Cricket XXXX Cricket (8 page)

‘Really!’ exclaimed Phil impatiently, in that same please-don’t-ever-mention-the-subject-to-me-again voice with which he quashed my embryonic, ‘why-don’t-left-arm-round-the-wicket-bowlers-bowl-
at
-the-wicket-rather-than-
round
-it?’ interest in cricket. ‘How can you be so totally stupid?
Everybody
knows twelve-metres refers to the height of the mast . . .’

Therein lies the fundamental difference between Edmonds P. H. and Edmonds F. E. . . . Whereas I am occasionally bright enough to recognise that I don’t know things, Phil is invariably dumb enough to assume he always does. I eventually found the answer to my question from the veteran Perth sailmaker and celebrated round-the-world yachtsman Roily Tasker. Twelve-metre class yachts, it would appear, are required to comply with the Rating Rule and Measurement Instructions of the International Twelve-metre Class, issued by the authority of the International Yacht Racing Union, in March 1985. The Twelve-metre Class of yacht is based on a complicated quotient, the import of which only Einsteins, gigabyte computers, Mensa folk and Ben Lexcen intellects of life can fully comprehend. The formula of the equation, for those addicted to the new Fremantle variation of Billionaires’ Trivial Pursuit, is simply this:

Good! Now the semantic nebulosity of twelve-metre has been sorted out, we can all forget it. I merely adverted to the formula because it epitomises the complicated morass of rules, regulations, practices and traditions which govern the America’s Cup. Many syndicates even have rules experts in their camps to advise them on procedure. During the 1983 Cup, for example, the New York Yacht Club challenged the legitimacy of
Australia II’s
radical winged keel. The NYYC lost its appeal, and simultaneously with it waves of grass-roots sympathy – if we may mix the maritime with the pastoral. Since the New Zealanders in Freo are doing so remarkably well in the 1986–87 Louis Vuitton Cup (the award for the successful challenger who will subsequently meet the successful defender), there is currently more American hoo-ha about the Kiwis’ fibreglass twelves, the ‘plastic fantastics’ as they have been so appositely nicknamed.
Stars and Stripes
skipper Dennis Conner has all but called the use of fibreglass instead of aluminium cheating, and fellow Californian
USA II
skipper Tom Blackaller has been heard to utter similar, if less directly litigious, comments.

No one, as yet, has had the temerity to lodge an official complaint. The New Zealanders have Lloyds, public sympathy, and a lot of brilliant sailing on their side.

Insufficient knowledge of the rules has also led to certain misunderstandings over sponsorship. There are four Australian syndicates fighting it out for the honour to defend the Cup: two Perth-based syndicates, the Bond syndicate (with its
Australias
), and the Kevin Parry-led Taskforce syndicate (with its
Kookaburras
), which is presently leading the field. There is also a South Australia syndicate and an Eastern Australia Defence syndicate, with its rhyming slang yacht
Steak ’n’ Kidney
, so christened to rhyme with Sydney. Over-enthusiastic donors in the latter two syndicates had not all realised, however, that no matter which Australian syndicate were to win the Cup, that delightfully redundant Garrard artefact would continue to remain bolted securely in place at the Royal Perth Yacht Club. The competition is not between countries or cities, but between individual yacht clubs, and the Australian syndicate which wins the right to defend the Cup, irrespective of whence it comes, will do so on behalf of the Royal Perth Yacht Club.

This apparently came as something of a shock to certain Sydney hotshot punters, who had fancied the idea of the next series being battled out under the shadow of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. There seems a degree of poetic justice, however, in the fact that the Western Australian underdogs who wrested the Auld Mug from the New York Yacht Club, a club dominant for 132 years in the sport, should be allowed to cherish it while it still remains on Australian soil. Distressingly, though, looking at the Kiwis and the ravening Yanks, that may not be for very much longer.

The government of Western Australia, expecting vast profits from the tourist industry, has also ploughed millions of dollars into the Cup and its peripherals. Like Treasurer Paul Keating’s tax returns, however, the massive influx of tourists has failed to materialise. Neither does a sudden flood of twelve-metre aficionados seem likely to develop at this late stage to amortise capital investment. The press and syndicate circuses are already in situ, and locals fear that there could be even heavier losses if the Americans do not make it through to the finals. Nevertheless, there is no underestimating the groundswell of nationalism, even chauvinism, generated by winning at sport, be it never so exotic a sport as twelve-metre racing. Stickers, posters, advertisements, jingles, lapel badges, T-shirts, you name it, everything here in Perth proclaims, ‘G’day from WA’. Eileen, the wife of entrepreneur Alan Bond (who has probably done as much as any one man to put Western Australia on the map), is playing a protagonist’s role in this state promotion. It is tragic, however, that so few Eastern Australians, because of the vast distances involved, and the exorbitant price of internal flights compared to cheap, bucket shop international fares, ever even visit the place. It is such a pity! After Sydney, Perth must surely rate as the most beautiful of Australia’s state capitals. The Second Test in Perth stands out like a beacon in a rather gloomy early itinerary. If nothing else it means another trip to Freo, which is presently so full of sailors. And I am a nice girl.

It has become irritatingly necessary to go to WACA and watch some cricket. Being a Roman Catholic (although ever so slightly lapsed, due to theological difficulties in swallowing the encyclical
De Humanae Vitae
hook, line and
ex cathedra
sinker), I always feel obliged to do some penance after having some fun. Penance! Torquemada in the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition would never have inflicted this on the worst religious deviant. The cricket was worse than grotesquely bad, which can often prove acceptably amusing. It was just inadequately shambolic, which at best is intensely embarrassing. The Australian press corps was feeling mightily chuffed, and offering generous odds on England’s patently inexorable annihilation at the First Test in Brisbane. In Western Australia’s second innings England dropped at least seven dolly catches. I say ‘at least’ because there could have been plenty more and I may have missed some. My eye-surgeon brother, Brendan, currently devoting himself to being a little bannister on the stairway of life, researching into sickle-cell anaemia in Jamaica, discovered when I was out there, on England’s last disastrous tour, that I could hardly see. Not that there is anything I want to do to rectify this highly satisfactory state of affairs. I do not want to end up with vision so perfect that I am given incontrovertibly empirical evidence of something which I have vaguely suspected for some time now: that I have spent the last four or five years sleeping with a big, bald, fat man.

On the evidence of that day’s cricket, at least, Johnson of the
Independent
was perfectly right. England could not bat, they could not bowl and they could not field.

Watching as they dropped the seventh easy catch, people wondered seriously whether the England team was capable of catching the next morning’s plane to Brisbane.

The flight from Perth to Brisbane, traversing the entire continent of Australia, involved about seven hours’ travelling, a three-hour time difference, and a stopover to change planes in Sydney. It was perhaps not entirely fortunate that those of our merry band who need their regular fix of tabloid twaddle raced off to buy the local evening paper. Oh, dear! It was the same phenomenon that reared its ugly head in Trinidad last year and caused so much trouble. Old guard British correspondents often erroneously assume that the copy they file back home to London will be read at breakfast time, forgotten by lunchtime, and consigned to the immortality it deserves, as people’s fish and chip wrappings, by teatime. How they underestimate the wonders of modern technology! Nowadays a piece written in Australia and filed to London may well be winging its way back within hours, boomerang style, to knock its originator on the head. In fairness, it must be granted, that this ‘talk back’ school of reporting often lifts chunks out of context, usually the most controversial and scurrilous chunks, and does a cut-and-paste job that is ideally designed to precipitate intercontinental aggro of mega proportions.

The
London Evening Standard’s
cricket correspondent, John Thicknesse, had apparently filed a piece on the Somerset County Cricket Club’s ritual bloodletting. The Somerset Committee, for a variety of reasons (many of which will probably never be fully comprehended unless or until captain Peter Roebuck releases his own deeply disturbing chronicle of events), decided to dispense with the services of West Indians Viv Richards and Joel Garner, and to enlist the services of New Zealander Martin Crowe instead. Far be it from me, a mere woman, to involve myself in the purely cricketing rationale of this move. Indisputably, Viv Richards is one of the world’s finest batsmen, and Joel Garner still a splendid fast bowler. The fact remains, nevertheless, that despite the presence of these two West Indians and Ian Botham, the Somerset team has been doing very poorly. There is talk that the triumvirate of superstars was a clique within the dressing room, and an influence in many ways deleterious to young, suggestible county players. Lest I start involving Heinemann in yet another mammoth legal battle however, suffice it to say that one fact remains beyond the shadow of a doubt. Superstars who may well perform miracles to packed crowds in the international arena are not necessarily as liable to give their all on a wet Sunday afternoon playing Glamorgan at Swansea. I rest my case, and await with interest the evidence of my learned Cambridge legal colleague, Mr Roebuck.

Botham, upon hearing of his two mates’ dismissal, immediately tendered his resignation to boot. This was perceived by many of the public to be a loyal and generous course of action. Considering that the Somerset Committee had stood by Botham while he was suspended for nearly an entire seasonfor drugs offences, it is perhaps difficult to decide where primary loyalty should lie. Whatever the merits of the case, supporters’ groupings were quickly mustered on both sides, and the resultant civil war made the Yorkshire County Cricket Club/Boycott issue look like a High Commission cocktail party. The internecine strife has become so ugly that in a press conference here in Australia Botham has warned Roebuck (who will be arriving in Brisbane to cover the tour for
The Sunday Times
of London, and
The Sydney Morning Herald
) that he would be safer staying at home. Phil says that kind of totally unveiled threat is all ‘piss in the wind’ (I’ve noticed, incidentally how the level of Phil’s concepts, conversation and metaphors plummets when he has spent more than two weeks in the egregious intellectual company of a touring team), but I am not so sure. Peter would probably, in any event, be well advised to give Botham a very wide berth. Since childhood I have always been physically frightened of people whose bodyweight in kilos is numerically higher than their IQ.

In his piece Thicknesse had branded Botham a boorish bully, which is about as original an observation as roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and Mike Gatting likes cheese and pickle sandwiches. It was, if I am not much mistaken, virtually the same expression used by the
Mail’s
brilliant roving, award-winning correspondent Ian Wooldridge, and by Phil’s biographer and
The Times
correspondent Simon Barnes in Trinidad last year, and the consequent eruptions were not dissimilar. On this occasion it was not Botham’s ghostwriter from the
Sun
who showed him the ex libris Thicknesse snippets. For it often seems that some reporters deliberately goad the mercurial Beefy into doing things, saying things, and overreacting to things in order to provide good tabloid copy. This time it must have been some other either deliberately malevolent or inadvertently thoughtless cog in the cricketing circus wheel. Botham duly exploded into a suitably Olympian rage, only the calming influence of managerial proximity preventing Thicknesse’s comments from becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Botham turned to two of the England team’s younger acquisitions, and told them, although not perhaps in so felicitously turned a phrase, that they would rue the day should he ever catch either of them talking to Thicknesse.