SPECTATOR SPORT
Jungle cricket
Frank Keating
AUSTRALIA have just finished a Test match at the beguilingly ramshackle Bour- da ground in Georgetown, Guyana, which is more than we did ten years ago to the month. England had asked for a replace- ment fast bowler and Lord's had dispatch- ed Robin Jackman, chirpy Oval sparrow with the little legs, long run-up, and the appeal to the umpire and the heavens of a ship's klaxon. For the previous nine win- ters, Robin had been coaching or playing in South Africa, a fact to which Mr Forbes Burnham, the demon-king who then ruled Guyana in his Chinese dungarees, did not take kindly. The day after Jackman's arrival, Eng- land played a pre-Test one-dayer in a jungle-clearing down in Berbice. Having heard Mr Burnham growling about apart- heid on the early morning state radio, a few of us played truant from the cricket and strolled up from the Pegasus hotel in our Bermuda shorts and Panama hats to the British High Commission. We must have looked like a bunch of Brits in one of those Pinewood films; you know, with full supporting cast: Melford of the Telegraph playing the lugubrious twitcher John le Mesurier; Woodcock of the Times as Robert Morley, mopingly mopping his jowls with a spotted handkerchief; Fitzpat- rick of the Guardian a Mancunian Richard Wattis; Hodgson of the Star a glum Peter Ustinov; and me, happily typecast as Richard Todd or a youthful Trevor Ho- ward.
A couple of ragged sentries saluted us and we were ushered into the presence of Her Majestry's representative in Guyana and non-resident Ambassador to Surinam, P.L.V. Mallet Esq., CMG, Winchester & Balliol: previous postings, Sweden, the Sudan; club, Brooks; hobbies, cricket. He sat at his desk under the Annigoni portrait. He was dressed in a Persil-perfect tropical suit. This was probably the biggest day of his career. There was a tiny blob of egg yolk on his chin.
Whitehall had just phoned, he said. 'Looks like bad news, I'm afraid, chaps.' The phone rang again. It was his man in Berbice. He winced, then replaced the receiver to announce, 'England 34 for 3, Boycott, Gooch and Gower all gone.'
The match didn't last long. As soon as the team returned to the Pegasus, a silent, sinister official in khaki and wire specs served Jackman, his perkiness only momentarily embarrassed, with his 'im- mediate revocation of entry permit'. No cricket team can ever have packed more quickly. Then the rickety airport bus wouldn't start, and the team's beloved assistant manager Ken Barrington, who used to own a garage in Surrey, fiddled around under the bonnet and got it going. A small, glum crowd saw us off. 'With that bastard Burnham depriving them of their cricket, I'm surprised he's not got a full-scale evolution on his hands,' muttered Barrington. We relished Ken's unending stream of malapropisms. They even came in pairs, like opening bats. Of the West Indies pace attack, he said, 'The ball conies at you non-stop like a high-philosophy bullet and if it wasn't for batsmen's helmets we'd have quite a few fertilities around.' Or even trebles: once he told Bob Willis, 'The secret of bowling in anyone's cup of tea is to keep the batsman in two-man's land till he surrenders his wicket like one of them Japanese Kalahari pilots.'
At least Barbados let Jackman play. A week later, when the Test series resumed, darling old Ken sat, fraught and chain- smoking in the pay, as England, his 'boys', collapsed miserably to 122 all out. Nothing changes — except later that evening, 14 March 1981, Ken Barrington died of a heart attack.
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