blue safari suit. His black beard was expertly trimmed and the rest of his black hair enveloped by a matching blue patka. ‘Desist please, Sir’, said the engineer as I prepared to utter my opening words to an expectant audience far away in the studio in London. ‘Chief Minister for Punjab has arrived to give party political broadcast.’ I knew from the Minister’s unyielding countenance that there was absolutely no point in arguing. I could have wept.

  There was almost another abortive broadcast just after Christmas when I was persuaded by the producers in London to get Tony Greig to a local studio in Delhi for what was then quite an unusual type of transmission: a live phone-in. As usual, he was co-operative but our taxi drive to the main studios of All India Radio on a dark and foggy night seemed to go on for ever. Eventually the driver drew up in front of some impressive looking wrought-iron gates, firmly closed to all-comers. On the gate was a large notice proclaiming the owners of the premises: ‘Oil India’.

  Communications, or the lack of them, explained almost everything that went wrong on tours of India, sometimes extending to players arriving at matches without cricket kit that had gone by train and been delayed. The equipment was never lost for ever, however, because it was always, on that and several subsequent tours, guarded personally by a faithful ‘minder’ called Govind, a powerfully built man with a handsome round face who would sleep on the floor of dressing-rooms at night to look after the property of the teams under his care.

  Touring teams and press parties tend to have many happy memories of tours of India, if only because the wholly different culture helps them to stick together and share experiences. On a subsequent tour there was, for example, an interminable coach journey, most of it made in the hours of darkness, en route to a one-day international in Jamshedpur. The tour guide seconded to the press party by the local travel agents was an earnest and well-meaning little man called Ragu, whose local knowledge came to the fore as we approached this sprawling industrial city, home of the vast Tata steel empire, along a narrow road in the Dalma Hills.