Can Anyone Hear Me? (34 page)

We then had to make the drive back through the mountains to Kingston in the south.

When we were through Kingston and heading for the hotel at Port Royal, we were stopped by a random police check. The man saw the World Cup car park sticker.

‘You runnin' the ICC team?'

‘No, I'm running the BBC.'

‘Who
you, den?'

I told him.

‘Oh, you de big man!'

I said that I had an even bigger man beside me – Jonathan Agnew. This really got them going. The sergeant was summoned and there were handshakes all round.

‘Have we done anything wrong?' asked Aggers.

‘No, man. We jus' checkin'. Respec', Jonathan man.'

And we were on our way.

The 2007 World Cup has had a bad press, not helped by the shambolic way in which it finished, nor by the way it seemed to go on for ever. After that opening ceremony on 11 March, the final was played on 28 April. Seven weeks – and that does not include the warm-up matches during the fortnight before.

But one thing they did organise quite well was the reduction of travel, which might have been much more arduous.

England's early base was St Lucia, where we covered a match on alternate days and mounted interval programmes for commentaries from games elsewhere on the days in between. A broadcast line had been installed in one of the rooms at our hotel and so for these interval programmes our studio would be a balcony with a stunning view over the Caribbean, belying the usual panic involved in putting the programme together.

Such was the security on match days that I would then drive the equipment back to the ground to set up for the following day. No engineers for us on this trip.

The day after England had been beaten by New Zealand in their opening game, our interval programme included early reports
on two possible upsets that might set the tournament alight.

Ireland had dismissed Pakistan cheaply in Jamaica and Bangladesh had done the same to India in Trinidad. So there was plenty to talk about, though the technical preparations were a bit of a scramble.

Again I returned the equipment to the commentary box in the afternoon and when I got back to the hotel, news was starting to filter through that there had been some sort of incident with England players out on the town last night.

As we were setting up for the England vs. Canada game, we heard that the
News of the World
at home was claiming that Flintoff had been one of those involved in the late-night binge and that he had then got into trouble on a pedalo off the beach at the team hotel. Scanning the England warm-ups, it seemed that he was missing. At the toss, Michael Vaughan confirmed that he had been left out ‘for disciplinary reasons'. During the day we heard that he had had the vice captaincy removed as well.

But worse news was beginning to break. We were hearing from Jamaica that after Pakistan's defeat by Ireland, Bob Woolmer, their coach, had been found unconscious in his room.

A couple of hours later it was being reported that he was dead. It was stunning news.

Everyone
on the
TMS
team had known Bob Woolmer well, some of us since his time as an England player, but all of us as coach of Warwickshire, South Africa and Pakistan. Indeed, on the last tour of Pakistan, little more than a year earlier, I remember setting up a live broadcast with him for the World Service from a hotel garden in Faisalabad. He had been keen to stay on the line to listen to the rugby commentary they were carrying afterwards.

Two days later, the word from Jamaica was that Woolmer's death had been ‘suspicious' and all sorts of rumours started flying round of various members of the Pakistan team being told not to leave the country. It was a long time after the World Cup finished that it was ruled just to have been natural causes.

On the morning after England's rather lacklustre win against Canada, we were at the team hotel to see Andrew Flintoff compelled to front up to a press conference. Afterwards he spoke to Aggers, whose interview started with, ‘Well, Freddie, what have you been up to?'

England still had to beat Kenya to ensure their progress into the Super Eight and, with Flintoff bowling well on his return, they did just that.

Now my next base was in Antigua, though England had first to fly off to Guyana to play Ireland. When Aggers returned from there, he was to report on a small BBC party billeted in some discomfort. In Antigua, meanwhile, we were getting to grips with a hotel entirely made for all-inclusive package holidays, in which we were very much the exception, being there to work.

The new Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, built in the middle of nowhere to replace the intense, noisy centre-of-town Recreation Ground, made its debut with West Indies vs. Australia, but, to the huge disappointment of the man after whom
the ground was named, the home side did not put up much of a show. And, also to his disgust, the ground was not a quarter full, as access from St Johns had not been made easy. Subsequently, of course, that stadium had the embarrassment of having a Test Match abandoned after ten balls in 2009 because of its dangerously loose sand-based turf.

When England arrived from Guyana, they lost very narrowly to Sri Lanka and rather more heavily to Australia, despite a Pietersen century. That meant that when we moved on to Barbados they had to win all their remaining three games.

Bangladesh were comparatively easy prey, but South Africa blew them away, winning by nine wickets with over 30 overs to spare. Barbados is always graced by a large British contingent in the crowd and they made their displeasure known.

So the last game of the Super Eights, West Indies vs. England, involved two teams already eliminated. Nonetheless it was a sell-out and one of the best games of the tournament. After a blazing start, the West Indies ran up 300, but another Pietersen hundred saw England to victory by one wicket, with one ball to spare.

It was a game of farewells. Brian Lara played his last match for the West Indies – and was run out for eighteen. And two days before that we had been summoned to the England team hotel for a press conference, which I rigged up to broadcast live, as Duncan Fletcher announced his resignation from the job of England coach.

The semi-finals, in Jamaica and St Lucia, were both one-sided, leaving Sri Lanka and Australia to return to Barbados for the final.

That match is remembered for the farcical end, when bad light brought the players off in a situation where Sri Lanka were in a hopeless position. The Duckworth-Lewis rules should
have given Australia the game anyway, but the players returned in the gloom for some anti-climactic pat-ball. What the game should be remembered for is Adam Gilchrist's onslaught of 149 from 104 balls, which determined that the trophy stayed with Australia.

It was a poignant time for me. Having worked on every cricket World Cup, this was my last. And this was the last time I would produce the programme overseas. In two months' time I would be leaving
Test Match Special
after 34 years of running it.

That England and Australia made it to the first World Cup final outside England at all was not written into the hosts' plan. Everything had been nicely set up for an India–Pakistan final. But over the course of two days, it all went awry.

I spent a great deal of time at the Wankhede Stadium, trying to get an interview with Sonny Gavaskar in advance of tomorrow's semi-final here. I eventually succeeded, before returning to watch television coverage of the first semi-final in Lahore. The outcome never seemed in doubt and the reaction from all the Pakistanis, as Australia ran out comfortable winners, was stunned silence. Part one of the script written in advance seems to have gone badly wrong.

Australia had run up a substantial 267 for eight, with David Boon the top scorer, making 65. And, though Javed Miandad made
70, Craig McDermott's five wickets made sure Pakistan finished eighteen runs adrift.

The second part of the plot came, appropriately enough, on 5 November in Bombay and that plot was to sweep the Indian left-arm spinners out of the game, after England were not disappointed to have been put in. That was what Graham Gooch achieved, making 115. Mike Gatting joined in the assault and the pair put on 117 for the third wicket, with Gatting making 56. 254 was not necessarily an impregnable score, though.

The celebratory fireworks were mostly discharged somewhat prematurely, when Kapil Dev looked like taking India to their target comfortably. He perished, though, caught off a skier by Gatting off Hemmings and after that things were always under control for England.

England won by 35 runs and Eddie Hemmings finished with four for 52. England had made it to the World Cup final.

World Cup Final day. I made the rare – for me – decision to go to the ground in the press bus, thinking it might make the journey through the crowds easier. In fact it was quite the reverse. It quickly became obvious that it would be faster to walk, as the bus, which was granted no privileged status, was stuck fast in Chowringhee's traffic.

I abandoned the bus and struck off across the Maidan to Eden Gardens, arriving a good 30 minutes ahead of the rest of our party, which included a rather unwell CMJ, who was by
no means confident of making it through the day. So I scheduled him for shorter spells than the half-hours he had done in Bombay.

Australia got off to a rapid start, but England pegged them back in mid-innings. They still managed to cut loose towards the end to finish with a challenging total of 253.

David Boon had had a good tournament opening the batting and again he had launched the innings with 75. In the latter stages, it was Allan Border and Mike Veletta who secured that score, leaving England needing the highest winning total batting second in the tournament.

Tim Robinson fell in the first over, but Bill Athey and Gooch set up a sound base, which Gatting and Athey built on, to take England to 135 for two after 31 overs. It was looking relatively comfortable.

Allan Border certainly felt the game was getting away from Australia and something different had to be tried. So he brought himself on to bowl his part-time spin. The first ball was drifting down the leg side, but Gatting had committed to a reverse sweep and the ball lobbed up off a top edge and, via his shoulder, was taken by the keeper, Greg Dyer.

If that wasn't the turning point in the match, it certainly checked England's progress, which might have recovered its momentum, had not Athey gone for a third run on a Steve Waugh misfield and been run out. After that England were always just off the pace, mainly through the steady loss of wickets, until a miserly penultimate over from Waugh left the ninth-wicket partnership needing seventeen from McDermott's last over and that proved too much to ask.

Mid-way through that final over, when it became
mathematically impossible for England to win, Henry Blofeld – well aware that Australia, with no commentary of their own there, were taking ours – declared, ‘Now you really can start celebrating in Australia. I give you my final, final permission.'

It was a huge disappointment for England, of course, but for Australia, who had not had the greatest of success thus far in the eighties, it was the start of a new era.

After-match interviews and even reports were quickly rendered impossible by the volume of the public address system's music. But the Australians enjoyed their lap of honour with the cup.

In
the summer of 2007 I retired from the BBC after 42 years. For 34 of those I had been producing
Test Match Special
. That made it more than just a job. It really had been my life. People ask if I miss it and I say that of course I do, but a call from Aggers from some remote airport departure lounge as he waits for a delayed flight makes me miss it slightly less.

I had a pang of regret as I listened to the commentary from the World Cup final in Bombay in 2011. It was the first one that I had not worked at. But then I thought of the post match scramble for interviews and the clearing up of filthy cables, the packing up of equipment and the logistics of getting it all out of the ground and ready for the flight home. It is not all glamour.

Certainly I still dream frequently that I am in some strange foreign commentary box, trying to make it work against the odds. Usually in my dream there is a very restricted view of the game and always the line to London or a few of the commentators are missing.

Apart from the camaraderie of touring with fellow broadcasters, press and players, it has been an enormous privilege to have seen so many wonderful sights. I have visited the Taj Mahal and the spectacular Amber Palace at Jaipur on more than one occasion each. I have carried on up the Khyber Pass, with its forbidding rocky mountainsides. I have marvelled at
the towering Himalayas and celebrated just being in the presence of such tourist icons as Table Mountain and Sydney Harbour's Bridge and Opera House. I have climbed the vertiginous Sigirya Rock in Sri Lanka and admired the Victoria Falls and the mysterious settlement of Great Zimbabwe. All these and more have given me wonderful memories, which I will always cherish.

Funnily enough, I think it was a piece of British engineering that produced the greatest tingle factor of all.

Despite last night's late finish, I was up at 6.30 a.m. to go to the roof of the hotel. It was a grey, drizzly morning, but I was just in time to see the QE II gliding slowly past the Opera House. She stopped when her bows were up to the Bridge and was manoeuvred by tugs back into Circular Quay.

Over the past week we have seen a couple of European cruise liners in the same berth, but this was a serious ship and a hugely impressive sight. I felt quite a surge of pride and a tingle down the spine as I watched her tie up.

The cheeky little ferries carried on buzzing past her, as if they were not going to allow such a monster to disrupt their day.

I have also seen quite a bit of memorable cricket, though I never covered a winning Ashes tour of Australia. The one time England did win down under while I was doing the job – under Mike Gatting in 1986–87 – I was manning the London studio through the night.

Now with an Australian wife, Kim, I divide my time between
Buckinghamshire and Brisbane and so, in advance of the 2010–11 Ashes series, the BBC asked me to reprise my reconnaissance tour of four years previously, going round the Test venues to make sure that they would have the right facilities. I had the advantage not only of having a home there, but also of knowing many of the necessary contacts at the Test grounds and almost all those in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

I arrived in Perth for my inspection there at about the same time as England and had the chance to catch up with Aggers and members of the team and the press, some of whom were surprised to see me there. Still, it was a strange feeling to go to the Gabba in Brisbane on the first morning of the first Test as a spectator. After having seen the first ball of the series four years before directed by Steve Harmison straight at second slip, I was determined not to miss the start.

That wayward delivery had seemed to set the tone for the series. This time the shock came with the third ball, which Andrew Strauss cut firmly straight into the hands of the gully fielder. All Englishmen's spirits quailed.

The traditional pre-series Australian hype – in which the Poms are rubbished and the only question is which of the Australian supermen are going to complete the final line up to carry out the humiliation – had been slightly muted this time, relying on attacking the England players for failing to attend a function they had not been invited to. But it went into overdrive after the first day, when Peter Siddle, on his 26th birthday, took a hat-trick – Cook, Prior and Broad falling, just when England were rebuilding. Australia took a large first innings lead and all the hopes for a successful defence of the Ashes seemed to have been dashed at the first hurdle.

I was at the Gabba for every day of that match, anxiously laying
claim to a ‘lucky seat' as Strauss, Cook and Trott staged the great second innings fight back that set up the chance of the series win. Then I had an engagement that took me to Melbourne conveniently for the retaining of the Ashes there. Maybe as a simple spectator I was able to savour the moment even more than my successors working at the MCG, but in some ways something did seem to be missing. I was no longer part of it.

Over the years the places, the people and the fact of being involved in the unfolding of cricket history have played equal parts in what has been an enduring adventure.

But for all the thrills, the greatest experience of all remained the feel of the aircraft wheels touching down and the disembodied voice announcing, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London Heathrow. The temperature is five degrees – and it's raining.'