Rachael Heyhoe Flint (Baroness Heyhoe Flint) captained the England women’s cricket team from 1966 to 1978. The tour to New Zealand took place in 1969.
Her autobiography Heyhoe! was published in 1978.
NEW ZEALAND GAVE me a chance to try out a different but very vital type of tactic, in one friendly match we were playing. The game was staged at North Shore, very near to the docks. We were out fielding in this particular encounter when a row of bronzed British naval officers appeared on the boundary and gave great vocal support. So, as captain and being in charge of tactics, I immediately moved a fielder out so that she stood right among the handsome ‘fellers’ on the edge of the field. She knew the tactics and we all knew the tactics, and when the next wicket fell our deep fielder came running in to the cluster of players in the middle of the field and reported, ‘There’s a party on the ship tonight – how many want to go?’ This proves that women place as much importance on tactics while touring as men do!
Graeme Fowler (Lancashire and England) played in twenty-one Tests.
His diary Fox on the Run appeared in 1989. It’s October 1984, and he has just arrived in India as part of the England touring team. ‘Jabba’ is Mike Gatting, ‘Giff’ is Norman Gifford.
31ST OCTOBER. We had a good flight. Club class, but I spent about four hours in the galley, playing cards while Jabba ate cheese and peanuts, so it was enjoyable. The BA crew were pleasant. I didn’t even see the film between the time in the galley and knocking back red wine.
The arrival, though, was unusual. There was no one to meet us, which was a complete mystery to anyone who has been here before. I expected hordes of people clambering everywhere, but not a sign of anyone, not even the usual official party. We did arrive at 5.13 a.m. local time, which might have had something to do with it. At the hotel, however, we were met by three musicians dressed up as Mexicans, who welcomed us with ‘Home on the Range’!
We went straight to bed, and when we woke up it was to the news that Indira Gandhi had been shot by Sikhs. The first reaction was one of incredulity, followed by horror, shock, etc. But as the day went on and tales began to come back to the hotel of what was happening in Delhi, we began to wonder where that left us. Everybody is in chaos. The tour is in limbo. Do we carry on or do we fly home?
1ST NOVEMBER. The fighting in the streets is getting worse. Our hotel is away from the centre, so we are a little detached from it. The people from the Imperial Hotel, which is right in the city centre, were evacuated out here because they were virtually under siege. Four of the press, including Graeme Morris, were set upon last night – from all accounts their hard journalism was antagonistic to the locals.
Even from our hotel we can see the city burning. It is eerie, because all we can do is sit by the pool, work out in the hotel gym, relax and wait. As Vic Marks put it, ‘While Delhi is falling, so far I’ve played bridge and had a sauna and jacuzzi.’ I reminded him we’d also played chess.
Needless to say, there was no question of practising. We did not do so as a mark of respect; had we practised, we might have encouraged some ugly scenes.
We had a meeting with the tour management this evening. A twelve-day mourning period has been decreed, so there is no chance of any cricket in that time, which means the original tour schedule is already out. So there is no point in our being here, quite apart from the possible danger. How strong that is is difficult to tell. [Team manager] Tony Brown, I thought, was a bit harsh in putting down some people’s legitimate fears, directed in the main at Allan Lamb. The news has come in that two hotels have been burnt down, that Sikhs are being killed, and that the road to the airport is blocked, which does not add to one’s composure. But everything is in limbo at the moment, and the mood among the players is fragile, to say the least.
2ND NOVEMBER. We left the hotel to go to the High Commission for a practice on coconut matting. It was hardly first-class practice, but it served to relieve the boredom. Vic was struck in the face trying to catch a skyer from Giff during fielding practice. He didn’t need stitches, but he ended up with a sore black eye and a small cut. In the evening we went back to the High Commission again to play darts and snooker and to have a drink with the people there. We got back to the hotel after midnight and had a laugh at the NBC news reporter who was stationed outside our hotel. He was useless and I couldn’t stop laughing at him.
3RD NOVEMBER. Today is the state funeral. Mrs Gandhi is being cremated. Millions of people have gathered, and it is being transmitted live on TV. Half of the commentary is in English, half in Hindi. There is some Hindi on at the moment, so I’ve got Barbra Streisand playing. I’m watching with Vic. From the window, I can see a lot of the lads are trying to pass time away round the pool.
The latest news is that we may be going to Sri Lanka, but it isn’t official yet. Frantic negotiations are taking place to try and salvage some kind of tour, but nothing can happen here until the official period of mourning is over; so even if the tour can start with a new itinerary then, there is no point in our being here in the meantime. The High Commission think the violence could get worse – the death toll has risen to 700 – and many of the press, who have been here before, are very sceptical about any cricket being played at all.
4TH NOVEMBER. We travelled to Colombo on the President of Sri Lanka’s plane. It was pretty short notice, and we had to split our baggage to take essentials with us, but it was a great relief and not a bad trip – there were only forty of us on the Tri-Star, so we had plenty of room. We managed to get some Swan lager, which made for a pleasant journey. The President, who had been at the funeral, introduced himself, and didn’t seem a bad bloke.
We arrived mid-evening and it was pouring down. As soon as we got here we found the bar full of New Zealand cricketers on their way to Pakistan. It was good to see them and have a drink and a chat and swap stories.
W.G. was twenty-four at the time of the tour to Canada and the USA in 1872 and already known as ‘The Champion’. He says about the experience, ‘it stands out in my memory as a prolonged and happy picnic’.
These Reminiscences were published in 1899.
ON THE EVENING of the first day of the match we were banqueted, and I made my first appearance as an after-dinner speaker. I had to reply to a toast to ‘The Champion Batsman of Cricketdom’ and our Captain Fitz, in his amusing book, ‘Wickets in the West, or the Twelve in America’ records my maiden effort as follows: ‘Gentlemen, I beg to thank you for the honour you have done me. I never saw better bowling than I have seen to-day, and I hope to see as good wherever I go.’
We had another dinner on the second night, this time at the St. James’s Club, the members of which kindly invited us to be their guests. The people of Montreal took a very keen interest in all our movements, and large crowds assembled to watch the match. The newspapers paid great attention to all our doings. Their reports of the matches were very funny, if not very accurate. Neither the reporters nor the spectators seemed to understand the game very thoroughly, and we were often amused at the excitement when a catch was made off a bump ball.
From Montreal we travelled to the Dominion capital, Ottawa, where we took up our quarters at the Russell House, and were very well looked after by the proprietor. Canadian hotel-keepers seem to keep their bars open all night, and I was awakened about half-past two one morning by an exciting discussion which was going on in the bar. Recognising the voice of Farrands, whom we took out as our umpire, I listened to the conversation, and overheard a gentleman bragging about his own cricketing abilities, and declaring that he had scored freely off Freeman’s bowling. Farrands would not listen to this assertion, and bluntly told the man that Freeman would knock him, bat and ball, right through the wickets in a couple of overs. I believe that if I had not made my appearance and pacified the disputants, who were getting very excited, a row would have been inevitable. I poured oil on the troubled waters, and when I left the scene of the controversy Farrands was enjoying the hospitality of his antagonist.
Next day we commenced our match against twenty-two of Ottawa, and again we won a single innings victory. The wicket was certainly better than it had been at Montreal, and as I was in good form I made 73, the top score of our innings. Rose and Appleby did the mischief with their bowling against the twenty-two. Of course, we were entertained in Ottawa – we could not move anywhere in Canada without being entertained, as the people were so hospitable. Once more I was called on to reply to a toast, and once more I cannot do better than quote Fitzgerald’s report of my utterance: ‘Gentlemen, I beg to thank you for the honour you have done me. I never saw a better ground than I have seen to-day, and I hope to see as good wherever I go.’ I have a lively recollection of this particular banquet, because among the delicacies of the menu was a haunch of bear. Naturally, never having tasted this rarity, we all thought we would sample it. It looked all right, appetising enough in its way, but it was terribly tough and the taste was abominable. I quite believe that the haunch never came off a wild bear; in fact, I think it was a relic of some poor superannuated show animal whose dancing career was ended. It was quite impossible to get one’s teeth through it, and though the taste for bear may perhaps be cultivated, like the taste for olives, I fought shy of the delicacy ever afterwards. While in Ottawa we were asked, as everybody who visits Ottawa is asked, ‘to do the slides’. Shooting the slides really means sliding down the rapids of the Ottawa River on a lumber raft. We were comfortably assured that there could be no danger, as the lumber was always firmly secured when picnic parties were doing the shoots, and so most of the party accepted the invitation. It is exciting work for the first time, and makes a pleasant diversion, but it is a pastime of which one soon tires. As Fitzgerald said, the peril all told is not equal to a real slide on a bit of orange-peel on a London pavement.
Journeying via Lake Ontario, one of the most amazing of Canada’s inland seas, we next stopped at Toronto, where we found a well-prepared ground ready for our encounter with twenty-two of Toronto. The interest in our tour was even keener here than at Montreal or at Ottawa, and the crowd of spectators was greater than had hitherto been attracted by our matches. A flower-pot stand, with accommodation for 2000 onlookers, had been specially erected for the occasion, and much better accommodation was provided for the cricketers than we had previously enjoyed. For the first time, for instance, we found soap and towels provided in the pavilion for our use, and as the climate was sultry we greatly appreciated the thoughtfulness which prompted this provision. I recollect this match principally because I was lucky enough to make my first century in Canada on this occasion – my share of the English score of 319 being 142. Again we were easily victorious, winning for the third time in three matches by an innings. Against Rose and Appleby’s bowling the Toronto twenty-two compiled only 97 in the first innings and 117 in the second. The match excited great interest. One gentleman, who had come down from the country to witness the encounter, got himself introduced to me in order to offer me a couple of young bears to take home to England. I could not quite see to what use I could apply the creatures when I got them home, so I declined the seductive offer.
At Toronto we had another banquet – that goes without saying. This time the members of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club were our hosts. Here I perpetrated my third speech, reported by Fitzgerald thus: ‘Gentlemen, I thank you for the honour you have done me. I have never seen better batting than I saw to-day, and I hope to see as good wherever I go.’ Our visit to Toronto was made extremely pleasant by the hospitality of the people. We were entertained somewhere and somehow nearly every night. The Toronto Club invited us to a banquet, and of course I had to get on my legs again to respond to a toast. Fitz reports my fourth speech as follows: ‘Gentlemen, I have to thank you for the honour you have done me. I never met such good fellows as I met to-day, and I hope I shall meet as good wherever I go.’ I may say that my speech was received with rapturous applause. Mr. W. H. Smith, afterwards the leader of the House of Commons, was present at this banquet, and also spoke. Hospitality was literally showered upon us. Indeed, the people seemed unable to do enough to make our visit pleasant and memorable. The Lieutenant-Governor gave a ball in our honour, and an excursion was arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Cumberland to Lake Simcoe, and Couchising. Altogether, we did not get much breathing time between a constant succession of festive and social engagements. To finish up the week’s sojourn, the Toronto Club organised a scratch match of teams selected from the English twelve and the Toronto cricketers. I captained one side, consisting of six Englishmen and five Canadians, and Fitzgerald captained the other, which was similarly constituted. Like most scratch matches it was productive of excellent fun, although the play was not of the order of strict cricket. My eleven made 168 (of which Lord Harris made 65) and 119, and Fitz’s side scored 165 and 63. I ran out to meet a ball in my first innings and got stumped, and in the second innings, just when I was well set, and scoring freely, my opponents, who thought they had had enough of me for that day, bribed the umpire to give me out LBW, and I retired discomfited, much to their amusement and my own disgust.
Throughout our stay in Toronto the weather was splendid, and we were reluctant to leave the city when the day of departure came. Leaving Toronto, and still travelling westward, we made a short stay at London (Ontario), where we played a match on the old Barracks ground against twenty-two of London. We made 89 and 161, and they compiled 55 and 65, Appleby and Rose proving invincible with the ball. There was no lack of entertainment for us in London, whose citizens were not going to be behind Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal in their welcome to us. Our last sojourning place in Canada was Hamilton, where we had the experience of finishing a match in the dark, to which our opponents consented, so as to expedite our departure for Niagara. By this time, of course, the summer was rapidly waning, and the evenings shortening, and as there is no twilight to speak of in Canada, darkness fell suddenly upon us while we were playing. It was so dark that we could hardly see where the ball went and I remember I bowled the last man out with an underhand sneak. We gave the twenty-two of Hamilton a thorough beating, for while we made 181, they only managed to put together 86 and 79. The captain of the Hamilton team entertained us at his house, and a large company assembled in our honour. Again I was made spokesman of our team in response to one of the toasts, and if Mr. Fitzgerald does not misreport me I said: ‘Gentlemen, I have to thank you for the honour you have done me. I have never seen prettier ladies than I have seen to-day, and I hope I shall see as pretty wherever I go.’ The Canadian tour was a triumphal success in every way. Never did twelve cricketers work together in greater harmony and with more perfect esprit de corps. From the day we left the Mersey to the day we got back to Liverpool there was not a single hitch, nor one moment’s bad feeling. I have spoken since to several members of the twelve, who have subsequently been to Australia, the Cape, and the other places, with cricketing teams, and they all with one accord say that they never experienced such a harmonious tour. I attribute the credit for this very largely to the man we had as our captain. Poor old Fitz smoothed all the rough places with his unfailing tact, geniality, and businesslike ability; and looking back at the tour, over a vista of nearly thirty years, it stands out in my memory as a prolonged and happy picnic. Most of the cricketers we encountered in Canada were gentlemen who had gone out from England and settled in the Dominion for business and professional purposes. I have every reason to believe that our visit had a beneficial effect in the direction of cultivating cricket sentiment in Canada, though the Canadians have not gone ahead with the game as the Australians have. The batting of the teams we met in Canada did not attain a high standard – they seemed incapable of facing our bowlers, and fell victims to easy balls, which ought to have been severely punished – but nothing else could perhaps be expected. It must be said, however, that we met some excellent bowling, and that the fielding of the Canadians was very creditable. It is a curious fact that while we were in Canada Fitzgerald never lost the toss, and yet with one exception we beat our opponents by an innings and some runs to spare.
As in the case with most travellers seeing the Falls for the first time, our first impressions of Niagara were in the nature of a disappointment. We were disposed to discount the majesty of the great cataract – like the Irishman who, when asked if he did not think it was wonderful that so many million tons of water should go pouring over the precipice, replied, ‘Wonderful? No! for, begorra, what’s the hindrance? It might have been wonderful if it had gone up the precipice.’ But this feeling soon vanished, and the awe-inspiring grandeur of the Falls grew upon us and increased day by day until we left the vicinity. Of course we visited all the points of interest, and amongst other things were photographed, with the Horseshoe Fall as a background. The photograph hangs in my room as I write, and conjures up many happy reminiscences of our Niagara experiences. Several of the influential Canadians, who had feted us during our visits to the cities of the Dominion, accompanied us to Niagara, and stayed at the Clifton House Hotel, where we had taken up our quarters. Some of the younger members of The Twelve thought it would be only right if we showed our appreciation of their kindness by returning their hospitality in some small way which would be agreeable and enjoyable to all; so we gave a ball at the hotel, but unfortunately – or as some of us thought very fortunately – the ball took place on a Saturday night, and dancing had to stop at midnight.
Leaving Niagara on September 16, we crossed into the United States, and entered on the second portion of our tour. We took train first to Albany, and then steamed down the Hudson to New York. We were not greatly prepossessed by our first glimpse of New York. The first thing that struck me in the city was that each hotel – we stayed at the Brevoort House – had its own oyster-bar. We found this exceedingly convenient, and soon became good customers, for the oysters were excellent. We opened our tour in America with a match on the Hoboken Ground in New Jersey against twenty-two of the St. George’s Club. To reach the ground from New York we had to cross the river, and for the first time in my life I saw a vehicle driven on to a ferry boat, and then driven off on reaching the other side. For this match we had an excellent wicket – it was prepared by Stubberfield, the old Sussex professional, who had an engagement out there – and we had another easy victory, our score being 249, of which I made 68, while our antagonists totalled only 66 and 44. In the first innings Rose and Appleby did all the bowling, and in the course of some chaff some one said that I could get the St. George’s men out even quicker than Rose. Anyway, I went on bowling with Appleby in the second innings, and we succeeded in getting rid of the entire twenty-two for 44 runs. Great interest was evinced by a certain section of the people in this match, but cricket was not then, as it is not now, a very popular game in New York. George and Henry Wright, the famous baseball players, were included in the St. George’s twenty-two, and were the best scorers of their side, while, of course, their fielding was – as the fielding of all baseball players is – simply magnificent. Our visit to America was the third which had been paid by English cricketers – George Parr having captained a team which visited the States in 1859, and Willsher having taken out another team in 1868. Some of the comments of the New York newspapers were extremely amusing. Ottaway, for instance, was described as ‘a tall, lithe, sinewy man, with a splendid reach, and an eye that can detect at a glance the course about to be pursued by the invading sphere of compressed leather’. We were just as hospitably entertained in America as in Canada, and at one of the banquets in New York they made me make another speech. In the words of Fitzgerald again, my speech runs:– ‘Gentlemen, I have to thank you for the honour you have done me. I have never tasted better oysters than I have tasted here to-day, and I hope I shall get as good wherever I go.’ I think it is rather too bad of Fitz to have perpetuated my first utterances in this way, but I daresay that the reports are not libellous. I make no pretensions to oratory, and I would any day as soon make a duck as a speech.
Frances Edmonds is a writer and expert in cross-cultural communication.
Here she joins her husband, England cricketer Phil Edmonds, on the 1986 tour of the West Indies and recalls the previous winter tour to Sri Lanka, India and Australia in 1984/85. From Another Bloody Tour (1986).
I JOINED THE TEAM in early February, at Hyderabad. India is the most fascinating, delightful and often distressing place. Tours to the Antipodes are all very well, but basically Australians and New Zealanders are just the same as us, except, of course, that they operate in fewer polysyllables. India, on the contrary, is a disturbing amalgam of the alien and the familiar. It is a country of violent contrasts: ostentatious wealth juxtaposed with the most horrendous poverty; affluent tourists and even more affluent Indians immured in sumptuous hotels, the one emotionally incapable of dealing with, and the others inured to, the mutilated beggars, the maimed children, and the sheer force of Indian numbers.
Cricketers are deified in India. Certainly the team was never subjected to the usual aggravations of travelling in that country. No ‘OK’ flight reservations which suddenly become ‘wait-listed’, because a few ‘Men from the Ministry’ want seats. No interminable waits for baggage at the other end. No infuriating dealings with the relentlessly inefficient Indian bureaucracy at check-in desks.
All these nightmares I experienced when I left the glorious fold, and travelled on my own to Goa for a week. None of these headaches, however, for our pampered heroes. The team had its own bearer, Govind, who collected their luggage from one hotel, and made sure it turned up at the next. Their Goanese travel manager, Charlie, ensured that they boarded every plane at the very last minute, and were whisked away by coach immediately on arrival. The scheduled flight from Nagpur to Delhi was re-routed to put down at Agra, so that the England team could see the Taj Mahal. One player, however, declined the treat. Mike Gatting had seen that old mausoleum before, and besides, ‘The House of the Rising Moon’ was an excellent Chinese restaurant in Delhi.
It is no wonder that four months of such preferential treatment and the almost degenerate ease of hotel existence can spoil a man. When Phil returned home and started demanding steak sandwiches at two in the morning, I was obliged to knock him into line pretty smartly. Men, as the ancient Serbian proverb runs, must be treated like horses. Allow any sort of deviant behaviour to persist and they are ruined for life. Unsellable, too.
A piece of advice, by the way, for ladies travelling in India. Look after your own laundry. Remember that clothes are what an Indian dhobi breaks stones with. Now, this sort of treatment is perfectly acceptable for jock-straps (rancid) and cricket socks (sweaty), but it is hardly appropriate for your brand new collection of Christian Dior lingerie (écru), as I learned to my cost in Delhi. To see the fruits of an entire day’s shopping in the Avenue Montaigne boiled to the colour of cabbage and the consistency of a combat jacket is enough to make a strong woman cry. On the sartorial front, incidentally, a Sanyo travelling steam iron now seems an essential piece of kit for the tour to the West Indies. The Trinidadian Unions, it would appear, are refusing to carry our bags. Presumably, next, they will be refusing to iron our clothes. Touring, quite frankly, just ain’t what it used to be.
The England team in India was a very personable bunch. Many of the old-hand correspondents said (though I noticed that few of them actually wrote) that the degree of team spirit, bonhomie, and general affability was due more to the absence of specific individuals than to the presence of anybody else in particular. (I cannot recollect that Matthew Engel ever mentioned this, however, so it probably was not true.)
Pat ‘Percy’ Pocock (the off-spinner of Surrey and England) would indubitably rate as one of my favourite tourists. Tedious transfers by bus were often alleviated for me by Percy’s cheerful chatting in pidgin Spanish, a dialect he has no doubt acquired around the 19th hole at La Manga club, and which is somewhat restricted to an in-depth vocabulary of beverages alcoholic. My own dear husband would sit totally incommunicado, his Walkman clamped firmly on his head, lost in the sort of catatonic trance rarely seen in cricket circles since Bob Willis retired from the game, listening intently to Beethoven. I felt he was acting like an absolute pseudo. His Walkman might well have been playing Beethoven, but his briefcase was full of Tina Turner. I would accuse him of being pretentious. ‘Pretentious?’ he’d muse quizzically. ‘Moi?’
Rooming arrangements for the men on tour are bizarre, to put it mildly. Apart from the captain and the vice-captain, the Test and County Cricket Board has decided in its infinite sagacity, or perhaps its infinite parsimony, that team spirit is best served by players sharing rooms. Not, of course, the same two players sharing together for the entire five months. There are too many professional cricketers sporting single earrings nowadays. No, there is a judicious rotation of roommates so that everyone gets a thoroughly good dose of everyone else’s most nauseating habits and infuriating idiosyncrasies. Probably a jolly good dose of anything else going around as well. Thank God for penicillin.
My arrival in Hyderabad was greeted with almost audible sighs of relief from those who had been obliged to share with Phil. The man is an almost total insomniac, and listens to the radio (if possible, Radio Four or the World Service) all through the night. In the early stages of marriage this produced a most disturbing effect. I would wake up at 9 am and already know the news verbatim. I began to believe that I was some twentieth-century Cassandra, and wondered whether this sooth-saying gift could be focused more profitably on the results of the 2.30 pm at Catterick. It was only several years later that I realized I had been assimilating the information subconsciously at 4 am, 5 am, 6 am, 7 am and 8 am.
Originally, I encouraged Phil to wear a radio ear-piece, but the noise still just reverberated around his bony cranium, unhindered by much hirsute muffling. I am constantly being woken up to the sound of the World Service broadcasting in German. It would not be so bad if he understood a single word of German, and yet the awkward blighter resolutely refuses to turn the radio off. It is truly staggering that no one on the team has ever slugged him. And when people wonder why there are no little Edmondses, I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Alistair Cooke. I refuse to get intimate to the stentorian tones of Letter from America. Just in case certain heavy sleepers in the team can cope with incessant radio, Phil insists on sleeping with the curtains open too. In India the light streams in the bedroom window at about 5 am, inevitably waking any slumbering inmate. A weary Allan Lamb had the temerity to complain, and was immediately fined by the ‘Social Committee’ for selfishness in wanting the curtains closed. Poor Jonathan Agnew (would that he were here with us in the West Indies) was obliged to cover his side of the bedroom’s lighting arrangements with a cocoa-pot cosy, since Edmonds also likes to read until about 3 am.
Angus Fraser, the former Middlesex and England fast bowler, played forty-six Test matches from 1989 to 1998. His Tour Diaries appeared in 1999.
The Antigua Test match took place in April 1994.
IT’S NOT USUALLY good for the game when one side gets close to 600 and then the other matches it and there is barely time for another innings. The fifth Test in Antigua came into that category, but it was a game that will go down in history because of the contribution of Brian Charles Lara. We were on the receiving end of the highest individual score in Test history.
Richie Richardson wasn’t playing in the match, so Courtney Walsh took over and immediately put an end to the previous dithering by winning the toss and saying ‘We’ll bat.’ I thought, ‘There’s a typical bowler. No p****** about. Now he can go and put his feet up!’ The pitch looked flat, but we actually had a good start and got rid of Phil Simmons and Stuart Williams early. It raised our expectations, but we were soon brought back down to earth and the match became very hard work.
I actually felt I had bowled pretty well and got through 23 overs in the day, but I was tired by the end of it simply because there was no way past Lara’s bat. It was the same after the second and the third days, too, as he just went on and on. It was an absolutely chanceless innings as he progressed to 164 by the end of the first day, 320 by the close on day two and then went on to better Sir Garfield Sobers’s previous best of 365 by 10 runs before Caddick had him caught behind. Lara never slogged, went at the same tempo throughout and displayed incredible concentration. After each 50 he just raised his bat and carried on, and he didn’t put a foot wrong until after he went past 300. Then I beat him a couple of times, went down the wicket and said, ‘I don’t suppose I can call you a lucky bastard when you’ve got 300 on the board.’ He just smiled at me and carried on.
We were always aware, from an early stage, that he was going for the record and that the West Indies were going to give him the chance to get it. A score of 375 out of 593 for five declared is amazing, particularly on an outfield that was on the slow side. Lara is the best batsman I’ve bowled at, no question. People like Border and Richards were great, but even they were a little more limited in what they were capable of doing than he was.
Lara had such a range of shots that he can make you look stupid. Having such a good eye, he can score freely and gets away with most indiscretions on the strength of it. The goal was there for him that day and he just played and played and played until he reached it. The big moment came when he pulled Lewis for four, and some amazing scenes followed immediately afterwards. We weren’t aware of what was going to happen, but the ground was suddenly full of people and Sobers was on his way out to the middle.
We all congregated in the middle because we knew the ground would take at least 10 minutes to clear and just watched while Lara kissed the ground and hugged Sobers. I thought it was a bit too much to set up a scene like that. We said to each other, ‘I thought you just raised your bat when you reached a landmark.’ Darrell Hair was the umpire and we asked him if the time lost would be taken into account when our over-rate was calculated. He said, ‘How much time do you want?’
By this time there were hundreds of people on the outfield and the umpires were desperately trying to keep them off the wicket because we still had to bat on it. They all moved away, but there was one bloke walking up and down the pitch looking to see if there was any damage to it and Hair went up to him and pushed him out of the way, telling him to p*** off. Then he discovered it was actually the groundsman inspecting his beloved wicket.