13 March. Piarco Airport. Earlier in the morning than is consonant with conventional concepts of ‘beauty sleep’.
No one, it seemed, was devastated to leave Trinidad. On the contrary, there was a definite spring in most people’s steps at the thought of the imminent arrival of the ‘loved ones’. Strong men, not normally perceived as ‘softies’, bore a decidedly less prickly demeanour. Peter Willey was mooning around in the Duty Free, carefully selecting a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream for his wife Charmaine. Newly-wed nice boy, Neil Foster, was buying chocolates for his darling, Romany. The ‘not good in the morning’ faction had their ‘Walkpersons’ rammed firmly into their antisocial ears. Greg Thomas read stories about himself in The Cricketer magazine, and tried hard to believe them. The same old well-worn jokes were doing the rounds:
‘What does the acronym NASA stand for?’ Answer: ‘Need Another Seven Astronauts.’
And the current South African joke: ‘Why does President Botha refuse to play chess?’ Answer: ‘Because he doesn’t know what to do with his black bishop.’
It is not exactly highbrow stuff, but it passes these endless hours we seem to spend hanging around in airports.
Richard Ellison, Phil and I were busily concocting rather puerile epigrams. Well, Elly and I were busily concocting. Phil, I am beginning to notice, is jolly good at simply repeating. A sample of more repeatable efforts would be:
My name’s Elly,
And you’ll agree.
The new ball’s for me,
Despite Both’s wobbly.
and
My name’s Henri [Phil’s nickname]
I report sadly
The team all shun me
’Cos Simon’s mon ami.
Nothing for Silver Latin satirist Juvenal to turn in his mausoleum over, I’m obliged to concede. Lengthier distaff laments soon followed:
It’s cricket, bloody cricket,
It’s all they do and think,
It’s cricket when you’re eating
It’s cricket when you drink.
And if you think you’ll change them,
Sister, you’re out of luck,
’Cos it’s cricket, bloody cricket
When you want to have a . . . cup of tea.’
It was on this apogee of cultural and poetic achievement that we were called upon to board the plane.
The England cricket team, the West Indian cricket team, the entire ‘pilot fish’ press corps, and a few normal travellers were all packed into the same BWIA island-hopper. An hour’s delay was inevitable as the flight’s cargo of fresh, bound-for-Barbados prawns had to be off-loaded to accommodate cricket coffins, TV camera crew equipment and my four suitcases. I watched the prawns broiling away on the tarmac, salmonella, botulism and God knows what else making merry under the early morning sun. I made a distinct mental note to avoid all seafood buffets in Barbados.
The West Indian team were seated at the front, and the crew of giddily tittering air hostesses raced around providing them with long, exotic-looking drinks, bejewelled with maraschino cherries. Aft, in the ninepennies, the England team was having a hard time trying to extract the odd glass of water. Nobody, so it would seem, loves a loser.
We arrived some forty-five minutes later to a rum-punch party at Grantley Adams International Airport, Barbados, and were whisked away (all too speedily for some) to our next two-week home, the Rockley Resort and Beach Club, to the south-west of the island.
The drive from the airport to the hotel was rather a disappointment: narrow winding roads hugged by weather-beaten, clapboard houses, and dull overcast skies. Not exactly the island paradise I had been anticipating. The hotel, to my initial chagrin, was not on the beach but right in the middle of a golf course. Our unit is actually situated directly behind the seventh green and as I write an over-pitched ball has bounced through my patio and on to the bed. What the hell! I’ll just lob the thing back on to the green, and give the poor blighter an Edmonds-sponsored break.
After about two days here, however, I am beginning to enjoy the set-up thoroughly. The Rockley is a self-catering and time-sharing resort. The accommodation is arranged in ‘clusters’, each with its own swimming pool and tropical gardens, and there are central facilities of squash and tennis courts, restaurant, bar, supermarket, shops and disco.
The team has been located in ‘Lemon Arbour’, and now the wives have arrived, we really are beginning to resemble a Caribbean Coronation Street. It is a little warren of cricketing couples, everybody rocking into everybody else’s outside patio for early morning tea, elevenses or preprandial sundowners. I find it a much more natural, normal and pleasant environment than the Hilton in Trinidad with its combination of American prices, third-world service and churlish behaviour. There is no doubt that everyone is so much happier since the girls appeared. Misogynists of the TCCB, please take note.
Barbados is, perhaps, the most British of all Caribbean islands and shows no signs of the French and Spanish cultures which have permeated other English-speaking islands. The first British expedition landed here in 1625, and by 1640 sugar cane was introduced. Barbados’ planters were the first in the Caribbean to establish large sugar plantations, and these demanded the importation of vast numbers of African slaves. This lead inexorably to a preponderantly Negro population, but until well into the twentieth century all political and economic power was wielded by a small white minority. Fortunately, the respect for British political and parliamentary traditions was deep-rooted, so that the eventual transfer of power from one section of the population to the other occurred without trauma. Indeed, the achievement of political independence in 1966 had little effect on the general community, and today Barbados is an independent state within the Commonwealth, with the Governor General, Sir Hugh Springer, representing the Queen. There are, as in the United Kingdom, two Houses of Parliament, and the leader of the Barbados Labour Party, Bernard St John, is currently Prime Minister.
The Barbados Labour Party has been in power for the past ten years and despite the somewhat misleading appellation is probably the most conservative government in the Caribbean. Observers have been quick to notice that with the possible exception of Trinidad (the Trinis are well known for being the exception to any West Indian rule), the more conservative the government the more welcome they have made the England team, Rebs and all. Mr Bernard St John has been one of the few Prime Ministers to take a totally unambiguous and unequivocal stand in favour of the Tour. He knows all too well which side his country’s economic bread is buttered, and the arrival of 5,000 English hard-currency-laden tourists to watch the Third Test is not the sort of statistic his tiny island can afford to ignore.
A mere twenty-one miles long and fourteen miles wide, Barbados is a relatively flat, beach-fringed, coral island, and the mainstay of the economy is indubitably the tourist industry. Sugar cane (from which sugar, molasses and Barbados fine rum are produced), sea-island cotton, light industry including the manufacture of textiles and computer components, fruit, vegetables, diary produce and fish all contribute to a fair degree of diversification. Barbados can now also produce enough crude oil commercially to supply about one third of the island’s energy requirements, and all in all is generally considered to boast an unequalled record of political and economic stability in the West Indies.
It is probably also the most cricket-crazy Caribbean island, with a more than average quote of Bajans (Barbadians) playing representative cricket for the West Indies. In the pace department Joel Garner and Malcolm Denzil Marshall are two of Barbados’ favourite sons. And the well tried and tested West Indian opening batsmen Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Leo Haynes also hail from the island, as does relative newcomer, Carlisle Alonza Best. Honestly, even the array of forenames is enough to strike fear and trembling into the yeoman heart of many an English Graham, Timothy, David or Ian.
I have always had a bizarre fascination for names, even though combinations of duress, scopolamine, thumb-screws and the census would never extract my second Christian name from me. If ever the Edmonds duo sees fit to extend their recessive genes to progeny, I have sworn to give themall good, straight, classical names: Zeus Edmonds, Aphrodite Edmonds, Poseidon Edmonds and Bacchus Edmonds all have an impressive and suitably apotheosised ring to them.
Lemon Arbour has been more or less cloven into two: at the ‘Nursery End’, we have the Willeys with six-month-old baby Heather; the Embureys with Clare and new baby Chloë (she of Pampers fame); the Gooches with blond, blue-eyed charmer Hannah; the Willises with Katie-Ann and, somehow, in the middle of it, Nanny Ian Botham looking after an ailing Les Taylor.
At the other end of this cricketers’ Crossroads we have the couples yet to get off the mark, the band, in biblical terms, ‘without issue’, and those who have – very sensibly – left the issue at home. The Smiths, the Frenches, the Lambs, and Derby and Joan Edmonds are the old married hands scattered in amongst the ‘honeymooners’. Alison and Paul Downton, Romany and Neil Foster, Fiona and Richard Ellison, and Patricia and Tim Robinson were all spliced in October of 1985, international cricketing marriages being obliged to slot in between the end of the English season and the beginning of overseas tours.
Lemon Arbour is a perfect paradigm of conjugal bliss; the men clear off to the team room for a post-match drink and talk, and the girls sit around together and pool terrible tales of cricketing marriages: exhausted husbands who don’t talk, eat their dinner with never a word of thanks, and fall asleep watching the television in total zomboid silence. It is always reassuring to know that everyone is more or less the same.
The girls are still banned from the team room, lest anything vaguely analogous to common sense should infiltrate the men’s stratospheric thinking. I have therefore appointed myself the ‘Anti-manager’, and have established a ‘Not the Team Room’. There is a placard to that effect posted neatly on our door:
NOT THE TEAM ROOM
TACTICS AND STRATEGIES STRICTLY PROHIBITED
NOT THE NEXT TEAM MEETINGS
18/4/86
20/4/86
TOPIC (SAME AS TEAM MEETING): WHAT TO DO ON REST DAY
Many of the ‘egg-and-bacon’ brigade would no doubt think me an iconoclast; although judging by some we have seen in Barbados, not all would be familiar with the word.
The inevitable has happened. The men are far more interested in our alternative meetings than in their own redundant and repetitive tripe. Platitudes such as ‘those not playing are even more important than those playing’, and ‘whenever you’re batting, look at the scoreboard and add two to the number of players down’, and ‘a Test match is five days out of your life’ do not bear excessive reiteration. Alternatively, of course, if the entire England team could be encouraged to stay up all night fasting, chanting such axioms mantra-fashion, and psyching themselves into either a catatonic trance or a furious frenzy, such meetings might not be so absolutely superfluous. Tour-issue sackcloth and ashes might not be a bad idea either, not only as penance for such feeble performances in the first two Tests, but in an effort to generate some much needed aggression in the Third. In the meantime, until a Jesuit, Ian MacGregor or myself is brought in to reorganise this side, five-minute pep talks and optional fielding practice is just not enough to beat the best in the world.
England started this leg by putting themselves at yet another psychological disadvantage by losing the regional match against Barbados. Many observers commented on the apparent aberration inherent in ‘resting’ Gower, Gooch and Lamb for this game. It is not as if anyone has done sufficient to sit on their laurels, and many people felt that they could well have done with the additional match practice. It is only fair to adduce the opposite argument, of course, and plead that all members of the squad should be given the odd game to avoid becoming depressed and match-stale.
The cause you espouse depends very much on whether you feel England should be a galvanised, potentially Test match-winning team or just another philanthropic sporting society. Struggling and failing as the best players currently are, even the most clueless observer would assume they should be grasping every opportunity to improve.
The Third One Day International was an unqualified disaster for England. How the euphoria of the Second One Day game in Trinidad, with Graham Gooch’s brilliant match-winning performance was allowed to evaporate so soon, and how it was never harnessed into a more positive and optimistic team approach is a phenomenon difficult to fathom. Thus far Phil has not played in any of the One Day games. ‘Best bowler in India and Australia last year,’ he muses philosophically, ‘and not even twelfth man now.’ Ostensibly he appears unconcerned, yet deep-down he desperately misses the buzz of being the lynchpin, of constantly being in the midst of the action: he is frustrated at his overnight relegation to the periphery of these one-day thrashes.
Whether or not his currently strained back would stand up to the fielding rigours of the limited over knockabout is, however, another matter. Few cricketers, it would appear, are normally one hundred per cent physically fit. Usually they are playing with some minor ache, pain or niggle, although chronic complaints are of course much more worrying. Phil is at present obliged to take constant doses of Distalgesic, an extremely strong painkiller. One is sufficient for most human beings; two would fell a horse; and Phil is up to eight a day. The long-term effect of such patent abuse remains to be seen. Certainly. I hold these mega-doses of Distalgesic responsible for some of Phil’s less endearing behaviour. One minute he can be unctuously oleaginating his way around the Governor General’s cocktail party like some smarmy left-arm oil-slick, and the next minute he can be erupting in some Olympian rage over one of my perhaps not entirely innocuous remarks.
Certainly, Phil seems more and more frustrated with developments on this tour. He perceives a lack of determination and leadership which together have whittled away that bulldog spirit so prevalent in India, a tour equally as hard and arduous in its own way. The spirit in this touring team was wrong from the outset. It is certainly difficult to avoid the impression that the team was weakened from the very beginning: by players who made no secret of the fact that they wanted to go home from the outset, and by characters who were grasping at the many political straws to have the entire tour called off. Why they made themselves available for selection and agreed to come in the first instance is not totally incomprehensible. Firstly, none of them is capable of doing anything other than playing cricket in any event. And secondly, refusal to do battle with the best in the world might, in fairness, have precluded automatic selection for a relatively easy New Zealand and India home season ride. Despite some of the blanket criticism that is being meted out to the team in the English press, it certainly looks to me as if just a few, bad, ultra-selfish apples are spoiling an otherwise genuinely enthusiastic barrel. More of this later, when I’ve had a chance to phone my publisher’s libel lawyers . . .
The tour has certainly brightened up for me since the cricketing consorts arrived. Most of the team have hired Mini Mokes as a fun mode of transport around the island. They are indeed ideal vehicles for bald people with suicidal tendencies, and have the same buzz-factor as a week’s non-stop session of Russian roulette. On the first day’s hire, the windscreen of one suddenly fell on to Ian Botham and Les Taylor’s laps, splintering them with glass. The next day, Ian’s brakes failed, and the thing went careering into a wall. Poor old Botham. It would have to happen to him. The gear stick of mine came away somewhat disconcertingly in my hand as I was trying to reverse in Bridgetown. It was then I decided that I had had quite enough fun for one day, and we hired a nice bourgeois Nissan saloon for the rest of our stay. At around £175 per week, a Moke is not cheap, and the servicing done by some Bajan rental companies is distressingly desultory.
A plastic convertible soup can on wheels, a Mini Moke is more the plaything of a trainee kamikaze pilot than of a sensible tourist, and some wag was even brought to draw the analogy between it and the England Cricket team: holes in the side, flapping at the top, and a total lack of direction. He might also have added, and about to explode. The word is out that Graham Gooch is about to make another cosmic communiqué to the world.
The Third Test was . . . Sadly, I’m running out of adjectives to convey the degree of depressed fatalism which seems to be permeating many of the team, especially the upper- and middle-order batsmen.
I arrived on the first day to watch the start of play. This in itself was no mean achievement, given some truly outrageous Moke driving from Alison Downton (who did not give much indication of wanting to see her first wedding anniversary); some pretty hysterically ribald South African commentary on the state of the Barbadian nation from Lindsay Lamb; and some uncontrollably dirty giggles from Fiona Ellison and myself squeezed tightly in the back. Momentarily stopped at the lights, some big black buck made Lindsay an offer that her Cape Town upbringing did not find desperately difficult to refuse, and off we roared to the Kensington Oval, Bridgetown.
Team selection had been facilitated by the fact that there were only twelve fit men. Good old Mike ‘Call Me Gritty’ Gatting is back with us after a fairly nasty and complicated operation to rebuild his nose. He is such a stalwart, gutsy, positive and aggressive man: a real bull terrier. One can only hope that this ‘never say die’ attitude communicates itself to less enthusiastic players as the few remaining weeks go by. It was a sad misfortune that he had his thumb broken in the territorial match between Barbados and England.
I met him after my early-morning swim in Lemon Arbour, and he was as jovially good-humoured and buoyant as ever.
‘How’s the thumb?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it’s just a knock,’ he replied, showing me a really ugly, bruised black nail. ‘Only one more thing to happen now. They say misfortunes come in threes.’ He was off to practise, broken nose, broken thumb and all. ‘Gatt,’ opined Tony Brown, impressed, ‘apart from anything, is worth his place on guts alone, and the contribution he makes to team spirit.’ And who in all honesty could gainsay that?
It would not be difficult to fault Gatt’s common sense and instincts of self-preservation in returning so soon to face this incredibly fast West Indian music, but you couldn’t fault his loyalty and determination. His nose seems to have healed up remarkably quickly, a telltale horizontal scar on the bridge and some residual swelling being the only outward manifestations of the entire Marshall affair.
‘Do you like it better than your last one?’ quizzed Fiona Ellison, concerned, reviewing the cosmetic surgery critically, as if cricketers acquired a new one every tour. The psychological scars, if any, remain to be seen.
If the England team corridor in the Trinidad Hilton looked like Emergency Ward 10, the Rockley Resort is starting to resemble Apocalypse Now. Regular cricket correspondents are beginning to realise that a copy of Gray’s Anatomy is more useful in compiling their Test match previews than any number of statistic-stuffed Wisdens.
Les Taylor has been laid low by some non-specific lurgy. Already deaf in one ear, he has apparently now gone temporarily deaf in both, which is probably no bad thing when you’re sharing a room with Beefy Botham. I wanted to take him a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky, and a dose of own-brand female solace, but Phil generously assured me that I was the last person a sick man would want to see.
‘Take no notice of him next time,’ said Les when I eventually explained my absence from his death-bed. ‘The Johnnie Walker at least would have been most acceptable.’
David Smith is still suffering from a back injury sustained in Trinidad, and Richard Ellison has some vague viral complaint. By the rest day, Tim Robinson had gone down with a bad attack of twenty-four-hour flu. And in the Women’s Ward many of the girls are still suffering from an assortment of imported English winter ailments. Fiona Ellison, having sung herself hoarse in an am-dram production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers has taken to gargling with Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. (‘Julie Andrews does it. Why shouldn’t I?’) Phil too has now contracted a sore throat, and has taken to gargling with our rather expensive Hine Vieille Fine Champagne antique cognac. (‘Fiona Ellison does it. Why shouldn’t I?’) Romany Foster is suffering from flu. Alison Downton has a sore throat and a bad eye, and Lindsay Lamb has a shocking cold and a sore ear. If anyone is interested, I am perfectly well, aware of the degree of sympathy to be extracted from hard-hearted Edmonds in the event of any illness.
The day before the Test match, the local paper carried a report that thirteen of the England squad had been to consult their long-suffering team physiotherapist. Their various complaints and maladies were chronicled, including inexplicably, ‘David Gower, Broken Heart’ . . .