‘THIS LITTLE BLOKE CAME OUT, WITH A FLOPPY GREEN CAP, WALKING TO THE MIDDLE LIKE A GIANT, MOBILE, GREEN MUSHROOM.’
Barry Norman was born in London on 21 August 1933. He is a film critic, writer and broadcaster. He presented the BBC’s Film programme from 1972 until 1998 when he moved to Sky, and he has written and presented documentary series for the BBC. He was a prominent journalist on national newspapers and still writes a weekly column for the Radio Times. He was also a regular broadcaster on radio and has written a number of novels as well as a book on cricket. He was awarded the CBE for services to broadcasting in 1998.
Having arrived early for our meeting, I sit in the reception area at the Groucho Club in London’s Soho, turning the pages of The Independent without taking in a single word. I am waiting for a man who has interviewed every film star worthy of the name, from George Clooney to Sophia Loren. I am feeling a touch apprehensive. Barry Norman appears, very apologetic, having suffered a train delay on his way into town. We settle either side of a small table and order coffee as he describes how his lifelong love of cricket began.
‘It all started with my maternal grandfather, who had been a huge Surrey fan all his life, and was always telling me tales of men called ’Obbs and ’Ayward, because they were a very working class, south London family and aspirates were an unnecessary luxury as far as they were concerned. I was about 10 years old and my granddad just kept talking to me about cricket and I got more and more intrigued by the whole thing. Because it was wartime, there wasn’t a lot of cricket being played, not even club or village cricket, or anything like that. So, never having seen it played, I went down to the public library and borrowed every book I could, and read avidly about the game.
‘The first game I ever saw was the Victory International, when England played the Australian Services, at Lord’s in 1945. I just fell in love with Lord’s there and then. Since then it has been one of my favourite places in the whole world. Wonderful! There were some pretty amazing players in both teams: Wally Hammond, who scored 83, Cyril Washbrook, who made 112, and Bill Edrich, who got 73. That was a great introduction to cricket. I was amazed at the beauty and the power of Hammond’s cover drives. I had read about cover drives and knew what they were, but when I saw Hammond batting – and that was the only time that I did – it was truly memorable.’
Barry’s memory and knowledge of a match played nearly 65 years earlier is quite remarkable. When I returned home, I find details of the game in the 1946 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. Each of the scores that he had quoted was spot on.
Barry was also a spectator at Don Bradman’s last appearance at Lord’s three years later. ‘I still see it all so vividly in my mind. It wasn’t a Test match; it was the Australians against the Gentlemen of England. It is unbelievable now that I got there at half past nine in the morning with my mates from school and the queue outside the Grace Gates went all the way round the corner to what was then the car park. Two men and a dog you would get in now. The place was absolutely packed and when Bradman came in, the whole crowd rose to him and cheered him all the way to the wicket. I do remember feeling slightly disappointed, because I had read about Bradman and I knew about his incredible exploits, and I was expecting a giant! Instead of which this little bloke came out with a floppy green cap, walking to the middle like a giant, mobile, green mushroom. But then, when he got there, wow! You suddenly realised that this was something else again. And he scored all of his runs with not a single shot in the air – all along the ground. Then, when he reached 150, he just lobbed one up and Martin Donnelly caught it. Bradman simply tucked his bat under his arm and walked back to the pavilion to another standing ovation from the entire crowd. And people were weeping. I mean, I was weeping. It was a hugely emotional occasion and we all knew we were never going to see anything like it ever again. And I never have. I have seen some wonderful players since, but nobody quite like Bradman. I think Bradman is the kind of Shakespeare of cricket: just as Shakespeare bestrides the English language, so Bradman bestrides cricket. The number one player of all time.’
Two memorable matches at Lord’s, but another particularly memorable match for Barry was played at Manchester in 1956. ‘I think probably because I got to know him quite well, the match I would love to revisit would be Jim Laker taking 19 wickets at Old Trafford, because you wouldn’t invent that. And the most amazing thing is that Tony Lock only got one wicket. Nevertheless, that is what happened. I think Jim is the greatest off-spinner that ever was. He was the second person, after Eric Morecambe, to describe me in public as a “cricket nut”. Because of that, and because I was kind of an off-spinner myself – albeit not in Laker’s class, of course – if I had a time machine and went back to a cricket match, that would be the one.’
Still looking back to those early days, Barry now talks about his active involvement in the game. ‘I started playing a bit at prep school but I don’t remember that very much. When I went to Highgate, which was my public school, that’s when I started playing. I was already hooked on the game, so playing it was just sheer bliss. I loved it. I started off as a fast medium bowler and a bit of a batsman and then, in my mid-teens, I suddenly grew during the winter and when I tried bowling fast medium again the next summer, for some reason my body wouldn’t let me. I had changed shape completely. So I switched to leg breaks and I bowled those for a number of years at school and then in club cricket, until I realised that being a leg spinner was not very sensible because you tend to be a bit too expensive for the captain. I had a couple of years off the game because I was working at weekends, and when I came back, I started to bowl off spin and stayed with that until the end of my playing career, such as it was.’
For 25 years, Barry enjoyed playing village cricket for Datchworth in Hertfordshire but towards the end it all started to get more serious. ‘They entered a league and suddenly it was much more competitive. I figured that my daily life in the media was competitive enough and that I didn’t want to carry that on into my weekend leisure activity, as it were. So I opted out of the first XI and went to play for the seconds instead, because they were still playing friendlies, which were great. Everybody is still trying their best but you are not treated as a pariah if you drop a catch or don’t get any runs.’
Then he became involved with the Lord’s Taverners, something that gave him another cricketing lease of life and a further interest in the game. ‘The first time I was approached was in the 1970s, when I was presenting the Today programme on Radio 4. Just before we went on air, the guy I was about to interview, whose name I’ve now forgotten, said “Oh, I’ve got a message for you from Eric Morecambe,” who at that time was President of the Taverners. And the message was, “Why isn’t Barry Norman, the biggest cricket nut in the country, a member of the Lord’s Taverners?” And I said, “Well, they’ve never asked me.” I couldn’t see any reason why they should because I thought that the Taverners members consisted mainly of people who had played for England. The kind of people who wouldn’t normally let me in the same ground, let alone the same side. But nevertheless an invitation came through.’
I show Barry the scorecard for a match between the Lord’s Taverners and a Scarborough Festival XI played in 1983. Amongst an impressive list of players is one BL Norman. ‘Good Lord! Well, I’ll be damned! I remember that. That was the start of the greatest weekend of my cricketing life, because it had started on the Saturday with a game in which I caught and bowled Mike Denness for six. But what that scorecard doesn’t tell you is that if I hadn’t caught that ball, I would have ended up with a navel the size of a Jaffa orange, because it came straight back out of the middle of Mike’s bat. I put my hands down there for protection, and it stuck. What made it even better was that our skipper was Brian Close, the hardest man who ever played cricket. He came up to me afterwards and said, “I wouldn’t have put my hands behind a ball like that on a cold day like this.” I reckon that is the finest compliment ever paid by one man to another.
‘Then it was down to Arundel on the Sunday and I got Colin Cowdrey caught at mid-off for about 13. I mean, totally misreading the vicious spin and cunning flight! Now, if Colin had got 53, he would have given me his wicket, but Colin didn’t give his wicket away at 13 in any kind of game. That was a genuine wicket. I took four wickets in all but was just pipped for Man of the Match by Kevin Keegan, who had also taken a few wickets and scored a lot of runs.’
Barry played as often as he possibly could until he decided to stop when he was 60. ‘I was on the Taverners’ Cricket Committee at the time and we were about to play our 40th Anniversary match at Lord’s. Derek Ufton, chairman of the Cricket Committee, was picking the side and, out of courtesy, every playing member of the Committee was invited. I thought, “Wow, my God, playing at Lord’s, wonderful.” And then I thought, “Well, I don’t know.” The pitch would be the one nearest the Tavern stand, with the short boundary on that side and a huge, huge boundary on the other side. I just had this image of myself fielding on the furthest boundary, the ball coming to me and my not being able to throw it back anywhere near the wicket. I would just be lobbing it in. I thought, “Only humiliation awaits me here.” So, because the batting had also pretty well gone, even though the bowling was still all right, I decided that this was probably a good time to bow out. So I said to Derek, “Thank you very much, but I won’t play.” He was terribly polite but I could see the look of intense relief in his eyes, as he could now get a proper cricketer to take my place!’
Films have been an everyday part of Barry’s life, not only because of his own career, but also because of that of his father, Leslie, a director and producer. But cricket was not really part of his family life, because his father and brother weren’t very interested. He also sees very little connection between the film world and cricket. ‘There is a strong connection between acting and cricket, but that’s mostly theatrical rather than film people. There is no real interplay between the two and consequently there aren’t too many films about cricket. It’s not a game that lends itself to films when you think about it. The most famous one was The Final Test, with Jack Warner, and that was made more than 50 years ago and was pretty absurd really. When you look at shots of Jack Warner trying to hook the ball, it is like a man with a newspaper trying to swat a fly. It’s quite clear the man had never held a cricket bat in his life. And he was already in his fifties and too old to be playing Test cricket. There is a lovely moment – I think it is Warner himself who came into bat, with the opening fast bowler, Ray Lindwall, supposed to be in action for Australia. As he passes the outgoing batsman – one of the famous cricketers – Warner asks, “Is he turning it much?” Turning it?! Not quite Lindwall’s type of bowling!
‘Then, much more recently, there was a film called Wondrous Oblivion, starring Delroy Lindo. Cricket was very important within the plot of the film but wasn’t the predominant part and the fact that nobody was very good was OK because they weren’t supposed to be. So that worked, although I suppose the best of all cricket films was the Indian film Lagaan. It’s not all about cricket, and the Indian team had never actually played cricket before. The British officers they were playing against were also not supposed to be all that good. So at that level it works rather well.
‘I remember David Puttnam telling me once that he wanted to make a film about the Bodyline Tour but there were all kinds of reasons why it wouldn’t really work. First of all, he would have to simplify the game for Americans – everyone would have to be caught or bowled. The intricacies of lbw would totally defeat the American audience. The actors who would play Douglas Jardine, Harold Larwood and the rest of the players would have to look like real cricketers when they were bowling and batting. He also wanted professional cricketers to stand in on the field for the actors. His main problem, the one that clinched it for him, was that the only bowler he could find whose accent seemed to resemble Larwood’s was Norman Cowans, and he was a slightly different colour from the original! So the whole thing was abandoned.’
We turn from films to books. Barry Norman’s Book of Cricket was published in 2009. ‘I have never enjoyed writing a book so much in my life. I have written 20 books and I have enjoyed this one far more than any of the others. It was bliss to be able to do something I really love, looking up cricket statistics and the rest of it, and to have an excuse for doing it, not just out of interest but while working and earning money. That was marvellous. And it went on and on, because I delivered what I thought was the final version – and then cricket went nuts. There were the Mumbai bombings, England abandoning the one-day internationals and going back to India to play two Tests. Then there was South Africa beating Australia in Australia, followed by Australia going to South Africa and winning there. And then the attack on the Sri Lankan team bus. So, in the end, my publisher said, “For goodness sake, stop, or we will never get it published!”’
Despite his love of all things cricket, Barry is not a great fan of the Twenty20 form of the game, seeing it as ‘text message cricket’. ‘Sachin Tendulkar said that Twenty20 cricket was like a dessert: very nice, but you can’t live on dessert – you have to have a main course. For me, the main course would always be Test cricket, because if all you know is Twenty20, you don’t know very much about cricket at all. It is the Test match that really sorts out the sheep from the goats and the men from the boys.’
Nevertheless, I suggest to him that Test Cricket could easily become an endangered species. ‘I suppose it is quite possible, because we have a generation coming up with the attention span of fruit flies! They don’t seem to have the ability to concentrate that long on a game. I don’t see where the problem is, frankly, because if you are watching a game it’s like reading a novel: everything is unfolding in front of you and the characters are developing as you go along. So I think it is endangered. Graham Gooch, the Eeyore of cricket – a really gloomy man, said that he could envisage a time when Twenty20 became like the golf circuit, with people just flying around the world following the sun and playing Twenty20. But I don’t think it would last long. If Test matches died out and the first-class game with it, so all you were left with was Twenty20, I think within 10 years cricket would be completely dead.’
But for the time being at least, it is very much at the forefront of his mind, conjuring up images of various games and players. ‘Harold Pinter said that he thought cricket was even better than sex and I can see where he is coming from. I don’t entirely agree with him. I think they are both very enjoyable activities with much to be said for them, but they are not exactly the same. But I think cricket is still marvellously English. There is a suggestion by some Australian that it was actually invented by the Flemish. There is no Belgian in the world who has ever had the kind of devious subtlety to invent a game like cricket and I think that is what I love about it. It is the subtlety, the deviousness, the complexity of it – the very perversity of it. It is quite the most ingenious game that was ever invented. Also, the finest way of wasting time that was ever invented!
‘But even so, there are a few things that I might want to change. To start with, there is probably too much of it – there shouldn’t be as much international cricket going on. I do think this is burning the players out too fast and it devalues the game. What is the point of Australia v Bangladesh, except that from the Australians’ point of view they come back with greatly enhanced averages, which are meaningless? I think it might be a good idea to have a stern look at who is actually playing Test cricket, making the qualification for Test cricket a bit harder, so that countries like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh have to prove themselves elsewhere rather than in Test cricket.
‘Or keep the statistics against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe separate. Look at the record of off-spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan, for example. More than one in five of his wickets were taken against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. And they are saying he is a greater bowler than Shane Warne. Well, he’s not. He’s as big a spinner of an off-break as I have ever seen but to me his action is, and always has been, suspect. And then the laws seem to have been changed to accommodate him. If you remember, Muralitharan was called for throwing, very properly in my view, by an Australian umpire in 1995. There were big repercussions and I think that the ICC thought that Sri Lanka might say, “OK that’s it – we are not going to play Test cricket any more” and there would have been a huge international incident. So all this tinkering went on. At the time this happened, a spinner was allowed to bend his elbow by five degrees at the time of delivery and I think fast bowlers could do it to ten degrees. Well, now look what happened. They discovered that Muralitharan was bending his elbow by 14 degrees when he bowled the doosra [off-spinner’s delivery that turns the other way like a leg break]. So they said, “OK, tell you what – everybody can bend their elbow by 15 degrees now.” What they appear to have done is look at Murali’s action which, in my view hasn’t really changed since day one, and said it’s now okay, never mind what a few umpires might have thought. So what happens in the future? If another magical spinner turns up, who bends his elbow by 17 degrees, are they going to say that’s fine, too? And where will it all end?’
Barry’s lunch appointment beckons and we agree that he should end on a lighter note. And he succeeds – kind of… ‘I associate playing cricket with having lots of laughs afterwards and in all the years of playing cricket, I only met two people that I really disliked in the game. I was playing for my village side and a friend of mine, the local headmaster, had opened the innings. He based his game on that of Geoffrey Boycott, so he was hitting the ball all right but not really much off the square. Even so, I came in and joined him and we had a decent partnership, in the course of which he made his very first 50 ever in any form of cricket. To get to that milestone, he hit a two. I ran back up to the bowler’s end to complete the second, safely made my ground and then started walking down the pitch to congratulate him. The bowler picked up the ball, broke the wicket and asked, “How’s that, Dad?” and the umpire said, “That’s out, son.” And I was given out. I will never forgive those two people. If I met them again, I would kill them, even now. I got 46 and I was run out. That was appalling. It really means something when we say, “It’s not cricket.” But not to those two bastards.’
And on that funny but sad note, we leave the Groucho. Barry pauses to light a cigarette and heads towards another more traditional club in St James’s Square for lunch with some long-term journalist friends. I head home for a sandwich with Wisden.