Читать книгу Classic After-Dinner Sports Tales - Jonathan Rice - Страница 11

Not only one of the great leg-spinners and captains in Australia’s cricket history, a man who retired after taking 248 wickets and scoring 2,201 runs in his 63 Tests, but also one of the legendary cricket commentators, whose laconic and precise style is often imitated but rarely matched.

Some cricket spectators have long memories. A few are brilliant with their repartee and, when they marry that with a good memory, the effect can be devastating.

Forty-nine years ago, I toured the West Indies and played in all five Tests. This had come at the end of a rather harrowing experience in Australia against Frank Tyson and Brian Statham, who were the earth-shattering fast bowlers in the MCC team captained by the late Sir Leonard Hutton.

In the Caribbean, led by Ian Johnson, Australia won the First Test by nine wickets, drew the Second and won the Third in Georgetown by eight wickets in only four days. When we played the Fourth, in Barbados, we made 668 and had West Indies in all kinds of trouble at 147/6 on the third evening. It looked a ‘lay down misère’.

Assume nothing in this game.

The next day, the overnight not-out batsmen, Denis Atkinson (219) and Clairemonte Depeiza (122), batted throughout the five hours’ play, Atkinson with some lovely strokes and Depeiza with his nose and his bat touching the pitch. Nothing got past, not even the ones which kept low. Clairemonte and the horizontal defensive stroke were inseparable that day.

The next morning I bowled to Depeiza, he lifted his head, balanced on one leg, essayed a flamboyant back-foot drive and the ball ran straight along the ground and bowled him.

In 1991, when I was working on television for Channel Nine in the Caribbean, I was in Barbados and just about to host the ‘intro’ to the one-day game eventually won by the Australians to give them that Limited-Overs series. No one knew at that time Australia were about to win. The crowd was in high good humour. They knew they were in for an exciting game, and some were even celebrating and toasting their heroes pre-match. Loudly!

At least one of them also had his cricket history in good shape.

In my earpiece the Director’s voice said, ‘Fifteen seconds to on-air’ and there was, for some reason, a momentary hush around the ground, with drums and cymbals silenced. As if on cue, came a very loud, and very Bajan voice.

‘Hey, Sir Richard Benaud,’ it echoed around the small ground.

Now he had everyone’s attention.

‘You de son of dat guy who couldn’t get out Atkinson and Depeiza all de fourth day in 1955?’ I managed a quick and slightly tight smile to acknowledge the minor connection, even if he did have the family line slightly astray.

‘If you couldn’t bowl dem out, you do right to take up television, man,’ he continued, just as I was saying, ‘Good morning and welcome to the paradise island of the Caribbean.’

But I was saying it through my own laughter and that of a thousand spectators in the Kensington Stand right behind me.

The man’s timing was perfect, and so was his memory.