Spirit On The Water (11 page)

After a very welcome tea to sustain us, we started our innings. It looked a tall order from the outset and so it proved. At 133 for
6 and with more than ten overs to go, the rain came to our rescue. Crawford assured us all that the alacrity with which he accepted the Wistaston’s captain’s offer of a draw was no reflection on his faith in the batsmen still to come.

The champagne moment of the match was shared between Joe’s excellent diving catch at cover, cigarette still in mouth and Chris’s imperious pull for his second consecutive boundary, the bowler having changed from gentle Sunday Taverners leg breaks to fierce Saturday league pace after the first boundary.

England had started that summer with a series win against what was arguably the worst West Indies team ever to tour this country. A long running dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board and the players was still continuing when they arrived and can not have helped the team’s frame of mind. They only had one warm up match before the First Test. This was rained off and the West Indian bowlers arrived at Lords without having bowled a single ball in anger. It was Peter Moores’ first Test series as England coach and he could not have asked for an easier introduction to international cricket.

Pietersen, Prior, Vaughan, Collingwood and Cook all averaged over 50. Even Sidebottom averaged 49, admittedly with the help of some ‘not outs’. That Panesar should be the leading England wicket taker in a series played on the green wickets of May and June was a reflection on both the West Indies’ batting and England’s seam attack.

The Lords Test was a draw due to rain but England won the three remaining Tests. Shivnarine Chanderpaul was a lone beacon of resistance for the West Indies. He top scored in every innings that he played and ended with an average of 148.66 – the highest ever Test series average for an overseas
batsman in England. He left Don Bradman, Steve Waugh, Viv Richards and Garry Sobers in his wake.

With the Test series over, the West Indies Cricket Board continued to do their best to disrupt their team’s progress. The selectors wanted to offer the job of one-day captain to Chris Gayle. The Board rejected this initially and said they wanted Daren Ganga, who had stood in for the injured Sarwan in the Tests, to continue. Eventually Gayle was appointed but it was yet another example of mismanagement by the West Indies Board and hardly conducive to team morale.

With Chris Gayle finally in charge, the Twenty:20 series was drawn one apiece. In the first ODI, England struggled to a total of 225 but the Windies were shot out for 146. Once again Chanderpaul stood alone, with 53 not out. Somehow the West Indies managed to recover, perhaps responding to Gayle’s laid back Jamaican charisma. They won both the next two games comfortably and Paul Collingwood had lost his first one-day series as captain, 2 – 1. Chanderpaul got a century in the second ODI, unbeaten of course. In the deciding game, it was difficult to know which was the more surprising: Chanderpaul being out for only 33 or Chris Gayle taking forty-two overs for his 82.

It was a season of two halves for England. The three match series against India that followed the games against the West Indies had everything. Good cricket from both sides, bouncers, beamers, barging and jelly babies.

None of the Ashes winning bowling quintet of 2005 were available for England against India. Flintoff, Harmison, Hoggard and Jones were all injured and Giles had retired. With no ‘all-rounder’ to take Flintoff’s place, England reverted to a four man bowling attack made up of Anderson, Sidebottom, Tremlett and Panesar.

Bad light and rain ultimately thwarted England in the First Test at Lords but did not prevent it from being a very exciting game. Had Hawk-Eye been the umpire, Panesar’s imploring appeal for LBW against Sreesanth would have been upheld and England would have won. As it was, Steve Bucknor turned it down and a few minutes later, the teams came off for bad light.

In the Second Test at Trent Bridge, an England player placed some jelly babies near the stumps when Zaheer Khan went out to bat. Although there was no TV footage to support it, some of the newspapers named Ian Bell as the most likely culprit. Ian Bell?! Up to that point, the general impression was that geese could confidently approach Bell without any fear of a boo. Could it really have been him and if so why did he do it?

One theory was that it was intended to wind up Zaheer Khan as there had been a number of comments about his weight. If so, it worked. He took five wickets in the second innings and India won the match. A more generous explanation was that the jelly baby was there to mark the position where short leg was supposed to stand. It was all rather puerile, or infantile you could say, and certainly didn’t do England any favours.

During the same Test match, Sreesanth seemed to be on a one-man mission to rough up the England batsmen. He shoulder barged Michael Vaughan, bowled a beamer at Kevin Pietersen and overstepped by two feet to bowl a bouncer at Paul Collingwood. He was fined half his match fee for the barge and apparently given a talking to by Dravid, the Indian captain.

This is how it should be. It is part of the captain’s job to set the standards for the team and if a player transgresses, then it is right that he should have a word with him. Cook missed a trick when he pretended that he hadn’t heard Graeme Swann say “F**k off” to Siddique when he finally got him out in England’s second Test against
Bangladesh in March 2010. Maybe Cook is an Arsenal supporter and had been taking lessons from Arsene Wenger? An Arsenal player could take out a Kalashnikov and gun down the entire opposition midfield and Wenger would say he hadn’t seen it.

To Swann’s credit, he apologised unreservedly afterwards. His outburst was born of tiredness and frustration having bowled 49 overs in Bangladesh’s second innings. All Cook had to say was that Swann had said it in the heat of the moment and he was sure that he regretted it. If he had done that then, not only would he have maintained the moral high ground, but also shown himself to be a leader with a mind of his own. The ‘Wenger approach’ did him no credit.

One up and one to play, India batted first at the Oval and scored 664. All eleven batsmen reached double figures, only the eleventh time this had happened in a Test match. Despite the presence of Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly and Dravid, the only Indian to score a century in the match, and indeed in the series, was Anil Kumble. One of the ‘nice guys’ of international cricket, it was his first and only Test century in his 118
^th
appearance for his country.

England made 345 when they batted but Dravid did not enforce the follow-on. He may have regretted it when India were 11 for 3 in their second innings but they recovered to 180 for 6 and then declared with a lead of 500. England were never likely to win but they could lose. Pietersen scored 101 and then got out but the game ended in a draw. Dravid had become only the third Indian captain to win a Test series in England.

An exciting seven match ODI series followed (it’s not often you can say that) with England winning the final game to take the series 4 – 3 (and you can’t say that often either!)

2007 had been a pretty good year for England considering the injuries to their first choice bowlers and adjusting to a new coach
and a new ODI captain. It had also been a good year for the Ash Tree. The tour to Nantwich had helped to ‘bond’ the team and there was encouraging talk of enthusiasm for future tours, maybe even venturing outside Cheshire.

Diego Maradona, Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry and Greg Chappell were all very, very good players, arguably great players but they are all remembered predominantly for something other than outstanding ability at their chosen sport.

In the case of Maradona it is the ‘Hand of God’ goal against England. With Zidane it is that World Cup Final head butt and for Henry it is the handball against the Irish. And Greg Chappell? You can probably guess but we will come to him later.

I acknowledge that this is a somewhat Anglo Saxon view. Maradona and Zidane are still worshipped as gods in their respective countries. Henry can do no wrong in certain parts of North London and is a hero in France but he probably won’t be holding his next stag do in Dublin. If you are an Irish Arsenal supporter, and there are a few (e.g. Dara O’Briain who appeared on the BBC’s
Newsnight
accepting David Ginola’a apologies from an embarrassed French people), then you are on the horns of a genuine dilemma. Henry, is he hero or zero?

In English eyes, Diego Maradona will forever be associated with the ‘Hand of God’ goal that he scored for Argentina against England in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal. How 5’ 5” Maradona managed to get to the ball before 6’ 1” Peter Shilton remains a mystery. As is how the Tunisian referee failed to spot Maradona’s left hand punching the ball into the net. Even his teammates saw him do it; Maradona had to urge them to
celebrate with him in case the referee changed his mind about awarding the goal.

Four minutes later, Maradona proceeded to dribble the ball over sixty yards, through half the England team before finally rounding Shilton and slotting the ball into the net. It was later nominated The Goal of the Century by FIFA.

Gary Lineker got a goal back from a John Barnes cross to make it 2 –1 and that was how the score stayed. For Argentina, it was revenge for the 1966 World Cup quarterfinal when they had Rattin sent off and of course it was retribution for the Falklands Conflict, which was still very fresh in the memory. Lineker’s six goals in the tournament won him the coveted Golden Boot award but Argentina went on to win the World Cup.

22
^nd
June 1986, the day of the ‘Hand of God’ goal, was the rest day of England’s Second Test against India. England got thrashed, scoring 102 in the first innings and 128 in the second. The game took place at Leeds and
Wisden’s
review of the match had this to say:

I am completely with
Wisden
on this. If you are ever watching a Test match on TV and you see three blokes resolutely staying in their seats as a Mexican wave goes round the ground, it will probably be Colin, Roger and me. If you then observe the same three blokes muttering obscenities to themselves and to the
people standing up in front of them, it will almost certainly be us. The use of the verb ‘muttering’ is important. The obscenities will be loud enough for us to hear but not quite loud enough for the people in front to detect what we are actually saying.

Colin, Roger and I are in what increasingly seems to be a minority these days. We go to a Test match mainly to watch the cricket. Perverse possibly, but true. If I wanted to jump up and down in the air with lots of people I don’t know, then I would join an aerobics class.

For completeness, I would also like to make it clear that I don’t go to Test matches in fancy dress (unless jeans and blue denim shirt count) and I’m not a great fan of the Barmy Army either. Why would you go to a cricket match and want to listen to this sung over and over and over again? Everywhere we go

While we are on the subject, I was at Edgbaston in 2009 when elements of the Barmy Army, booed Ricky Ponting as he came out
to bat. Admittedly it was mainly ‘good-natured’ pantomime booing but it did not feel right. I’m a long way from being a member of the Ricky Ponting fan club; I want him to be clean bowled first ball but that doesn’t mean I’m happy to see him booed as he goes out to bat. It is vulgar, demeaning and totally lacking in sportsmanship.

Just because Australian spectators sometimes do it to our batsmen is not a good enough reason for us to do it too. You might as well say that because some of the Pacific Islanders used to eat missionaries, it was OK for the missionaries to do the same to them. Ponting is a very, very good batsman and deserves some respect. It’s the thin end of the wedge. Before we know it, cricket will have degenerated to the boorish and tedious habit of football crowds booing any visiting players they don’t like.

Anyway, I digress. Just as Maradona is forever linked with the ‘Hand of God’ goal so Zinedine Zidane will always be remembered for his head butt in the 2006 World Cup Final. Zidane was a wonderful footballer and played with distinction for a number of clubs including Juventus and Real Madrid. Just before he signed for Juventus from Bordeaux, the Blackburn Rovers manager, Ray Harford, expressed an interest in signing him. Jack Walker, the owner of Blackburn Rovers, apparently replied: “Why do you want to sign Zidane when we have Tim Sherwood?”

Zidane played for France 108 times. He scored two goals in the 1998 World Cup Final when France beat Brazil 3 – 0. Eight years later, the 2006 World Cup Final was to be his last professional appearance. It started well for him when he opened the scoring with a penalty, given away by Marco Materazzi. Italy equalised through none other than Marco Materazzi and the game went to extra time.

Materazzi, making a strong bid for the man of the match award, then made his most significant contribution to the game. He
tugged Zidane’s shirt and apparently Zidane said that if he wanted his shirt that much he would give it to him after the match. As Zidane walked away, Materazzi can be seen saying something. It obviously wasn’t complimentary because Zidane calmly turned round and head butted Materazzi in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

The referee didn’t see it but a quarter of a billion viewers and the fourth official did. Zidane was sent off and Italy went on to win the match on penalties. Just to rub it in, Materazzi was one of Italy’s successful penalty takers.

There was much speculation as to what Materazzi had said to provoke the attack by France’s captain and winner of the player of the tournament award. The immediate post match favourite was that Materazzi had called Zidane, whose parents were born in Algeria, a terrorist. A few years later, Materazzi revealed that when Zidane had offered him his shirt, he had replied “I’d prefer your whore of a sister.” Not particularly pleasant but hardly enough to provoke a flying head butt you would have thought.

As an interesting contrast to when David Beckham was vilified and denounced for his sending off against Argentina in 1998, Zidane was seemingly forgiven by most of the French supporters. President Jacques Chirac said after the match: “You are a virtuoso, a genius of world football. You are also a man of the heart, of commitment, of conviction, and that’s why France admires and loves you.”

Not everyone was so forgiving. “With one blow, the icon is smashed,” wrote
Le Monde
in its editorial.
Liberation
offered its readers this sobering thought: “For a month, France has dreamed alongside Zidane. This morning, it woke up with Chirac.”

Maradona and Zidane, both football geniuses, will forever be remembered for acts of ungentlemanly conduct. So too will Thierry Henry for his instinctive (French view) or deliberate
(view of everybody not French) handball, not once but twice in the World Cup qualifier against Ireland in 2009. An awful lot of negative karma must have followed Henry and the French team to South Africa. The captaincy was taken away from Henry, he didn’t start any of the matches and the French were a shambles. The squad imploded spectacularly and finished with more strikers than Maradona’s Argentina team. France finished bottom of their group and went home in disgrace.

You may be forgiven for thinking that this is supposed to be a book about cricket and this chapter is supposed to be about Greg Chappell and New Zealand’s tour to Australia in 1980/81. Well yes it is but I would claim the C.L.R. James defence. What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?

Handballs and head butts in football matches possibly aren’t what James had in mind but it can be salutary to look at what can happen in the heat of the battle in other sports. Maradona’s act, and his lack of regret, is not altogether surprising given his reputation both on and off the pitch during his career. Zidane had ‘previous’ as his sending off in the World Cup Final was the fourteenth of his career. He apologised for his action but said he did not regret it. In a way, it is admirable that Zidane should put the honour of his sister above a mere soccer match. It’s just a shame for him it happened to be the World Cup Final. However, his exemplary life off the pitch probably helped him maintain his reputation after he retired, despite arguably costing his country a second World Cup.

Mention ‘the underarm incident’ to most cricket followers and they will immediately think of either Greg Chappell, or his younger brother Trevor, or maybe even older brother Ian who was commentating on the match. Certainly there was a cacophony of Chappells around at the time.

The incident happened towards the end of New Zealand’s tour of Australia in the winter of 1980/81. There has always been fierce rivalry between the two countries and had this incident happened in the 18
^th
century, it could easily have led to war. If you think that seems far-fetched then it is worth remembering the War of Jenkin’s Ear. In 1739, Britain declared war on Spain because the captain of a British merchant ship, Captain Robert Jenkins, had his ear cut off by the Spanish, eight years earlier.

The New Zealand squad that arrived in Australia at the end of October 1980 was a capable one. Although Glenn Turner, their best batsman, did not make himself available for the tour, they still had a competitive team. Edgar and Wright were an experienced opening pair. Geoff Howarth, the captain, had developed into a fine batsman while playing for Surrey. Coney and Burgess were promising players and Richard Hadlee was well on his way to becoming a world class all-rounder.

Any New Zealand team has to overcome a slight inferiority complex when playing their ‘big brother’ at cricket. They did not do themselves justice in the three Test matches and lost the series 2 – 0. They would have to wait till 1985 before they recorded their first ever Test win on Australian soil. When the time arrived they did it in style, winning by an innings and 41 runs. Richard Hadlee took 15 wickets in the match, 9 for 52 in the first innings and 6 for 71 in the second. Martin Crowe and John Reid got centuries. For good measure they went on to win the series 2 – 1.

However, that was all in the future. In 1980, they had been outplayed in the Tests but still had high hopes of doing well in the Triangular one-day series. India were eliminated after a multitude of preliminary matches, which started in November and carried on till January. New Zealand went through with Australia to compete
in the
Benson & Hedges
World Series Cup Finals, on a best of five games basis.

New Zealand won the first match at Sydney, helped by an excellent innings from John Wright, well supported by Geoff Howarth. Five wickets for Hadlee saw a rather complacent Australia fall short by 78 runs. New Zealand’s batting failed in the second match, played in Melbourne, and Australia won comfortably by 7 wickets.

The third match, played once again at the MCG, was to be one of the most talked about games in the history of cricket. The major controversy, which nearly did result in a declaration of war, revolved around the last ball of the match. However, earlier in the game, there had been another episode that was somewhat overlooked because of the brouhaha at the end. The New Zealanders were certainly not laughing.

Australia batted first and Greg Chappell on 52, refused to walk when Sneddon, at deep mid-wicket, claimed what appeared to be a low but fair catch. Both umpires somewhat bizarrely said that they were looking for short runs rather than watching the ball so couldn’t give Chappell out. It was left to the batsman to accept Sneddon’s word, strongly supported by Howarth. Chappell declined to do this, although subsequent television pictures proved conclusively that it was a fair catch.

Greg Chappell went on to score 90 and Australia made 235 off their 50 overs. In the days before disputed catches were referred to the third umpire, it was the convention to accept the fielder’s word. Chappell was effectively saying that he thought Sneddon was cheating. In fact it was Chappell who was ‘cheating’ by not walking when he was out. Had he done so then Australia may not have scored as many as they did and he would not have had the albatross of the ‘underarm
incident’ round his neck for the rest of his days. What goes around, comes around.

When New Zealand batted they got to the last over requiring 15 runs to win. A very fine undefeated 102 from Bruce Edgar had helped them get to this position but he wasn’t facing when the last over started. Greg Chappell’s younger brother, Trevor, was given the responsibility of bowling it. The first ball was hit for 4 by Richard Hadlee, who was then out LBW to the next one. A young, slim-line Ian Smith, the Kiwi wicket-keeper, replaced Hadlee. He hit the next couple of balls for 2 runs each and was then bowled heaving across the line to a ball that kept low.

Brian McKechnie, the fast medium bowler who also played 26 times for the rugby All Blacks, came out to face the last ball. He was not renowned for his batting and he had to hit his first ball for a six just to tie the match. At this point, Greg Chappell’s brain went into meltdown. He came over to his brother and instructed him to bowl the last ball underarm along the ground.