Spirit On The Water (4 page)

Jason Gillespie went on to become one of Australia’s all time great bowlers. Only five players have taken more wickets for Australia than Gillespie
5
but he had a difficult time in the 2005 Ashes series and was dropped after the third Test. Gillespie returned to Australia and bounced back to be the leading bowler in the 2005/06 domestic season. He was selected to play in the two match series against Bangladesh and he made his mark in an impressive fashion.  

In the First Test, Bangladesh won the toss and batted, scoring 427. When it was Australia’s turn to bat, they were reduced to 93 for 6. Only a spectacular 144 from Adam Gilchrist saved the day. A gross injustice to Bangladesh you could say. Gillespie had the next highest score with 26. Second time around, Bangladesh only managed 148 and Australia were set 307 to win. A Ricky Ponting unbeaten century just about saw them home with three wickets to spare.

During the opening Test which was played at Fatullah, Australia’s security manager had spotted, on closed circuit TV , a gunman in a black bandanna in the crowd. He rushed towards him only to discover that the man was in fact a member of the government’s Rapid Action Brigade, assigned to protect the Australian team. A
keen cricket lover, he had been using the telescopic sight on his rifle to get a better view.

In the second Test at Chittagong, a few days later, Bangladesh again batted first. Gillespie followed up his five wickets in the previous match by taking the first three wickets in four overs. Bangladesh were all out for 197 on the first day and Australia started their first innings. When Hayden was out just before the close, Gillespie was asked to go in as nightwatchman.

The use of a nightwatchman in cricket is a curious concept. The batting side loses a wicket near the end of the day and it is considered very important not to lose another one before the close of play. So, instead of sending in a player who can bat, is in the side for his batting and who presumably is best equipped to deal with the bowling and prevailing conditions, a lesser batsman is sent out. Quite often the nightwatchman is out before the close which of course completely defeats the object. Even if he survives, he is usually out quickly the next day or hangs around not making very many runs. Either way, the initiative is handed to the fielding side.

Steve Waugh didn’t agree with the idea of a nightwatchman and did not use them when he was captain. Luckily for Gillespie, Waugh wasn’t in charge in Bangladesh and so he got his chance. Gillespie had already shown his worth as a nightwatchman in October 2004 against India, when he had batted for four hours with Damien Martyn to help save the second Test in Chennai. In Bangladesh, he did even better.

Going in as nightwatchman in the second Test, at Chittagong, Gillespie batted for a total of nine and half hours. He achieved something that had eluded Ian Chappell, Mark Waugh, Colin Cowdrey and Mike Atherton to name but a few. On the 19
^th
April 2006, his 31
^st
birthday, he scored a Test double century. His 201
not out was an incredible innings. OK, it was against Bangladesh but it was still a Test match and the Australians had struggled to win the first match. Gillespie had never even scored a first-class century before, his top score being 58. Australia went on to win the game and Gillespie was named man of the series.

This chapter started with an extraordinary Aboriginal tour of England in 1868, featuring Johnny Mullagh scoring a majestic 75 at Lords. It ends with Jason Gillespie, scoring a double century in his 71
^st
and final Test match for Australia. The facts and figure are amazing, the stories behind them even more so. 

David Gower versus Clive Lloyd. Arthur Scargill versus Margaret Thatcher. Winston Smith versus Big Brother. These were the epic battles of 1984.

Winston Smith sounds like he should have been a West Indian fast bowler. He would have had his work cut out to get into the West Indies side in 1984 with Holding, Marshall and Garner in the team. In fact the West Indies did call up Winston Davis, who was playing for Glamorgan at the time, to play one Test on that tour when Marshall was out injured. He was a good player but only appeared in fifteen Tests for the Windies because the fast bowling competition was so great. If Davis had not been available, Wayne Daniel was playing for Middlesex, or they could have called on a promising youngster in the tour party – Courtney Walsh.

England on the other hand had Derek Pringle and Jonathan Agnew. No surprise then that the West Indies arrived at Worcester for the tour opener in a confident mood.

1984 doesn’t seem that long ago does it, but if you ask people under the age of forty about the Miners’ Strike of that year, most of them will look blankly at you. It will ring a bell with some of them but few will know any details or appreciate its significance. It’s the same with Larry Gomes. Didn’t he play for Middlesex and then a few times for the West Indies?

Well yes, but Gomes actually played sixty Tests for the West Indies and had a batting average a fraction under 40. Together with
Gordon Greenidge, it was Larry Gomes who was the batting star of the 1984 tourists, not Viv Richards or Clive Lloyd or Desmond Haynes. He scored 400 runs in the series compared to Richards’ 250.

Of course Sir Viv had his moments that summer. In the first One-Day International at Old Trafford he batted superbly to be 96 not out when the ninth wicket fell. Michael Holding joined him with the score at 166 for 9. In the last fourteen overs, Richards and Holding added 106 with Richards’ share being 93. His score of 189 not out is still the fourth highest individual score in all ODIs.
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As with hazy recollections of the Miners’ Strike and Larry Gomes, not everyone remembers that Eldine Baptiste played in all five Tests that tour or that Joe Gormley was the NUM President before Arthur Scargill. Joe Gormley allegedly worked for MI5 which is perhaps even more surprising than the fact that Baptiste bowled more overs than Michael Holding in the 1984 series. Eldine was a decent fielder too, as a startled Geoff Miller found out at Lords when he was run out at the bowler’s end by an 80 yard throw from fine leg.

Baptiste did OK with the bat as well. His average of 34.8 was better than all the Englishmen in that series apart from Allan Lamb, and he was South African anyway. Younger readers who might be concerned by the recent presence of Pietersen and Trott in the England team may take some comfort in the fact that South Africans playing cricket for England is nothing new. Before Lamb
there was Basil D’Oliviera and the one and only Tony Greig, and afterwards came Robin Smith.

Smith’s older brother Chris and Greig’s younger brother Ian also played for England. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t have got Barry Richards or Graeme Pollock or Mike Proctor. If you are going to have South Africans playing for England you might as well have the best. As
The Times
editorial put it when Barry Richards was in his pomp: “Is there no way in which Richards of Hampshire could be co-opted into the English Test side? Can no patriotic English girl be persuaded to marry him? He is quite personable. Failing that, could not some elderly gentleman adopt him?”

As it happened, it was just as well that Allan Lamb was turning out for England in 1984. He got centuries in three successive Tests, the first batsman to do this for England since Ken Barrington in 1967. All the other English batsmen that series made heavy weather of the West Indies attack, although Graeme Fowler got a brave century at Lords in the Second Test.

Ask anyone when the last pitched battle to be fought on English soil was and, if they are still there by the time you have finished the question, they might say the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685. That was when the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son, landed on the Dorset coast and unsuccessfully tried to seize the throne from James II on the grounds that he was a Catholic. If they know their history well, they might say the Battle of Clifton (Cumbria not Bristol) in 1745. This was a preliminary engagement prior to the Battle of Culloden the following year. A real ‘clever clogs’ might say the Battle of Bossenden in 1838 when the
self-styled
Sir William Courtenay, claimed to be the Messiah (see later reference to Arthur Scargill). He preached to the poor rural labourers of Kent that if they followed him he would lead them to a land of paradise. They were simple folk and had little to lose but
their lives, which a number of them did when the army was called out to suppress the uprising.

Sedgemoor, Clifton, Bossenden are all good answers but all wrong. On 18
^th
June 1984 just as West Indies were putting the finishing touches to their victory in the First Test at Edgbaston, thousands of police fought a pitched battle with thousands of miners at the Battle of Orgreave in South Yorkshire.

Brutal force, overwhelming odds, battered heads, glimmers of hope relentlessly crushed, desperate self defence to avoid serious injury, yes, Edgbaston in 1984 was not a happy place for English cricketers.

Gower won the toss and felt obliged to bat first because he had two spinners in the side. He soon regretted his decision. Garner immediately had Fowler caught behind for a duck. This brought Derek Randall to the wicket rather sooner than he probably would have wanted. Randall was not afraid of fast bowling, as his epic 174 against Dennis Lillee in the Centenary Test had shown, but that had been seven years before and now he was exposed rather too early to the West Indian pace attack. Randall was more vulnerable early in his innings than most batsmen. Joel Garner soon bowled him, also for a duck, and England were 5 for 2.

Andy Lloyd, who was making his Test début on his home ground, had opened with Graeme Fowler. The benefit of familiarity with the ground was probably outweighed by having to face Garner, Marshall and Holding in your first match for your country. He played soundly for a while but then was hit on the head by a short ball from Marshall. He spent the rest of the match in hospital and never played Test cricket again.

Gower came in and scored a very elegant 10. Only some lusty blows from Botham and sensible batting from Downton enabled England to reach 191. After centuries from Gomes and Richards,
the West Indies were on the ropes at 455 for 8. Then, a ninth wicket partnership between Baptiste and Holding helped the Windies to a final total of 606. Holding, in the side for his bowling, hit four sixes and eight fours in his innings of 69.

One curiosity from the debacle of England’s bowling was that Derek Pringle, a medium pacer, bowled eighteen no balls. Very strange. The other oddity was David Gower not calling on Geoff Miller, England’s fifth bowler, until the West Indies had scored 260. Maybe Gower had forgotten that he was a bowler? Or that he was on the field at all?

With Andy Lloyd unable to bat in the second innings, Paul Downton opened in his place and hit a courageous 56 but England soon subsided for 235 and the West Indies had no need to bat again. While all this was going on in Birmingham, the police and miners were squaring up to each other at the Battle of Orgreave.

Was it really a battle? I think if you asked the people that were there, they would probably say yes. The Messiah (aka Arthur Scargill) was present, leading his men. Attila the Hen (aka Margaret Thatcher) wasn’t actually at Orgreave but she was there in spirit. Her troops were lined up like Roman legions with the police bashing their riot shields with their truncheons as they advanced. Like in
Gladiator
(and
Billy Elliot
for that matter), they parted to let the mounted police through to disperse the mass pickets.

There were many injuries on both sides. After the battle,
ninety
-five miners were charged with riot, unlawful assembly and similar offences. A number of the miners were eventually taken to court in 1987, but the trials collapsed and all charges were dropped.

Taking into account the fact that they were both happening in England at around the same time, you could not really get a greater contrast between the Battle of Orgreave and the rarefied atmosphere of a Test match at Lords. True, both were
confrontations with a lot at stake; it’s just that one had cucumber sandwiches at tea time and the other didn’t. The other difference was that David Gower and Clive Lloyd would share a beer at the end of the day when hostilities were over, which is maybe where Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill went wrong.

The miners’ strike seemed to be the last thing on people’s minds at Lords as a full house settled down to watch the Second Test. The match started encouragingly for England. A century stand between débutant Chris Broad (father of Stuart) and Graeme Fowler gave them a great start. Although their final total of 286 looked slightly below par, an inspired Ian Botham ensured a first innings lead of 41. He took 8 for 103 in 27.4 overs, his best Test figures against the West Indies. A solid unbeaten century by Lamb and a robust 81 from Botham in the second innings, saw England to a 328 lead at the end of the fourth day. Lamb had come off for bad light even though he was batting well. He had looked up in vain at an empty England balcony for some guidance from his captain. Gower later admitted in his autobiography that he had been watching the tennis at Wimbledon on television.

I took a greater than usual interest in the proceedings as I had a ticket for the last day. Viv Richards had always been a hero of mine but I had never seen him bat in the flesh. Now at last I would, and at Lords too!

Lamb was out straightaway the next morning and England added just 13 before David Gower declared. The West Indies were set 342 to win in five and a half hours. There was a great sense of anticipation in the crowd as Greenidge and Haynes went out to bat.

The West Indies had to score more in the fourth innings than had been scored in any of the other three innings. All results were possible with a draw favourite and an England victory a distinct
possibility. A West Indies win wasn’t really on the cards but at least we would get to see Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd bat.

With the score on 57, Haynes slipped after being sent back by Greenidge and was run out. This was the first time the West Indies had lost a wicket in the second innings for seven successive Tests. The fall of wicket brought Larry Gomes to the crease.

Gomes did not have the power or dashing stroke play of the typical Caribbean player but he did have a sound technique and a wonderful temperament. His undemonstrative style offered a balance to the flair of the other batsmen in the team. He was the ‘glue’ that invariably held the innings together.

I was just hoping that he wouldn’t stick around too long this time. The West Indies still had most of the day to bat. I was looking forward to seeing Viv Richards stride out at Lords and hopefully score a century. This would be followed by a West Indian collapse and an England victory.

None of these things happened. The West Indies didn’t lose another wicket. Gordon Greenidge powered his way to an unbeaten double century at nearly a run a ball. Gomes, giving him the strike wherever possible, ended up on 92 not out.

My recollection is that I was more upset at not seeing Richards bat than about England’s defeat. You shouldn’t be too unhappy when you’ve seen Greenidge hit one of the great Test innings but it would have been nice to see Viv bat, even if it was just a cameo at the end!

David Gower, in his second Test match as England captain, became just the fourth Test captain in history to lose after declaring. From time to time, Botham enjoys reminding him of this when they are commentating for
Sky
. Gower, not unreasonably, retorts that he wasn’t the one bowling. (Botham followed up his 8 for 103 in the first innings with 0 for 117 off 20.1 overs in the second.)

It’s always one of the pleasures at a Test match to wander round the ground when the game is not on. Some people do it even when the cricket is being played which always seems a little odd to me. After the match had finished, my friends and I strolled round Lords, soaking up the atmosphere, reflecting on the day’s play and doing some ‘people watching’.

We spotted a group of West Indian players who had not been playing in the match, including Richie Richardson. I went over to ask for his autograph and the players with him laughingly made the point repeatedly that he was Richards’ son. From the look on Richie Richardson’s face, it wasn’t the first time he had heard the joke.

Two down and three to play. The teams met again at Leeds for the Third Test. After scoring 0 and 6 in the Texaco Trophy one-dayers, Mike Gatting hadn’t been picked for the First Test. He was brought back for the Second Test and, after scoring 1 and 29, he was dropped again. So he wasn’t at Headingley which is a shame because it is pretty close to Orgreave and he could have gone along to see how the Miners’ strike was getting on and to witness firsthand the demonstrations, or ‘a few people singing and dancing’
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as he might have described them.

England batted first and scored 270, with Lamb getting the second of his centuries. It seemed a modest total but there was the bonus of Malcolm Marshall sustaining a double fracture of the left thumb. He was only able to bowl six overs and it was announced that he would take no further part in the match.

When the West Indies batted, Bob Willis had Greenidge caught in the slips and Paul Allott got Haynes and Richards cheaply, to leave the tourists in a precarious state at 78 for 3. Not for the last
time, Gomes came to their rescue. Partnerships with first Lloyd then Dujon took the score to 200. Baptiste and Harper were then both out for ducks but, just as it looked as though England might finally get the upper hand, Holding came in and hit a savage 59 including five sixes.