SPECTATOR SPORT
Gentlemen v. players
Frank Keating
So, we lost. The nincompoop who agreed at Lord's to schedule the last two Tests against the West Indies with just a night flight and half a day's rest in between should be carpeted. Fat chance. Well, he had to get the boys back in time for this weekend's Refuge League, Sky-covered, Sabbath slogabout. The players call it the Refuse League.
At the last, too, the press had their front-page screamers; even if they were closer to home than they like. Vivian Richards v. Christopher Martin-Jenkins was a mismatch if ever there was one. Smokin' Joe v. Faintin' Phil. Like on the way back from my first Caribbean tour in 1981. At Bermuda airport, the beleagured, beaten captain, Botham, bought a Sunday Express, and read Henry Blofeld's descrip- tion of `a great big baby who couldn't skipper a skiff on the Serpentine'. Ian drowned his drink, strolled over, pinned Henry against the wall, and began to strangle him with the knot of his Old Etonian tie. A general kerfuffle all round. It made a couple of downpage paragraphs. There were only eight of us, and a televi- sion newsman; we were only there to cover the cricket.
This time, over 60 journos travelled, plus 40 television men, and it came down to a scrutiny of Richards's captaincy. To pick first on the BBC's bland hyphen was one thing; two days later to put up his mufflers against the whimsically affable, unmischievous Express colour man, Jim Lawton, was to show that Viv's recurringly painful piles had put even more of a contemptuous swagger into his gait. How he has changed from his loved and lovable, wide-smiling, stripling days at Somerset. I know I'll never live to hooray a batsman of more blazingly brazen brilliance. But now there seems a broodingly venomous, even defensively aggressive racial edge to his manner. If you are not unquestionably for Viv and all his pomps and pouting, then you are an enemy, demeaning the pride in his race, somehow shearing his manhood. Suggest even that he plays himself in occasionally, and he freezes you with a withering glare. Certainly I'd have been petrified if I'd been Lawton. At the Birkdale Open in 1976, I tossed off the line that Tom Weiskopf, the former champion from the United States, couldn't putt for toffee. He was waiting for me next morning, his knuckles tight-white around a mashie. I apologised. And fled. Once, in the Ark near the Albert Hall, a pair of narrow blue eyes and wide, unpadded shoulders loomed over me. `So I can't fight my way out of a paper-bag then?' It was Joe Bugner. I stood my ground on that one.
Ian Chappell was another captain and short-fused cove, like Richards. During his last Test at Melbourne in 1980, I wrote a bit for the local rag, wondering if we'd really miss `this intimidating gangland boss who chewed a toothpick at first slip, occasionally removing it either to use as a splintery baton to harangue an English batsman, or to poke a gob of wax from his own ear'. True enough but no more than dashed-off descriptive waffle. Next morn- ing, a serious, no messing order to come and sort it out, like men, behind the pay. I sat high in the bleachers all day, quaking.
The following summer, Chappell came over for the Centenary Test at Lord's. As a journalist. By fluke, I was put in the press box immediately behind him. I kept my head down, nervously. He scribbled away. Suddenly he turned round. I flinched and felt faint — only for him to ask, civilly, even schoolboy-apologetically, 'Excuse me, sir, how do you spell "awkwardly"?'
Frank Keating writes for the Guardian.
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