Can Anyone Hear Me? (21 page)

It worked. Flintoff had Dravid caught behind in the first over after the interval. Tendulkar followed in the next, caught at short leg by Bell off Udal. Sehwag had had to bat down the order after being off the field injured. He only lasted five overs before Anderson had him lbw. In seven overs since lunch, India had lost three wickets for two runs.

Now Yuvraj Singh and M.S. Dhoni were the last realistic line of defence. Defence, though, did not seem on Dhoni's mind when he went for a huge hit down the ground off Udal. The fielder under the skier was Monty Panesar. He did not get
a hand on it. We could be sure that Dhoni would not have another such rush of blood.

Or could we? Two balls later, he did it again to the same wretched long-off fielder. We held our breath. Shaun Udal had plenty of time to contemplate the chances.

When Panesar held onto the catch there was an explosion of relief in every Englishman. For all the Dravids, Tendulkars and Sehwags who had gone before, it seemed the most significant moment of the day. India were 92 for seven.

They lasted only another quarter of an hour. Flintoff, the captain, took his third wicket, when he dismissed Yuvraj for 12 – the second top score in the innings – and Udal, whose 35th birthday had been the first day of the match, wrapped up the rest, for figures of four for 14.

Since lunch India had lost seven wickets for 25 in the space of fifteen overs and two balls. Flintoff was man of the match and man of the series. England had won by 212 runs and squared the series.

‘Time
spent in reconnaissance is never wasted' is an old military adage much beloved of my father. On returning from a few of these overseas tours, I was able to tell him that it is sometimes totally wasted.

On the sub-continent in particular, whole stadia, let alone commentary boxes can be altered overnight to the point that what you inspected the previous day is no longer recognisable. My first
TMS
production in India was a case in point. On the day before the first one-day international in 1981–82, I had seen the barren concrete cave at the back of the stand at the Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad. The next morning it was totally transformed by heavy, dusty hangings and an expanse of scratched perspex that not only obscured the view but had the additional effect of making the box completely airless.

One place where reconnaissance might have been unnecessary was the Wankhede Stadium in Bombay. Nothing ever seemed to change at the ground that was built by the Indian cricket board to cock a snook at the Cricket Club of India, custodians of the Brabourne Stadium just round the corner. (An English equivalent would have been the ECB having a row with MCC and building a big ground in Hampstead out of spite.) It may be in the financial capital of India, but the Wankhede was scruffy when I first went there in 1981. When I
returned for my eighth visit
in 2006 it appeared to have had no maintenance or even cleaning since my first visit.

Aggers opened his commentary with remarks with which we all agreed. ‘There are grounds whose names reflect their grandeur, like Lord's, or their beauty, like the Rose Bowl. The name of the Wankhede Stadium is just as appropriate.'

I am told by my former colleagues, who covered the World Cup final there in 2011, that the rebuilt version is much improved. I hope the authorities will maintain it in that condition and not allow it to become a national disgrace again.

There are commentary boxes in India that I remember with some affection. On my first tour those in Madras and Bangalore were both slung high under the roof of the stadium. At the time I reckoned the Madras one to be the highest I had worked in, but I had not then been to the Wanderers in Johannesburg, which must claim that honour – though with stiff competition from the new media centre at Lord's.

When I was last in Madras – or Chennai, as it is now known – the commentary box was not much bigger than a phone box, but happily then we were only covering a one-day international so the sardine-like confinement was not too prolonged.

The old Madras box's main drawback was the distance to the telegraph office in the bowels of the stand for my regular updates on Radio 2. I would have to edge along rows of seats, which had been packed so tightly that there was scarcely room for the occupants' knees, let alone someone trying to find a gangway. The trick was to vary the route, in order to annoy different people each time. All this to arrive in a caged area
near the dressing room. England players passing by would push nuts at me through the bars.

On my first two visits to Calcutta, we operated from a box very high up at the back of the stand. With many rows of seats stretching down in front of us, we were a long way from the playing area. I did my first
TMS
commentary in Calcutta, starting on the last day of 1984. Being at the back of the stand, there were a couple of large pillars one had to try to see round. With a fairly wide-fronted commentary box, our method was to separate commentator and expert summariser by a great enough distance that between them they had the outfield covered.

Early on while I was commentating, the ball was played into the dead area behind one of the pillars, which could hide as many as three fielders. As it did not emerge, I suggested that it must have been fielded. Jack Bannister, who was with me said, ‘Actually, it was a dropped catch.' Not a good start.

That stand had been rebuilt by the time I next went to Eden Gardens and the boxes were at a much better height for commentary, and open-fronted, which I prefer for radio. Unfortunately they were also a great deal smaller. Changing commentators was an exercise in contortion beneath a large wall-mounted television. Thus, when Mike Gatting was out to the first ball of an over in the 1987 World Cup final, the commentary on the actual ball was done by the summariser, Peter Roebuck, because the business of getting CMJ out and Blowers in had not been completed in time.

In the recce of a commentary box, you have to look at all the practical logistics, such as where it would be best to put the scorer, for instance, so that commentators, who change every twenty minutes, do not fall over him or her. You have to check
the view of the scoreboard, though on some grounds the fact that you can see it does not mean that it will be reliable.

In Nagpur in 2006 I found when I first inspected our quite spacious greenhouse of a box, that the commentary desk of black polished granite became hot enough to fry an egg on when the sun shone on it. Thin bits of sheet that I found at the back of the box provided little protection and were best deployed as sunshades, hung from the top of the windows. I advised each member of the commentary team to bring a towel from the hotel, to avoid scorched elbows.

The first clouds we'd seen appeared and the BBC World Service forecast even suggested there might be some rain.

‘If it rains in Nagpur,' scoffed Geoff Boycott, ‘I'll buy that weather girl dinner.'

And, as we were packing up at the end of the day, the first spots of rain came.

After some pretty heavy overnight rain, the commentary box had been filled with all the chairs from outside. Rain had trickled down the terracing on which our greenhouse was perched and soaked the red hessian matting on the floor, which now smelt terrible. I started the day trying to dry out anything and everything that had been left on the floor.

Aggers persuaded Geoffrey to admit on the air that he had been wrong about the weather. The moment was recorded and
dropped in later – ‘I were wrong.' It's doubtful, though, if the weather girl will ever get her dinner.

As I feared, the rain triggered power cuts, so we had to spend most of the day operating on batteries.

On the first day of the Test there, we were intrigued that a crowded All India Radio box next door seemed to be inactive. I discovered that they had not acquired the broadcasting rights. I remembered a conversation with the AIR head of sport some years before, when he was amazed that we had had to pay any rights fee to cover a series in India. The Indian government had instructed the cricket board that AIR should be given the rights for nothing. It was a state of affairs he was sure would continue in perpetuity.

Now, though, cricket in India was big business and it took until the eve of the second Test to bridge the yawning gap between the fee demanded and that which AIR felt they could afford.

The eventual solving of the crisis, in Chandigarh, did give me a headache. We had been allocated a narrow commentary box there and, as I set up the day before the Test (making the best of limited space to accommodate
TMS
, Radio 5 Live, the BBC Asian network and a reserve position for reports to Radio 4, Radio Wales and anyone else who needed something) I was told that All India Radio would be arriving in force to do their commentary alongside us. With major communication problems next morning, delicate negotiations for territory with AIR were just an extra problem.

It was there, during a lengthy rain break, that Aggers – in jocular fashion – came out with the time-honoured line, ‘I didn't get where I am today…' I reminded him that where he
was today was in a cramped pigeon loft in the rain in Chandigarh.

On my first tour to India, the commentary team had been built round Don Mosey, the crotchety Yorkshireman, who did not suffer fools and included anyone either born south of the Trent or privately educated in that category. There were many other targets in his list of hates, which did not leave much leeway.

We started that tour with Tony Lewis sharing the ball-by-ball descriptions. A successful former Glamorgan captain, Tony had also captained England in India in 1972–73 and his radio essay on the subject later for a one-off Radio 4 sports programme had been so good that when the programme's success had led to the weekly Saturday morning slot,
Sport on Four
, he became its first presenter. Meanwhile, I had been looking for a few new commentators for the 1979 World Cup and so had tried him out.

After he had joined the radio team, he also did some Tests for television. Changing between the two media is not easy for someone doing the radio ball-by-ball commentary. But Tony coped with this switching back and forwards with a spare method to his commentary and a delightfully observant sense of humour.

Eventually, of course, he did move completely to television, becoming the principal front man for the BBC, but he returned to us for a one-off Test match in Calcutta in the nineties as a summariser. Aggers, not having worked alongside him before, immediately commented on how good he was. During his commentary days, he was also cricket correspondent for the
Sunday Telegraph
and went on to the presidency of MCC.

We had an Indian commentator with us for the 1981 series in the person of Ashis Ray, an experienced journalist, who had done
quite a bit of broadcasting for the BBC World Service. He was to be with us also on the next tour, in 1984–85, as was Tony Lewis, again for the first two Tests.

On later tours of India we have been joined by Harsha Bhogle, whose talents were brought to my attention by the ABC in Australia, when he was part of their team for a series. In Indian broadcasting he has moved on from the haphazard selection of commentators for AIR to a high profile position on television, doing commentary and hosting quiz shows. Indeed, he is such a recognisable figure that when he was with us in India in 2006 we found him being mobbed by fans just as much, if not more, than Sunil Gavaskar.

In 1984, knowing that I was trying to assemble possible commentary teams in advance of the tour of India, I was contacted by Ralph Dellor. I had known him for some time as a competent freelance broadcaster, who used to do a lot of Sunday afternoon commentaries on BBC Radio London. I had used him in the extensive coverage we had mounted on the 1983 World Cup in England and I was therefore confident that he was someone I could rely on.

He asked me if, should he find himself in Madras around the time of the Test match there (he was en route to Sri Lanka at about that time), I would use him in the commentary team. I said that I would – and what a Test match he had for his debut, with England winning in devastating form. He joined us again three years later in Pakistan for the last two Tests, starting with the infamous match in Faisalabad. There he played a crucial role, even getting what was certainly at the time an exclusive interview with the umpire, Shakoor Rana.

Finding ball-by-ball commentators is always more difficult than finding summarisers. The radio commentator is the camera, describing the action as he sees it unfold. The
summariser, always a former first-class player, acts more like the television commentator, adding colour to the picture that has been painted. In 1981, we relied – probably too much – on a good relationship with the England dressing room for our summarising effort. The manager, Raman Subba Row, who had played thirteen Tests, encouraged the practice and did several stints himself.

I remember Mike Brearley arriving on the tour as an observer and taking me aside to express his reservations. He felt that it had the potential to put the players in a difficult position. I can certainly appreciate that point of view more now than I could as an anxious producer with a small budget, who had to keep the programme going. Not only might it make things tricky for the players sometimes, but the programme itself might be in danger of becoming sycophantic.

Happily, though, the players seemed to enjoy doing it – most of the time.

We had a stream of willing volunteers from the dressing room to act as summarisers. First came Mike Gatting, followed by the manager, Raman Subba Row, who is turning out to be a natural in this business. Then came Paul Allott and Jack Richards, neither of whom have had much cricket on tour.

All had some insight into the problems of broadcasting here. Mike Gatting's chair collapsed when he was mid-sentence, while Paul Allott was greeted with a shower of pigeon droppings coming through the roof and then had to chase a jumping spider across the desktop.

Part
of the original plan on that tour had been to use the
Daily Telegraph
's correspondent, Michael Carey. He was due to make his first appearance for the second one-day international in Jullunder, in the Punjab. However, during the week before, when contact with the UK had been difficult, the BBC's head of sport and the
Telegraph
sports editor had managed to have a row and permission to use Carey had been withdrawn by the paper.

The first we knew of this was the telex he received when we arrived in Jullunder the day before the match. It presented something of a problem. I had done some commentaries on the odd Saturday afternoon county match which had been well enough received and so my sharing the burden with Mosey seemed to be the obvious solution. Predictably, Mosey would not hear of it and the hierarchy in London were too scared of their lord of the north to tell him to get on with it.

Instead he talked himself hoarse for the day, while I tried to get a rotation of players from the dressing room to come and mount the rickety ladder to our open platform of a commentary position.

Following this, one of the press, Steve Whiting of the
Sun
, offered his services as a commentator. Don's immediate reaction to this was a snort of derision. However, when he started to realise that he might be in danger of having me imposed on him as a co-commentator Don declared him to be perfectly adequate.