Cricket XXXX Cricket Read Free

Responsibility for your own life is wrested from you for the duration, and all you can do is sit back and relax. One of the stewardesses on the London–Bangkok sector was the ex-wife of Geoff Howarth, former captain of New Zealand, but as a tribute to her sheer professionalism on a chock-a-block flight, she only managed to come and chat to me when the plane had actually landed. It was another of those sad tales of cricketing marriages, where long and enforced absences create a gradual and irretrievable breakdown. It is nevertheless the number of such marriages that survive that continue to surprise me, not the number that fail.
    As the plane circled to land in Adelaide, rows upon rows of Formula One racing cars hove into view, like so many multicoloured Dinky toys, waiting to be freighted back to their respective workshops. The entire city, hitherto better known for its multiplicity of churches, was still in the throes of post-Grand Prix euphoria. With the few exceptions of people who objected to the inevitable traffic jams, the noise and the influx of the racing world’s ritzy razzamatazz, the majority of the good burghers of Adelaide had been immersed in the hopes of Britain’s Nigel Mansell and his bid for the world championship. Mansell had only to secure third place in the race, and the title would have been his. Tragically, his aspirations burst along with his left rear tyre, and he narrowly escaped with his life. Alain Prost carried off the championship. But in all honesty who cares? Alain Prost is not an Englishman.
    The flight had been full as far as Sydney, but we who emerged at the final destination, ‘The City of Churches and Light’, were few. My copious amounts of baggage arrived almost immediately, thanks to the special ministrations of British Airways Special Services Executive, Francis de Souza. The cricket team had flown out heavily subsidised by British Airways, but the national flag-carrier’s well-tapped munificence embraces even sports less familiar, and the British challenge in the America’s Cup is also being generously sponsored by the self-confessed World’s Favourite Airline. Francis’ VIP attentions are reserved not merely for the superstars, but even extend to the vicarious extrusions of same, the wives, and I was unreservedly grateful for the ‘hand’ with my twenty kilos of excess baggage. Most of this comprised gear my husband, spin-bowler Phil, had failed to remember, items any professional cricketer could easily forget: cricket trousers, thigh pads, cricket shirts, England sweaters, spikes, helmet, an extra bat, chest pad, you know, all those relatively redundant peripherals to a four-month tour of Australia.
    Hypnotising myself into a Bob Willis-like catatonic trance, watching other people’s luggage swirl around on the black rubber carousel, I noticed gossip columnist Auberon Waugh. His avuncular physiognomy belies his often gloriously malicious mind. He is the sort of elegantly satirical, brilliantly vituperative, unashamed misogynist, whose ‘tripe-writer’ ribbons mere part-time mickey-takers, such as myself, are unworthy to change.
    Had he been sent here to report, in his inimitably excoriating fashion, on the ‘Clashes for the Ashes’? I savoured the thought. Sadly not. The distinguished progeny of the author of
Brideshead Revisited, Scoop
and
Black Mischief
had been invited to Adelaide in his capacity as wine connoisseur extraordinaire. An indignant Australian senator was so incensed when Waugh failed sufficiently to differentiate between South Australian and Hunter Valley wines in his essays on the Australian grape, she invited him over to rectify any confusion. I should like to put it on record here and now (just in case the good senator is reading), that I too am rather hazy on the organoleptic nuances of said varieties, and would be perfectly delighted to have my confusion dispelled as well.
    I was met at the airport by a correspondent from the local press, who