Today I decided to go and watch my husband bat. This does not usually involve much, if any, time, and so I had organised an early lunch at the Liguanea Club with Adrian Murrell. Adrian has kindly agreed to do all the pictures for this book and is universally acclaimed as one of the best sports photographers in the business.
Phil had forgotten that it was Valentine’s Day, and so one of the team’s liaison officers, Stafford Shann, was swiftly despatched to purchase a card for me. Phil had also forgotten his wallet, so Stafford had to pay for it. And Phil had forgotten his pen. so Stafford had to sign it. Phil also had to race off to the cricket (he had forgotten he was still batting), so Stafford had to deliver it. It really can be overwhelming, being married to such an incurable romantic!
I met Geoff Boycott waiting in the lobby of the Pegasus Hotel. I am always thoroughly pleased to see him and he must figure as one of my all-time favourite people on the cricket circuit. He has constantly been a loyal and supportive friend to both Phil and me, and on more than one occasion has incurred the wrath of the TCCB gods for criticising Phil’s exclusion from successive touring parties. He is covering the tour as the Mail on Sunday’s correspondent, but has brought his cricket kit with him as well as his typewriter. He can often be located during the course of the day having a net at Sabina Park, and there is intense, if officially groundless, speculation that Geoff’s talents as an opening batsman may once more be required should the England batting disintegrate. They could do a lot worse than Sir Geoffrey.
We had all been suffering from the most vicious attacks of mosquito bites. Despite prophylactic rubbing with Autan and remedial rubbing with Anthisan, the topography of my legs still resembled one of the blacker, more mogul-ridded pistes at Gstaad.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Geoff soothingly, ‘they only attack fertile women.’
I was, in my leprous condition, suitably pleased to hear this.
‘Conceived in Jamaica, born in Melbourne,’ mused Geoff hermetically.
It is sometimes difficult, even for a Cheshire lass, to follow the labyrinths of a Yorkshire mind.
‘Next tour’s to Australia,’ explained Phil, laconically.
‘Could be,’ I said, ‘but you are not going . . .’
I spent the morning watching the cricket from the press box at Sabina Park. Compliance with certain rules in the box is absolutely mandatory, and these were explained to me by Scyld Berry, the cricket correspondent of the Observer.
1. No laughing
2. No applauding
3. No enjoying yourself
4. On the hour, every hour, complain loudly about:
a) the telephones
b) the telex system
c) the locals
d) ‘abroad’
e) the telephones . . .
The first person I came across was Peter Smith of the Daily Mail, who did not appear to be excessively conversant with any of the rules. He welcomed me into the ‘holy of holies’ with a wide toothy grin. Toothy, unfortunately, involved just one front tooth, since Peter had lost the other one in an altercation with a step in Antigua. He had been putting it religiously under his pillow every night, and waiting for the Mail fairy to cough up the impending damage. Poor Peter. The tooth was eventually fixed, but the fairy never came.
Sitting just in front of me was Scyld. It was, after all, St Valentine’s Day, and Scyld had retrieved two pictures of his wife from the hotel safe that morning. He spent a large part of the first session mooning over them. Not your typical hard-nosed hack, our Scyld. The reverie was broken by whoops of glee from Matthew Engel, the Guardian’s correspondent. His phone had rung! The day before, the telephones had duly been installed, but the attendant wires unfortunately led nowhere. During the course of the night, however, somebody had patently attached them to something, and hence Matthew’s undisguised delight at the first telephonic tinkle.
‘It’s for you, Scyld,’ he reported a minute later, a trifle put out. ‘The woman from the Tourist Office about the trip to Negril.’
From the front of the box rang the mellifluous and patrician tones of Christopher Martin-Jenkins, commentating on the match for listeners of the BBC at home in England. Christopher has been the unfortunate recipient of two death threats. Surely The Cricketer magazine, of which he is editor, cannot be that provocative. It seems an innocuous enough publication. And Christopher himself is the mildest-mannered and most inoffensive of men.
‘I am sorry to hear about the appalling weather you are having back home,’ Christopher was saying. ‘Sorry to rub it in, but it really is the most glorious day here at Sabina Park.’
It suddenly struck me in a blinding flash of incandescent lucidity: the death threats were more than likely from some hypothermic crank snowed up in deepest Derbyshire!
The excitement of the cricket was all a bit too much to withstand, and the next day I went off to Negril. If one of the world’s best sports photographers and one of England’s top cricket correspondents felt that they could waltz off with impunity, I certainly saw no good reason to stick around. Phil, incidentally, carried his bat manfully in the first innings, bowled very well in the second, and England won the match. Anyone who, four months later, cares to know further details of this perfectly turgid game, should turn to the back of this book and consult a good psychiatrist.
We flew to Negril in a tiny Cessna 206, just large enough to accommodate four passengers and the pilot. The pilot swept low over illicit but uncontrollable ganja plantations. These are usually located in perfectly inaccessible spots, far removed from roads or even tracks, and virtually impossible to police. There is far too much money riding on this lowly ‘sacramental’ herb for it to be successfully stamped out. It was said by some influential politicians that ganja was one of the mainstays of their economy.
In a country where poverty is rife, and proprietary medicines are both excessively expensive and often unobtainable, infusions of ganja are drunk for medicinal purposes, and ointments and balms of the herb are used to soothe and heal. Smoking the stuff is an integral part of the Rastafarian culture and religious belief, and a lot of West Indians will tell you that it is certainly not as deleterious to your health as tobacco or alcohol. Against a groundswell of popular beliefs such as these, the government certainly has a Sisyphean task on its hands in trying to mobilise public opinion against the drug.
‘While there’s ganja and fire,’ said the captain of our snorkelling boat, expertly smoking the stuff out of a pipe formed from his own bare, cupped hands, ‘oh, man, while there’s ganja and fire, no one gonna stop us from smokin’ it.’ My companions and I nodded politely and sympathetically, as he waved his harpoon-gun at us for suitable dramatic effect.
The American tourists, in particular, are quick to exploit the ubiquitous and readily available nature of the local dope. Stories abound of holiday paradises such as ‘Hedonism II’, where naked strangers cavort merrily together, thrashing around in the warm intimacy of the jacuzzi, and knocking back banana daiquiris, high as kites on ganja. Paul ‘SHOCK HORROR PHEW WHAT A SCORCHER’ Weaver, of the News of the World (but now of the Mirror), decided to go there for a bit of ‘investigative journalism’ during one of the rest days. He was not a little disconcerted on arrival, however, to find a well-supported egg and spoon race in progress, and lots of Americans heavily into nothing more noxious than waffles.
People in the Jamaican tourist industry are, however, most disturbed at the paucity of English tourists to the island. The Americans, on the contrary, arrive in droves. It is a mere ninety-minute hop from Miami to Montego Bay, and they are much in evidence at all the resorts along the north coast. We took the compulsory tourist trip to Rick’s Cafe on the westernmost promontory of Negril in order to see the sunset. It was a genuinely magnificent sight, as the incandescent reds and oranges disintegrated into a tiny mercurial blob, and suddenly disappeared into a restless blue-black sea. To a man, the Americans broke into a round of spontaneous applause. Helios, no doubt, will be pleased that Uncle Sam approves his act.
While we were away, England managed to defeat Jamaica, a much needed psychological fillip, despite the fact that the Jamaicans had not unleashed their new, fast, wonder-weapon, Patrick Patterson. The worst was yet to come.
Sabina Park is not so romantic a cricket ground as a superficial description would perhaps lead one to believe. It is true you can see the Caribbean, sapphire blue in the distance, and that the glorious Blue Mountains, world famous for their coffee, are also much in evidence. The profusion of barbed wire and wire netting are not, however, the sort of precautions one would need to stay even the wildest excesses of the ‘egg-and-bacon’ brigade at Lord’s. And the ratio of one member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force per five spectators seems a little on the high side. They are a handsome bunch of men, these members of the JCF, most striking in their black jodphurs, set off to great effect by a thick red stripe down the side. The pièce de résistance is a red and black cummerbund, bejewelled with silver buckle. One wag assured me that the basic criterion for entry into the force, and in order to ensure correct deportment in this very natty uniform, was possession of a 23-inch waist. Possession of an IQ in a similar statistical region is not entirely disadvantageous either.
Juxtaposed with this indubitable sartorial splendour is quite a frightening array of riot equipment: batons, rifles and Smith and Wesson tear-gas canisters. I was beginning to feel that the likes of Siegfried Sassoon should be in the Press Box to chronicle the ensuing trench warfare. It was, therefore, a relief to learn that the full riot gear, tear-gas and all, had only ever been used on one occasion, when unfortunately the male-model JCFs failed to take into account details such as wind-direction, and the egregious incumbents of the governor general’s and prime minister’s boxes were felled in lachrymose and angry heaps. Today, however, the mood in Sabina Park is carnival. There have been a few token demonstrations outside the ground, but nothing of moment. Certainly, I have seen more aggressive West Indian contingents at the Surrey Oval than at Kingston Sabina. It may be that the West Indian faction here doesn’t feel socially oppressed as their counterparts in England. Yet, nevertheless, although the crowd is here to watch and enjoy their cricket, one felt that it is black supremacy that has drawn them. It is the very argument that many West Indians, including Viv Richards, have used in pleading for the tour to go ahead: ‘We are the best in the world. Now give us the chance to prove it.’
For me the One Day International was a combination of tedium and horror, the unremitting onslaught of the West Indian four-pronged pace attack (Garner, Patterson, Marshall and Holding) and the efforts of a struggling England batting line-up merely to survive. ‘A bit like bear-baiting,’ remarked Simon Barnes of The Times, ‘only we’re on the side of the bears.’
It is perfectly obvious that if England possessed the same phalanx of fast bowlers, they would indubitably use them to the same effect. What I am saying is not meant as a criticism of the brilliantly indomitable West Indian bowling machine. It is quite simple that I, as a non-purist, fail to see the ‘poetry-in-motion’ of fast bowlers smashing people to pieces. It is for the same reasons that even as a total Hispanophile, I cannot betake myself to the corrida, the bullfight, the Spanish national sport.
A good corrida is, I am told, a pure art form: dramatic theatre at its highest level. A good matador is a combination of actor, dancer and executioner. At a poetic and metaphorical level he represents man’s struggle and final victory over the forces of evil. With bullfighting, as with intimidatory cricket, I do understand that the aficionados derive much aesthetic pleasure, enjoyment and excitement from the contest, but it is, quite frankly, the kind of buzz I personally can live without. Moreover, this is the sort of sport which though appealing to the aesthetic values of the true purists, more often appeals to the basest, most animal instincts of the masses: that far from admirable quality of bloodlust.
Sorry for getting a bit heavy. The only point I wish to make is that this is not the kind of cricket I like to watch. Apart from anything else it puts me off my gin and tonic, especially when my own husband is nearly killed. But more of that later.
The first major casualty on this tour was Mike Gatting. It is always reassuring to see Mike’s stocky, squarish frame make its way out to the crease. Once again, Robinson and Gower had failed to make many runs. Poor David. Uneasy, indeed, lies the head that wears the crown. He looked so slim and frail and wispish, like a pedigree two-year-old filly, as he walked disconsolately back to his teammates in the dressing room. Gatt, on the contrary, is vaguely reminiscent of a shire horse. Strong, sturdy, reliable, unflappable, he walked out to the wicket swinging his bat, doing his little on-the-spot running hops, and looking decidedly as if he, at least, meant business.
Ten runs later he was writhing on the ground in a pool of his own blood, hit in the face by a ball from Malcolm Marshall. He was helped off the field, his nose completely broken and flattened, his face totally unrecognisable. They tell us Joel Garner subsequently found a piece of bone, a quarter of an inch long, embedded in the ball. I left for home, feeling perfectly sick, and wondering whether it was my place to phone his wife, Elaine, in London, to tell her what had happened before she saw it on the news. Fortunately the manager Tony Brown, a very considerate and thoughtful man, had done the unpleasant necessary.
A West Indian lawyer friend of ours, Ferdie Johnson, rushed Gatt off to hospital, helped by Ian Botham, who was not playing in that match due to injury.
‘I could not have been more impressed with Both,’ Ferdie told me later. ‘He kept trying to keep Gatt’s spirits up, laughing and joking all the time. “Come on, Gatt,” he said, ribbing him, “it’s happened to all of us, it’s about time it happened to you.”’
After Botham’s incredible marathon from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, many people are beginning to believe that beneath this ultra-macho, devil-may-care image, there probably is a heart of 22-carat gold. It would be tragic indeed to think that unless someone, either inside or outside the team, musters the guts, the authority and the discipline to channel his terrible talents and energies, then we may well witness another George Best phenomenon. Certainly, it would appear to be highly deleterious to team spirit to have one superstar who cannot be bothered to practice, or condescend to play in regional ‘warm-up’ games. A desire to appear, deus ex machina, for the ‘big one’ is fine, so long as your arrival centre-stage changes the course of proceedings. So far we have not seen much evidence of this, but with Both you never know . . .
To his credit he does not appear to harbour a grudge, despite a pen-portrait I adumbrated for the Daily Express, describing him as ‘in no way inhibited by a capacity to over-intellectualise’. It is exactly the sort of thing I would say to his face, and I’m convinced even Both himself would be inclined to agree with it.
Consigning such comments to a daily newspaper is probably not, however, the way to make friends and influence people. Other teammates are not quite so forgiving or forgetting. Certain players, quite rightly, view me with a great deal of suspicion after my minor flirtations with the press and limited excursions into journalism. It probably would have been easier, in retrospect, to describe them all in the terms they want to hear: ‘Tall, dark, handsome, intelligent, charming, polished, witty, urbane . . .’ but that would probably have precipitated several successful libel suits. In any event, I am currently paying the price for my literary transgressions, and feel suitably devastated to be marginalised ad eternum from the incandescent wit and wisdom of at least two of the England squad.
England, needless to say, was decisively beaten in the First One Day International, and the worst aspects of the British gutter press began to rear their ugly heads. The depths to which certain sordid sleuths will stoop are certainly abysmal. Why newspapers cannot simply accept that players are out of form, or professionally incapable of dealing with this unstoppable West Indian barrage, is beyond me. The absolute pits, we all felt, was reached when the wife of one member of the team was telephoned and asked ‘whether there was any truth in the rumour’ that she was having an affair with another member of the team, thus explaining his loss of form. It is classic Private Eye stuff. A flat denial will, in any event, elicit a headline ‘Mrs X denies rumours of affair with Mr Y’. It is the sort of gutter-game you just cannot win.
Relations between the team and the press are always a love-hate affair. I have yet to meet any cricketer who does not welcome the adulation and enjoy the indubitable privileges which media coverage generally bestows. When England is doing well, and the press is busily filing laudatory encomiums of often quite excessive and unctuous praise, then the player-press boat seems to rock along quite smoothly. When the team is failing badly, however, the media worm inevitably turns, and many a player’s hubris and carefully massaged ego is loath to take the slightest hint of personal criticism. It is then that the affair turns sour.
Many of the press have commented to me on their exclusion from official functions and extramural activities on this tour, something which never happened last year in India. Many are wont to blame the assistant manager. Bob Willis, whose attitude to the press while England captain was always one informed with the deepest suspicion. ‘Big Bob’, however, demonstrates feelings common to about ninety-nine per cent of players, and if exclusions, either perceived or real, are down to him, his actions would no doubt be welcomed by the majority of the team.
Phil, on the contrary, has always actively sought the company of many members of the press corps. They are, by and large, far more expansive, entertaining and rounded company than professional cricketers, and Phil must be one of the few players who actually invites them to dinner. With the exception of a few really pernicious and ultimately very dangerous characters, the cricket press are a very decent bunch, and I say that despite the generous dollops of aggro they have ladled out to Phil in the past. What they write about the team is sometimes bad enough, but what they know and do not write often demonstrates the discretion of the innermost sanctuary of the Curia. Most of them are not, at least, in the business of breaking up marriages.
It would, however, be perfectly wrong to suggest that the team’s entire time is spent parrying either the West Indian fast bowlers or the English press corps. I cannot speak for all players, some of whose social horizons seem to stretch little further than the team room or the bar, and whose conversation only seems to sparkle when there is nookey in the offing. But for those who wish to involve themselves in more substantial relationships, there are lifelong friendships to be forged on tour.
The Rousseau family, for example, took Phil and me to their hearts and showered us with the most overwhelming kindness, generosity and hospitality. Patrick Rousseau, of the Jamaican Board of Control, and his brother Peter are two of Jamaica’s leading entrepreneurs, with interests in real estate, stud farming and the hotel and restaurant business. One of their restaurants, the Blue Mountain Inn in Kingston, is billed quite correctly as one of the most romantic hostelries on the island, with the backdrop of the Blue Mountains, and the gurgling of the swift-moving mountain stream running through the garden responsible for many a precipitate proposal of marriage. The maître d’hôtel is an hysterically funny Welshman, Michael Byrne, who fell in love with Jamaica twenty-five years ago, and gave up his lucrative job designing jewellery for Christian Dior in London to come and live here.
‘But, darling,’ he confided to me confidentially, ‘since I left CD, it’s all tat. Tat. Tat. Tat.’ He did not strike me as the rugby-playing sort of Welshman.
The cuisine in the restaurant is eclectic, combining the best in local produce with traditional Jamaican recipes, with less spicy European cooking for the more unadventurous tourists, and a straight sirloin or fillet steak for the Americans. But it seems a sin to me to come to the tropical island paradise of Jamaica to eat imported beef. Why not try a nasal-passage clearing pepperpot soup, just the sort of thing to make you bowl at 90 miles per hour? Or Jamaica’s national dish, ackee, which mixed together with a bit of fried bacon and smothered over a light pastry base produces a rather exotic quiche Lorraine. Red-pea soup is another favourite. Strange how people in hot climates feel the need for hot spicy food – I noticed the same phenomenon in India. For the weak in gut and spirit, however, there is always chilled chocho soup, a rather non-descript green vegetable rather like a cucumber, which together with a dash of cream and a hint of spice liquidises into a delicious starter. For fish-fanciers, smoked marlin – a paler version of smoked salmon served quite simply with onions and capers – is a must. Dolphin (no, not of the ‘our friend Flipper’ variety) and Red Snapper also make frequent appearances on Jamaican menus, but I never miss an opportunity to indulge myself on Caribbean spiny lobster. These are saltwater creatures, and unlike other varieties, there is no huge claw: the meat is all in the body. This happily circumvents an awful lot of messy eating. I have often thought that it ill behoves the elegant lady gourmet to spend hours with a knitting needle, poking up some defunct crustacean’s legs. The detritus of a lady’s plate should not look like a road accident. Reverend Mother Paul, Order of St Ursuline, told me that.
The luxuriant profusion of local fruit leaves one with an embarras de choix. My favourite is bright orange paw-paw (or papaya), sprinkled with a dash of lime. Watermelon of sacerdotal red studded with dark black pips is gloriously refreshing and, for the weight watchers amongst us, of negligible calorific value. Tangerines are huge and the grapefruits are sweet. Bananas abound, and plantains (brothers of bananas), are commonly boiled and served as vegetables. I cannot help it, however, if, as the sister of a consultant gastroenterologist, they suggest to me so many anaemic little turds; though comments like that, I’m aware, will never land me Egon Ronay’s job.
Imported wine can be found in Jamaica – at a price. All luxury imports are subject to heavy duty. Local wine is, however, available, manufactured on the island from imported grape must. Montpelier Rouge, Pica Rose, sparkling ‘Cold Duck’, and very cold Monterey white are all perfectly reasonable and potable brews. Most people, however, drink the local rum, or the increasingly popular local lager, Red Stripe. I refuse, however, to drink anything which does not have a bright green paper umbrella, and a large red maraschino cherry in it. We are, after all, in the Caribbean.
The Rousseau brothers invited us to a very jolly dinner party at the Blue Mountain Inn where I met Raman Subba Row, President of the TCCB, his wife Ann, and Bernie Coleman of the TCCB, who deals with promotion. I sometimes find it hard to rationalise my own ambiguous feelings to male-dominated institutions and establishments; to last bastions of male chauvinist piggery such as the TCCB and the MCC Although I rail against some of the perfectly ridiculous rules and regulations they waste their time promulgating, and although they are essentially and manifestly anti-feminist in their outlook, I never fail to be completely bowled over by many of their component members. Raman is one of the most refined and charming gentlemen one could ever wish to meet. And darling Bernie is warmly avuncular, generous and kind. Perhaps I should stop waging other women’s wars, stop berating committee members about the absence of baby-changing facilities at Lord’s, stop criticising the TCCB for not subsidising wives’ trips on tour. When all is said and done, I don’t actually have a baby to change, and here I am tripping around quite nicely on tour. And yet the daughters of Emily Pankhurst must fight on. If the individual members of these often insensitive institutions can be so uncompromisingly ‘nice’, there is no earthly reason why the corporate body cannot be made to wear a more human face.