Buch lesen: «The Ashes According to Bumble»
Title Page
Richard Gibson
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Plans to Scon the Don
2 In the Line of Duty
3 The High Fliers
4 Preparing for Battle
5 Dogs of Waugh
6 Vipers
7 Black and White and Read all Over
8 Skinfolds at the Ready
9 My All-Time Ashes XI
Picture Section
Copyright
About the Publisher
Richard Gibson – if you don’t like the book, it’s his fault. I get enough hassle in the day job and from irate Indian supporters.
Gareth Copley – the lad needed a leg up, being from Huddersfield.
One of the first things you notice as an England cricketer on an Ashes tour is the aggression shown towards you by the locals, even when they’re trying to be nice.
‘G’day,’ they say, lips pursing into a smile, before rolling the rest of the sentence off the tongue like a lizard toying with a defenceless ant: ‘Ya pommie bastard.’
Such uncouth language. Surely, everybody with a bit of culture about them knows that on first meetings it is the done thing to be as formal as possible. No shortening of words, and certainly no use of slang. ‘Good morning, how do you do?’ Now that would be a far better address to a visitor to one’s country. It’s what our good queen would approve of, and let’s not forget that for all our historical sporting differences we are united by one thing at least. We have remained kind enough to share her good ladyship with that other rabble.
And anyway, if this pseudo-hostility from our Australian hosts was designed to intimidate they clearly chose the wrong bloke. Regular greetings like that were unlikely to break me psychologically; after all I’d suffered a lot worse during my upbringing in Accrington. Let’s face it, when your mum dresses you in pink frocks, insists on growing your hair long and calling you Gwyneth, as mine did, who cares what you get called outside your front door? Mum had wanted a girl, you see, and for a time she was not prepared to let the fact I wasn’t one get in the way of her dream.
You see, it’s easy to lose your sense of perspective when it comes to the phoney war that develops before every England v Australia series. But while Dennis and Jeff could bruise my bones, names would never hurt me.
As it happened Dennis and Jeff did such a good job of hurting me, and limiting my runs to boot, that my Ashes playing experience was confined to just one series, the 1974–75 whopping down under. So to justify writing an entire book about it, you will notice in subsequent chapters that I have by-passed some of the most enthralling episodes of its great heritage to talk about my own involvement. You will recall me top-scoring in an England win on New Year’s Day that winter; battling valiantly for six hours on the trampoline at Perth. You what? You’ve no recollection of your hero’s bravery in the face of much provocation from those uncouth wombat worriers? Well, let me tell you in the most exaggerated terms possible exactly how I quelled the charge of these savages – softening them up sufficiently for others like Sir Ian Botham to ride in and finish them off in future battles.
I should also probably mention here that some of the names in this recollection of Ashes history have been changed – not, as in some books, to protect true identities but because, after 50 years in the professional game, my recall can be a little hazy. What I can promise, however, is that after half-a-century my enthusiasm has not diminished and I remain as excited as a kid at Christmas when it comes to England v Australia clashes.
There is something so magical about tussling with the old enemy – the great rivalry between Celtic and Rangers, or indeed football internationals between England and Germany, the most comparable things I can think of among other sports – and I have been party to some real ding-dongs in my post-playing career, both as England coach and as a commentator with the BBC’s Test Match Special and Sky Sports.
A series between England and Australia is like no other in cricket and resonates as much now as it did at the turn of the 20th century when news of the exploits of the likes of WG Grace, Ranjitsinhji and Sydney Barnes would be devoured by readers of newspapers like the Manchester Guardian. When you think of years gone by, the ones of 1948, 1956, 1981 and 2005 stand out. Those were years when this country was host to great Ashes series.
In this age of 24–7 media coverage our heroes are so much more familiar than those of the past, and reporting and analysis so much faster, that you can actually feel as though you are a part of what is taking place. You can follow the scores or even watch the action on the move; read about the latest session’s play on your iPad or download a podcast to your iPhone. Don’t worry, I’m getting there with technology too, and recently invested in an iRon for my good lady wife. Pleased to report it keeps her occupied when I get home to watch the highlights.
There is something so appealing about a duel with the Australians that it is hard to keep your eyes off it, or to restrain yourself from watching re-runs again and again. Generation upon generation of English cricketers would forego any of their other achievements in the game to be a part of a successful team, to be an Ashes winner. Me amongst them.
Our relationship with the Australians in general is interesting. They say that love and hate are pretty close together, don’t they? And we sort of love them, and sort of hate them at the same time, don’t we?
Australians tell us how much they adore being Australian, and of a devotion to their beautiful country; glad that they haven’t had to grow up around whingeing Poms, who don’t wash and drink warm beer. The lack of gratitude as they badmouth us always gets me here. Have they forgotten? It was us kind lot that sent them there in the first place.
The rivalry between the nations has always been best expressed through cricket, I believe, and on the field there is without doubt a begrudging admiration on both sides for the other. Yes, we’ve heard all the jokes before:
What do you call an Englishman with a hundred to his name? A bowler.
What would Glenn McGrath be called if he was English? An all-rounder.
What’s the definition of optimism? An England batsman who applies sunscreen.
Of course, we give plenty back too, and I think most Australians understand that when the Barmy Army remind them of their ancestry – how Great Uncle Jack arrived kitted out in clads – it is done so in good spirit. Furthermore, despite their mercilessly cruel song about Mitchell Johnson – altogether now ‘He bowls to the left, He bowls to the right, That Mitchell Johnson, His bowling is you-know-what’ – a good percentage of the throng will have admired his match-winning performance at Perth during the 2010–11 series. Because secretly we like them, and secretly they like us. It just doesn’t pay to admit it too often.
In a work capacity I have spent a hell of a lot of time in the Sky Sports commentary box with Botham, and there is no greater verbal jouster than he when it comes to the Aussies. He is digging at them all the time – and that’s just his friends. He cannot help but get stuck into them. I think he earnestly believes it is the primary duty he was put on this earth for. No wonder he used to treat them with such disdain as a player.
For Sir Beefykins – or His Royal Beefyness or Sir Osis (of the liver) to give him his other nicknames – getting stuck into the Aussies is the be all and end all. Some of his very best friends are Australians and he just damn right insults them the whole time he is in their company. His words are pretty choice towards them even when he is not. You should see some of the foul-fingered texts he sends to them. It’s like his phone’s got Tourette’s. To give them their due, his pals don’t hold back either. If you read some of these insults being batted this way and that you would think there was nothing but pure hatred between them. Yet dig beneath the expletives and you find there are keen friendships formed in his playing days that have stood the test of time. He is even in business with one of them, the winemaker Geoff Merrill, exporting bottles of Botham Merrill Willis Shiraz around the globe.
During the modern era of Ashes skirmishes, around the time I was England coach, there was some mischief hanging around regarding the value of the series in Cricket Australia’s international scheduling. During two decades of Australian dominance, it was occasionally suggested that five matches against England was too many, that Ashes campaigns should be downgraded to three matches and that Australia would be better off playing four and five match series against other leading nations.
Not sure that would go down well with the public on either side these days, particularly given that the boot has been shifted firmly to the other foot. Prior to this double Ashes year of 2013, there is no doubt that England have been the dominant force over recent meetings between the countries, and Australia are now the ones trying to rebuild under a new chairman of selectors in John Inverarity and a new captain in Michael Clarke. They will have felt under pressure to get that little urn back, and the focus of their player management over the past few months will undoubtedly have been to get their best possible XI on the park for Trent Bridge in July.
It is a rather historic time for cricket’s greatest competition, with 10 back-to-back Tests over six months split between home and away. These two series on the horizon could prove to be defining moments in the careers of many of the players involved. The challenge for England is to show that they are among the best if not the best Ashes team in history, that they can now be favourably compared to Australia from the late 1980s and 1990s.
Okay, this England team was defeated by South Africa, and relinquished their world number one status as a result, but this is the series that matters most to the fans, the one they demand is won. In the English cricket psyche it is okay to lose to almost anyone but not Australia. That’s tradition for you. No matter where the two teams stand within world cricket’s rankings, this is the big one, the one that means the most, and the passing of time has not diluted that.
For these England players, to win three Ashes series in a row would be something special – two generations of cricketers before them failed to win one, so imagine a treble on your CV. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, an England side last won four series in a row in the 1880s.
What a challenge sits on the horizon. These players can go down in history as the most successful we’ve ever produced in Ashes terms. And as things stood, they entered the 2013 summer in good fettle. Sure, New Zealand provided an unexpected jolt or two and came close to winning the series, but overall the winter was positive. England had previously struggled in India, but having conquered the subcontinent at long last under Alastair Cook’s leadership, I feel they are on the verge of something very special.
People talk about the demise of Test cricket around the world but you only need to see what is happening around this country’s Test grounds in the summer of 2013, and how the Australian public will reciprocate that enthusiasm by turning out in their thousands over the winter, to show the appetite for the traditional form of the game is as healthy as it has ever been between the two most traditional foes. Recession or no recession, there will be a mass exodus from these shores to Australia in the 2013–14 winter, too.
We can only hope that this most ferociously contested cricket is played in the kind of spirit shown in the recent past. One Ashes moment that people will never forget is when Freddie Flintoff consoled Brett Lee, who was down on his haunches on the edge of the pitch in the immediate aftermath of the agonising 2005 defeat at Edgbaston. Fred obviously just felt it was the natural thing to do. Two great blokes, two great competitors, going at it hammer and tongs; it summed up the essence of England v Australia matches in a snapshot. You can call each other whatever you want, and within the spirit of the game do or say pretty much anything you like to your opponent between the hours of 11am and six o’clock in the evening, but this is a series that promotes unbelievable friendships and ultimate respect.
Chapter 1
Can there be anything in sport so small that creates such a big fuss? After all, when you break it all down, us English and those Australians have spent one and a quarter centuries skirmishing over a six-inch terracotta urn. If it’s in your possession – metaphorically speaking, of course, because it never leaves its safehouse at Lord’s – then everything is fine and dandy in the world. But if the opposition have their mucky paws on it, then start drawing up the battle plans because we want it back.
It is the primary rivalry in cricket and dates back to 1882, when England’s sorry chase of 85 to beat Australia at the Oval fell short, leaving star man WG Grace embarrassed and The Sporting Times bemoaning the death of English cricket in a mock obituary.
‘In Affectionate Remembrance of English cricket, which died at the Oval on 29 August 1882, Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances – R.I.P. – N.B. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia,’ wrote Reginald Shirley Brooks. I am unsure he can have imagined what his words would lead to.
Players from both countries have made their names on the back of performances in this greatest of series, and some of the attitudes of the greatest names have recurred in subsequent generations. Grace was quite a character of course, and one who used to inform opposition bowlers: ‘They’ve come to watch me bat, not you bowl.’ Sounds familiar, does that. I am sure there is some bespectacled bloke who played for Yorkshire for donkey’s years who used to say exactly the same, who now believes folk turn on the radio rather than TV for similar reasons. I actually got him out a couple of times but the name escapes me.
Grace was a beauty. You had to uproot his stumps to get rid of him apparently, as a nick of the bails would simply result in him setting the timber up again and carrying on as if nothing had happened. No wonder he scored more than 50,000 first-class runs in his career. Sounds like it was three strikes and you’re out in his rulebook. ‘I’ll have another go, if you don’t mind. Oh, you do mind? Well, I’ll be having another go, anyway.’
Then there was the godfather of bowlers Sydney Barnes, who, plucked from the Lancashire League, used to scowl and complain if asked to bowl from the ‘wrong’ end. He had a frightful temper, it was said, and aimed it at his own team-mates as much as he did at opponents. ‘There’s only one captain of a side when I’m bowling,’ he brashly once declared. ‘Me!’
Technically, England were the first winners of the Ashes 130 years ago under the captaincy of the Hon. Ivo Bligh, who announced his intention to put Skippy on the hop upon arrival in Australia. ‘We have come to beard the kangaroo in his den – and try to recover those Ashes,’ he is said to have told an audience at an early dinner on the tour. He did just that, returning to Blighty with a commemorative urn full of ashes of some sort, which was then bequeathed to the Marylebone Cricket Club upon his death in 1927.
Bligh’s victory began a period of dominance of eight England wins on the trot, a record sequence that the Australian teams that straddled the Millennium managed to equal but not surpass. Eight series victories in a row sounds as if it would dilute the intensity, but not a bit of it because in this duel you simply cannot get bored of coming out on top.
If there is one thing I really love about England v Australia clashes it is the win-at-all-costs mentality that prevails. I’ll declare my hand here. I hate losing, always have done, always will do. Bunkum to the stiff-upper-lip brigade who believe it is all about the way the cricket is played rather than the result. For my mind, as long as you do not transgress into the territory of disrepute, as long as you behave as you would if your parents were stood at mid-on and mid-off, and as long as you are acting within the laws of the game it’s all a fair do to me. In short, play as hard as possible.
Of course, there have been times when this ship’s sailed a bit close to the wind, but the history of the Ashes is richer for its great conflicts. Growing up as a cricket fan, there were some legendary tales to take in. As series that outdate me go there are none more memorable than that of 1932–33. So memorable in fact that it took on a name of its own: Bodyline.
During its course, the Australian captain Bill Woodfull exclaimed: ‘There are two teams out there on the oval. One is playing cricket, the other is not.’
Now that Douglas Jardine, the man in charge of the team alleged to be not playing cricket, sounds like an intriguing character. One who went around treating everyone else with utter disdain. Seems he didn’t like the Australians much, and didn’t have a great deal of time for his own lot either if they were ‘players’ rather than ‘gentlemen’. England captain he may have been, but he was from the age of teams being split between the upper classes and those ditching hard labour for graft on a sporting field. But as an amateur, he had little time for those who sought to make cricket their profession.
His task was fairly simple: to stop Don Bradman’s free-flowing bat in its tracks. His mind was devoted to curbing Bradman’s almost god-given skill, and he was chastised for coming up with a solution that served his England team’s purpose. One of the phrases I like in cricket is ‘find a way’. It is after all a game of tactics and, in Jardine, an Indian-born public schoolboy, England had a master tactician who found a way to win.
I guess he was the first in a long list of uncompromising captains in what is undoubtedly the greatest rivalry in cricket. From both English and Australian perspectives it is the series that matters. The number one. Possibly the only one to some.
There is no point downplaying its appeal because here is a series that draws the biggest crowds, the largest television audiences and generates the most chat down the local. Others are simply incomparable. In political terms our historical arch enemy has been Germany. The sporting equivalent is Australia.
Sounds to me like Jardine treated the Ashes as a war. Or perhaps more accurately, he tried to turn it into one. In his mind, all Australians were ‘uneducated’ and together they made ‘an unruly mob’. He lived up to this air of superiority by wearing a Harlequins cap to bat in. I guess that was the 1930s equivalent to go-faster stripes on your boots, peacock hair, diamond earrings and half-sleeve tattoos. I am not sure Jardine needed a look-at-me fashion statement, though, to draw attention to himself.
There was something more significant in Jardine’s behaviour that put him ahead of his era, though, and that was his use of previous footage to prepare for that 1932–33 tour. He watched film of Bradman caressing the ball along the carpet to the boundary during the Australians’ 1930 tour to England, and most probably grimaced. Bradman piled up 974 runs in Australia’s 2–1 victory that summer. But, having reviewed the action, Jardine is said to have noticed something from the final Test at the Oval. Although he took evasive action, Bradman apparently looked uncomfortable at short-pitched stuff sent down by that most renowned of fast bowlers Harold Larwood. He did well to spot it amongst the flurry of fours, I guess – Bradman scored a double hundred – but he was prepared to test the theory that Bradman did not like it up him.
The planning stage took in a meeting in Piccadilly with Larwood and others in August 1932, and continued in September when the England team set off on their month-long voyage down under. You can just imagine Jardine on the deck of the ship, rubbing his hands together, scheming like a James Bond villain. The evil henchmen that would make Bodyline famous were the Nottinghamshire pair Bill Voce and Larwood, a barrel-chested left-armer and a lithe, fairly short paceman whose cricket career rescued him from the daily grind of the pit. It was said that Larwood’s work as a miner gave him the extra strength to generate extreme pace. Just as now, pace has always been the ingredient that worries top batsmen most, and the one that made the Bodyline tactic successful.
The Ashes has had a habit of bringing out the dark arts and series like that have taken on almost mythical status. It seems like another world when you read about Mr Jardine but you can’t help chuckle at his behaviour. It’s like one of those 1930s talkies at the local cinema. This bloke turns up from down pit and is met by the villainous boss. ‘Now this is what I want you to do for me, Larwood. Are you clear?’
‘Certainly, sir, no problem. I’ll knock their heads off, if that’s what you want?’
These days a short one into the ribs is a shock weapon for a fast bowler but in Jardine’s tactical notebook it was a stock delivery. They say that the potency of Bodyline was evident even in the final warm-up matches of the tour when Bradman began to lose his wicket in unusual ways. In attempting to duck one bouncer, he left the periscope up and was caught at mid-on. Another piece of evasive action had resulted in him being bowled middle-stump. Suddenly, Bradman’s batting was no longer Bradman-esque.
Uncertainty does strange things to players and the photograph of Bradman’s first ball of the series – he had missed the first Test defeat citing ill health – shows it can even infiltrate the very best. The great man is well outside off-stump as he bottom-edges a Voce long-hop to dislodge the bails and complete the very first and very last golden duck of his international career.
Australia actually levelled the series in that second match at Melbourne. But it was in the next Test at Adelaide, upon the liveliest of pitches, where it all kicked off. Big style. It was from the dressing room at the Adelaide Oval, where he was laid out recovering from a blow to his solar plexus administered by Larwood, that Woodfull’s famous assertion that England had fallen short of the necessary spirit of the game made its way into the world.
To suggest the crowd were unhappy with the bombardment sent down to a leg-side trap would be like saying Marmite polarises opinion. In an age when the crowd reaction tended to be rounds of applause and hip hip hoorays, imagine how collective chants of ‘get off you bar steward’ or words to that effect would have sounded. From some pockets of the stands came the 10 count, as used in boxing, to suggest that the bouncer assault should be stopped.
Good old Jardine thrived on the confrontation, and could not give a hoot that the locals were sufficiently roused to tear down their own ground. An England captain in Australia has to have a thick skin. Luckily, Jardine’s exterior was the human equivalent of a rhino’s hide. Even his own tour manager, Pelham Warner, was uneasy about the conduct of the tourists in setting leg-side fields and aiming for the line of the body. It boiled over, of course, when Aussie wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield was felled by a top edge into his own skull, shaping to hook a Larwood bouncer. With blood on the pitch, no wonder Larwood and Co feared being lynched by the mob.
The best players through history adapt, yet when Bradman did in this particular series, eschewing conventional technique for shuffling this way or that as the bowler hit his delivery stride, he copped criticism. There were even calls for him to be dropped. This bloke, a flippin’ genius whose career Test average of 99.94 put him as close to cricket immortality as anyone has got, finished the series as Australia’s leading run-scorer. But there were still those questioning him, and whether he had the stomach for the fight against the fast stuff. The triumph of Larwood, who claimed 33 series wickets, over the boy from Bowral was key to England’s 4–1 win.
I would suggest that Anglo-Antipodean relations were at an all-time low that winter, and the Australian board’s wire back to the MCC claiming that the bodyline bowling had challenged the best interests of the game only added gasoline to the barbie. There is nothing like the use of the term ‘unsportsmanlike’ to ignite things. Unless the practice was stopped at once, it warned, the friendliness between the two countries was under threat. The MCC response was to insist no infringement of the laws, or indeed the spirit, of the game had taken place and that if the Australian board wished to propose a new law that was a different matter.
The MCC even volunteered culling the remainder of England’s tour. But that would only have halted the best theatre Australia had to offer. Of course, when there is some niggle, when the cricket is at its most hostile or spectacular, out they come. Think of the crowds shoehorned in during 2005 and the incredible television viewing figures that went with that, or even those of the following series in Australia when Ricky Ponting’s team sought and exacted their ultimate revenge. When the entertainment is box office, up go the attendances.
Some players like to stoke themselves up by engaging in chat with opponents, not necessarily with ball in hand but with bat, and Jardine was one for seeking out pleasantries with the crowd as well as members of the fielding side. He used to bait the masses on the famous hill at Sydney by calling for the 12th man to bring him a glass of water. It was all part of the pantomime, of course.
I reckon it would have made his trip had there been WANTED posters slapped on billboards all over Australia that year. But he didn’t have to leave the pavilion of their premier cricket grounds to discover he went down about as well as gherkin and ice cream sandwiches to your average Aussie. Legend has it that after taking exception to one on-field exchange, Jardine marched into the home dressing room to remonstrate with the opposition. He claimed he had heard one of them call him a ‘pommie bastard’ under their breath. He was met at the door by Vic Richardson, Australia’s vice-captain, who is said to have addressed the rest of the room with: ‘Alright, which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?’ Just about the right tone, that. What goes on, on the pitch, stays on the pitch – unless the stump microphones are turned on, of course.
Bradman was the major draw card for a couple of decades of Ashes conflict, and what an anomaly he was in the history of our great game. Name any team you want, any decade you want and there is no-one to come close to what he did on the world stage. At 20 years of age he became the youngest player to score an Ashes hundred, and from that point forth he made records tumble like dominoes down a hill.
At Headingley in 1930, he scored 309 runs in a day. That must have felt like one man against 11 for that particular England team. When he took over the captaincy for the 1936–37 series, he became the first man in history to lead a team to victory having been two Tests down. With this Clark Kent-esque figure around there was not much room for others to breathe.
Len Hutton registered the highest individual Ashes score of 364 at the Oval in 1938, in England’s whopping innings-and-579-runs victory, but still Bradman’s Australia held the urn. The great Wally Hammond went on into his 40s in his bid to finally overthrow him. As Jack Hobbs said: ‘The Don was too good: he spoilt the game.’
In his final series, Bradman fronted the 1948 ‘Invincibles’ – what a team they were. Not only did they win the Ashes 4–0 that summer, they also went 34 matches undefeated on the tour, led by fearsome fast bowlers like Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller. In the 1950–51 series that followed, attendance figures were down by more than 25% on the previous one down under. Although my old mate Warnie sports the nickname ‘Hollywood’ it is fair to say that Bradman was exactly that. As soon as Australia’s A-list performer hung up his boots, folk appeared less keen to turn out. And what a way to go – bowled by a googly from Eric Hollies second ball in his final Test innings when only requiring four runs to finish with an average in three figures. No matter how you dress it up those numbers are absolutely mind-boggling.
