Under a Croatian Sun (23 page)

Zvonko’s oaken features turned red and he started to his feet, but restraining hands landed on his shoulders and Zoran quickly went over to put an arm round him and apologise. It looked like this had happened before.

When Zvonko went home, I remarked on how quick his friends had been to intercede.

‘It’s to stop the blood feudin’,’ said Zoran. ‘Used to be quite a popular sport aroun’ here.’

I didn’t say so, but I did agree with what Zoran said about English drinking habits. When it comes to drinking, Britannia rules the waves. I’ve often wondered what it is about us northerners that we have to sink a large quantity of alcohol before we can enjoy ourselves when our southern brethren seem to do this on no alcohol at all. I once asked a friend in the medical profession about it and he said that, after thousands of years in a cold climate, perhaps our blood circulated slightly slower, and, as alcohol speeds up the circulation, this might be
why we feel somewhat cheerier after a couple of drinks. (But then an aspirin will do the same… I still don’t understand.)

I walked home that night warmed by Zoran’s wine and the thought of Vis becoming an important centre of viniculture. Once again, I saw myself striding down rows of vines on dewy morns in my britches and sitting on the benches with other seasoned winegrowers, imparting wise but cautiously prudent prognostications to international wine journalists about future vintages. Acceptance by the community? There wouldn’t be a scowling face among them!

But then how long was it going to be before we could start the damn vineyard? One year? Two years? Three years?

B
y now, most of the children and the elderly were sleeping at houses on the outskirts and the rest of us were sleeping in the heat of the summer nights with our windows shut. Wanting to make sure that the police had sent the noise report to the Department of Environment, we went along to the station and found Dalibor at the kiosk again. Seeing us come in, he quickly said that they were about to send the report and shut the kiosk window as fast as he could. Our persistent phoning must have got to them.

To give them their due, they did pay a visit to the bar each time we rang and told the manager to turn the sound down. But it didn’t make much difference. Even with the sound turned down a few notches, the bass notes still vibrated the village walls like a mole with a mini pile driver.

After another week, Ivana rang the Department of Environment and I listened in on the extension.

‘Have you received a report about disco noise from the Vis police station yet?’

A woman’s voice that sounded like its owner was wearing a white calico blouse and sensible shoes confirmed that they had.

‘It’s been keeping the whole town awake for weeks and neither the Town Hall nor the police are taking any action. Can you do something about it?’

‘It is not the role of this department to issue specific instructional directives to local administrative governmental bodies about matters of local conduct.’

‘What
can
you do then?’

‘We will inform the relevant Town Hall authorities that we have received a notification from the Department of Police.’

‘But the police could have done that themselves!’

‘This is in accordance with legislative government guidelines for complaint procedures relating to breaches of environmental guidelines or contraventions and infringements of regional norms,’ she said as if she was reading from an instruction manual. ‘It is for your local authority to take the requisite measures that are deemed necessary.’

‘You mean the Town Hall will have to do something?’

‘That is the customary procedure.’ (She probably had calico knickers too.)

I daresay a good cross-examining counsel would have harried her further for some more concrete information, but, not feeling up to it, we rang off and looked despairingly out to sea.

In the meantime, our complaining seemed to have produced the opposite effect to that desired. The nightclub management had put out the word that lowering the volume was losing them money, and they brought in Go-Go girls from Split to up the interest. It was now even noisier.

As soon as we heard about the girls, Erik and I went along to investigate. Lurking furtively behind a palm tree, we watched as three stunning girls with impossibly pert bottoms in spangly thongs were doing their thing to Euro-rap. They did look rather fetching, and for a moment we toyed with the idea of taking to the floor and getting on down to some mean moves beside them, but, thinking it might be taken as fraternising with the enemy, we took ourselves off home.

The view from the bridge didn’t look good. In one corner were the four quadrophonic blasters, three exquisitely beautiful Go-Go girls and the Split Mafia, and in the other corner were Ivana, me and a Scandinavian doctor. Our chances of getting the place closed down now looked even slimmer than before. But the most depressing thing of all was that, even though our neighbours kept asking us to continue the protest, still no one would help.

Bugger, bugger, bugger!

I said goodnight to Erik and trudged home in the depths of despond. Ivana was still at her desk, so I went to put the kettle on to make some Bovril. When I get really depressed, I make myself a cup of Bovril, put on the aviator cap I wore playing Captain Courageous in a school panto and listen to some Fleetwood Mac. Rather sad really. (And, as Ivana was around, I had to make do with just the Bovril and the Fleetwood Mac.)

At my age, it is rather sad.

As we needed more cricket gear, I rang the second-hand equipment division at Lords, and, while I was ordering from a helpful young man, he asked if I knew about the European Cricket Development Programme (ECDP), which had EU sports grants for start-up clubs in new regions. With a trembling hand, I scribbled down their number and dialled immediately. And yes! Grants were available for equipment, pitches and even
coaches. They emailed me an application form and I convened an extraordinary board meeting of the SWHKK. The members were ecstatic. We could hardly believe our luck.

‘Imagine! With a proper pitch and a coach, English clubs might even come and play us!’ enthused vice-captain Petar.

‘Don’t worry, they’ll come anyway,’ I said. ‘Cricket doesn’t stand on ceremony and it’s certainly not the sort of game you need the right shoes or the right watch for. It’s a truly democratic game. A game of the people.’

‘Maybe some touring Australian teams might even come?’ said Luka.

‘And what about a Caribbean tour?’ said Sinisa, the geography teacher. ‘Vis versus Jamaica! Maybe there’s a grant for that sort of thing, too? Maybe the government might help? After all, we’d be sporting ambassadors for our country, wouldn’t we’

‘Did you see that film about the Jamaican Olympic bobsleigh team?’ said Bozo. ‘They got sponsorship.’

‘I think you call it “public relations” in the West,’ said Sinisa.

‘Yes, we should definitely look into the possibility of a sponsored tour,’ said Luka, in his captain’s voice.

‘Well, I think it’s all a bit far-fetched for the moment,’ I chimed in. ‘We’ll need to get a lot of matches under our belt before we get into tours.’

But the bit was between their teeth.

‘Perhaps there’s a Jamaico-Croatian Chamber of Commerce or something like that? We might be a big boost for Jamaico-Croatian trade,’ said Petar.

Sinisa raised an eyebrow. ‘I think trade with Jamaica these days is very much a one-way thing.’

‘And what’s that?’ asked Luka.

‘Ganga!’

‘Jamaica…’ murmured Domigoy with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Playing under the palm trees… waves breaking on the sands… girls bringing drinks in coconut shells… It says on the Internet that there are girl cricket teams. Maybe Jamaica has some girl teams? Isn’t that the country where girls just wear those flower strings on top?’

‘No, that’s Hawaii,’ snapped our geography teacher. ‘Disgraceful ignorance of geography,’ he muttered. ‘Not uncommon in teenagers, but for men in their thirties. Pah!’

‘I don’t want to disappoint you,’ I said to the company, ‘but the sort of girls who play cricket are usually large and white and have thighs that can crush watermelons. They also have names like Rachael Heyhoe-Flint.’

Domigoy looked confused.

‘Will there be pretty girls in Manchester when we play at the Old Trafford?’ asked one of the others.

‘Steady on. The Old Trafford’s for county and international matches!’

‘Well, that’s not very democratic!’ said Petar. ‘I thought you said cricket was a game of the people…’

‘But what
are
the girls in Manchester like?’ interrupted Luka.

‘Er… I’m not too sure, I’m afraid. I’ve only been there once.’

Mercifully, the conversation then moved on to the hard-fought matches and the glorious deeds to come, and I could get on with filling in the ECDP form and whizzing it back to them.

Things seemed to be going in the right direction. We nearly had eleven men and it looked like we might get the grant. The future was looking good.

That Friday, the ECDP office rang me to say that our grant had been approved. Jubilation at the SWHKK that night – we could have all the equipment we needed, a pitch and even a proper coach. I was particularly relieved about the latter, as my
coaching expertise was just about exhausted and the players had reached the stage where they really needed some professional instruction. So I applied for a coach right away, and two weeks later a stocky, balding Mancunian stumped off the morning ferry with an enormous sports bag, a lopsided smile and the dry humour that has made Manchester famous. As we walked over to the gym hall, he was already winding up the players, and it was difficult to translate what he said without giving offence.

Once in the gym, he produced a plastic wicket, a bat and a tennis ball from the capacious bag and, during the next two hours, the players realised that it wasn’t just a matter of getting out there and playing with enthusiasm (as I’d more or less been encouraging them to do) – there was a lot more to learn.

That night, I lay in bed worrying if I had got the players into something that wasn’t really for them. Could it ever be an intrinsic part of their lives in the way it was for some of us? For me, as for many other Englishmen, the summer was cricket and cricket was the summer – sleepy days lying on the grass swards of West Sussex hillsides, soft light, lengthening shadows, and, in the evening, a pub with twinkling lights and warm beer. How was I going to get a bunch of blokes on a rocky island drenched in sunshine to empathise with all that? They’d never been to West Sussex. Would they ever get the sense of it without the surroundings, the beech trees, the green swards, the low light and the slumbering countryside – and, above all, would they ever learn to appreciate such irredeemably English attributes as a stoic manner when things go badly and a sense of fair play? (From our experiences on the convoys during the war, a sense of fair play was very much in short supply down here.)

The next day, the coach had the players out on the tennis courts, and for the rest of the week cricket balls rained down on the village like an Old Testament plague – on roofs, cars, fishing
boats, terraces, patios and Grandma Gokan’s cats, but I noticed that the players quickly learned to shout
Pasi!
(Watch out!) every time a ball was hit with any force.

‘That’s instinctive,’ said the coach. ‘The first golfers probably shouted “Fore!” and loggers “Timber!” the day they started. Seems we’ve got an instinct to preserve the lives of our fellow men. Lucky really, the way your lot go at it!’

The sun beat down all day, but the coach stood there encouraging and cajoling.

‘Much better! Keep your head down.’

‘Swing through!’

‘Watch the ball!’

‘Front foot closer.’

‘That’s more like it.’

‘Get to it quicker.’

‘Watch the bloody ball!’

The greatest danger was Domigoy who still hadn’t mastered his swing. Sometimes his windmill follow-through clobbered the wicket keeper and sometimes he clobbered himself. Bozo, who had decided to be the team wicket keeper, soon learned to stand well back whenever Domigoy was in, but the coach stood his ground, and, each time the bat came too near, he tilted his head just an inch or two out of range and called out, ‘Just a touch lighter next time, lad!’

With the bowlers, he had to try to reduce the excesses I’d been letting them get away with.

‘You don’t have to do something different every time.’

‘Be patient. Wear the batsman down!’

‘Arm straighter! Use your wrist!’

‘Pitch it up, lad. You’ll never get anyone out like that!’

‘Now don’t lose your temper, or you’ll bowl worse.’

‘There, that’s more like it, lad! That was a good ball and
batsmen don’t like good balls, do they? Give your batsmen what they don’t like.’

It was music to my ears. I was back in my Aertex shirt and Clark’s shoes with a brown paper bag containing a doorstep sandwich and a bottle of Tizer beside me.

By the end of the week, the coach had galvanised a motley bunch of players into a moderately competent team and left them with a wealth of dirty cricket jokes. Best of all, the whole village had felt involved, and when he left on the ferry there was a large gathering on the quay to see him off. Luka said a few words and presented him with some wine and the coach gave Luka
The MCC Laws of Cricket
and a stack of cricket videos. Everyone then cheered and clapped, and the coach stumped off into the hold, chuckling and shaking his head.

T
he day after the coach left, Luka and I went to the monastery to ask if we could use their field as the pitch again. My gardening friend and another Brother greeted us affably on our arrival, but, as soon as the word ‘cricket pitch’ was mentioned, their hitherto jovial faces took on the appearance of Job.

‘Barbaric behaviour!’ exclaimed Brother No. 2. ‘Your Royal Navy dug up most of the garden to make their cricket field wider and our Brothers at the time nearly starved to death.’

I made abject apologies on behalf of Her Majesty’s Navy, but they still wouldn’t budge.

‘So much for that idea,’ said Luka, as the monastery door clanged shut behind us.

‘Damn! It’s the only flat piece of land for miles.’

‘I think your Royal Navy probably came to the same conclusion.’

We went home to look for an Astroturf pitch on the Internet,
and the best deal we found was in Leeds. Their pitches had been used on snow, ice, deserts and aircraft carriers, the salesman said, so a bit of Mediterranean sun wouldn’t give them any problem. The colours they came in were iridescent green and virulent blue; we asked for the iridescent green, but, as they were out of it, we settled for the virulent blue.

My old teammates got to hear about the club when I was ringing round for the equipment, so it wasn’t long before we received our first challenge – from the ‘Stragglers’, a village touring team. But would the pitch arrive in time and where would we put it? Luka had started to clear one of his vineyard fields and prepare it, but it wouldn’t be ready for a year or two, and, as the only other piece of flat land had the emergency helicopter landing pad in the middle of it, we had to make do with that.

Four days later, Luka arrived at Marko’s in a state of great excitement. ‘The pitch has arrived in Zagreb! We can try it out this weekend.’

‘Sounds like you haven’t had many dealings with our Democratic Republic’s Customs Department,’ said Marko grimly.

‘Why should there be a problem?’

‘If there isn’t one, they’ll make one up.’

We called the customs office on Marko’s mobile, and, sure enough, they’d already thought up a problem.

‘We’ve never had a cricket pitch imported before, so we don’t know what category to classify it under,’ said the officer.

‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Luka breezily. ‘You can classify it any way you want. We don’t care.’

‘Well, I’m sure you don’t,’ said the officer sourly, ‘but it’s an important matter of precedent for us. What will happen if more cricket pitches are imported and the classification turns out to
be wrong? We’ll never hear the end of it! You’ll just have to wait a few weeks until we can get the classification sanctioned and put into the system. You can’t rush these things, you know.’

‘But we’ve got our first match in three weeks’ time! What are we going to do without a pitch?’

‘Postpone your match.’

Luka’s face contorted in rage and he was about to throw Marko’s phone across the room when Marko reached over and took it. Luka stood with his phone hand still in the air unable to articulate. Marko put an arm round his shoulders and guided him to the bar.

After four days of listening to Luka shouting at customs officers, Marko took me aside and suggested that I rang the British Embassy. Our Man in Zagreb knew just what to do. ‘We’ll call it a matter of international diplomatic importance, old chap. That usually does the trick and it saves everyone’s face.’

A day later, he phoned back to say that the might of her Britannic Majesty’s diplomacy had worked its magic once again, and the pitch was being released that afternoon. Luka and Domigoy jumped into Bozo’s van, drove through the night to Zagreb and were back with it a day later.

That weekend, we rolled it out on the helipad, but it was trickier to lay than we had thought. The concrete square wasn’t quite long enough and we had to put it diagonally across. Not ideal, but we had a pitch. The shocking colour of a celestial-blue Tintoretto sky, it looked somewhat incongruous among the soft greens and browns of the surrounding valley, and it certainly startled the passing farmers, but we thought it looked beautiful.

Once it was down, everyone came to see it. They walked up and down it, poked it with their fingers, stubbed it with their toes and some even lay on it. We also had a visit from the Chief of Police in his full regalia, but that was to tell us we should
warn the Air Rescue Office about the colour in case the vividness of it gave the helicopter pilot a fright when he next came in.

With only two weeks to go before the match, a growing excitement spread. Originally, I was going to be on the team, but, as the interest increased and many more young men came forward wanting to prove their virility at the lists, I ceded my place and moved to umpiring and scoring duties. Actually, I was much relieved. Ivana had been right about my right shoulder and left knee, both of which had now ceased to perform any useful cricket movement without considerable pain.

There were the usual last-minute panics. Someone pointed out that smart clubs had their own T-shirts, so Luka went over to Split to run up a few with ‘Remember Nelson’ emblazoned on them. Next, we realised that we’d quite forgotten about ‘whites’. Not a lot of club members owned any white trousers (considered impractical by the islanders), but whatever could be found was washed, repaired and altered by the players’ mothers, wives and girlfriends, and by the end of the week eleven pairs were ready. Your first pair of whites is one of those things that you never forget. I’ve never forgotten mine and I’m sure the members of the Kriket Klub won’t forget theirs. One could probably plot the course of one’s life with one’s ‘firsts’: first bicycle, first team, first kiss, first pay-cheque, first child (and, at my age, first grey hair, first knee, first shoulder).

However, despite our keenness, our play was still pretty scratchy and, now that all eyes of the island were on us, our greatest concern was how to acquit ourselves with honour in front of them. After giving the matter some thought, our vice-captain came up with an idea – to get opposition so plastered the night before that they wouldn’t be able to see the ball properly.
(Subtle one, Petar.) I suppose I should have told them that it just wasn’t cricket, but I didn’t. It probably was the only card we had to play.

Quite a crowd was on the quay to welcome the visitors off the ferry, and no time was wasted in getting them up to Luka’s vineyard to start the inebriation campaign. Much to my relief, the visitors needed no encouragement at all and we had a riotous lunch with the SWHKK hearing all the classic cricket stories – about the rudeness of Freddie Truman, the meanness of Geoff Boycott, the stubbornness of Len Hutton and that Fred Lilywhite, founder of Lilywhite’s, played for England in a top hat. Such a lot of wine was consumed that I rather overdid it, too, and had to retire for a longish kip before rejoining the campaign at Ranko’s that evening. The dinner was an uproarious affair; songs were sung, speeches were made, and, most importantly, by midnight all of the opposition were exhibiting definite signs of wear. The tactic was working.

The next morning, as the visitors alighted from Nano’s bus, all seemed to be going to plan. They staggered unsteadily on to the field, dazed by the heat and the sun, to spread themselves around the field, while we set up our makeshift pavilion of ten plastic chairs and two tables underneath the only tree. The smell of fennel and rosemary hung in the air, blue butterflies fluttered over tiny wild flowers, bees hummed in the heather and the fielders made decorous splashes of white against the green. It looked like a Victorian idyll. All it needed to win the prize for the perfect cricket picture was a cow, a village blacksmith and a vicar smoking a pipe.

There was an impressive turnout of spectators and a TV crew had arrived from Zagreb to cover the historic event. Clad in the whites so lovingly prepared by their mothers, Domigoy and Filip strode out on to the pitch like Sylvester Stallone and his
co-pilot striding out across the deck to their gunship. Domigoy in pads looked even more gorilla-like than usual – but he was going to show the crowd (and his cousin Zoran in particular) who could win honour for the island.

Cries of ‘Ide, Remember!’ (‘Come on, Remember!’) rang around the valley, and both spectators and team members alike waited with bated breath as our two openers twiddled their bats and looked apprehensively around. The field of rough grass was actually slightly lower than the concrete square, but, before things had got out of hand the previous evening, both captains had agreed that it was a shared handicap and the bowlers would have to negotiate the three-inch step as best they could.

Domigoy took guard and there was an audible inhalation of air from the crowd as their opening bowler pounded towards the stumps. With an extra skip, he was on the helipad and delivered the ball, which whizzed down towards the off stump. Domigoy took a swipe at it and it connected, sending the ball chest high towards mid-on. It was actually a cow shot (frowned on in the best cricket circles), but the crowd applauded madly as the hungover silly mid-on moved to catch it, but tripped over his feet and the ball continued unmolested. Domigoy stood there for a second looking at Filip running towards him as if he couldn’t think what he was doing, and then, remembering where he was, he pounded down the pitch like a primate ancestor. The crowd clapped in approval and both batsmen beamed around them. One run for no wickets, I entered in the score book.

The next ball was a short one. It bounced up sharply off the Astroturf and would have taken Filip’s left ear off if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to dive for the ground. The spectators gasped. Filip got to his feet, dusted off his trousers and waved his bat to the crowd with a big grin on his lantern face. This
drew more cheers. Their team could handle anything that was thrown at them!

It was two runs for no wickets at the end of the first over and Zoran came over to put things into historical perspective for anyone who cared to listen. ‘In this part of the world, we’ve been slicing at things with swords or bashing them with clubs and axes for centuries. It’s the cult of the axe, and it’s been here long before your Captain Hoste turned up with his cricket bat. I reckon you’ll be finding some powerful hitters among our men.’

The other players thanked Zoran for his brief historical footnote, and we were spared further sociological revelations by the arrival of Zoran’s arch enemies – the Mayor and his entourage. He glowered at them and moved away.

A spin bowler now took the ball, and, like the rest of the team, he was a bit unsteady on his feet, but he was a wily-looking fellow and was trying on the tactic of standing in front of the batsman, spitting on his hand and flicking the ball in the air. It seemed to be working on Domigoy, and I could see him fidgeting uneasily. Domigoy didn’t have much self-confidence and the continual put-downs from cousin Zoran had whittled away the little he possessed. A pep talk about how to face down bowlers would be useful sometime later, but for now he was on his own.

The second bowler loped up to the wicket and delivered a ball that spun so hard I could hear the buzz. Domigoy didn’t stand a chance. Spinning up at an abrupt angle, the ball shot through the gap between the bat and his pad and took out his centre stump. Domigoy turned and gaped at it like a spaniel at a bone that had been taken away. I thought he was about to cry, but he shouldered his bat and plodded stoically across the field, a portrait of despair.

Luka was next in and, with a scarf wrapped round his waist to add a dash of colour, he looked handsomely athletic. He smiled confidently as a call of ‘Captain in’ went round the field. The crowd cheered, certain of their captain’s prowess.

The first three balls he played cautiously, but, even though he simply blocked, there was applause each time. This was their captain at the crease.

For the last ball of the over, the bowler fired down another buzzing spinner, a short one that shot up at waist height. Feeling more confident, Luka stepped back to deflect it, but realised too late that it was still rising. It clipped the top of his bat and went straight into the hands of the wicket keeper. The crowd groaned in dismay. The first duck for two hundred years! Their captain!

Now, in my old club, this would have produced an immediate strangulated cry from the batsman of ‘I just don’t believe it’ or something to that effect, but Luka stood there looking at the wicket in disbelief. Seeing his distress, the kindly middle-aged wicket keeper said in a fatherly voice, ‘Hard luck, mate!’ which snapped Luka out of his trance and he walked back to his teammates.

The fact that hard luck played such a large part in the game was something else the team was going to have to learn. Which schoolboy cricketer can ever forget that the great Don Bradman scored a duck for his last test innings at the Oval. (Of course, Geoff Boycott, true to his usual miserable form, insists that a batsman makes his own luck, but what fields of turnip-like grass or unforgiving Astroturf surfaces has Geoff Boycott had to deal with ever since he was out of short pants?)

The next man in was Petar. Six foot five and built like a bulldozer, he strode out on to the field like Lars Porsena of Clusium in that poem we had to learn at school. Towering over the fielders, he stood at the wicket, glared around the field and
then hunched menacingly over his oversized bat. The fielders, recognising they had a slogger at the crease, stepped back a few paces. A murmur of expectation ran through the crowd. Now they’d see some action.

The fast bowler launched himself on to the concrete again and the ball whistled down. It was wide of the wicket and Petar sprang at it like a tiger. Wielded by his massive forearms, the bat flashed in the air and a mighty
thwack
echoed across the valley as the ball skied upwards. It hovered at its peak as if trying to defy the central discovery of Sir Isaac Newton, and then plummeted earthwards to where the bonnet of Zvonko’s tractor was waiting for it. A resounding clang rang out, making the spectators wince, and someone shouted, ‘A six! A six!’ An eruption of cheering broke out. This was more like it! Our first six! As good as the one Albert Trot hit over the roof of Lords in 1899.