A Beautiful Game Read online

  ‘Mark is widely respected by cricketers of the past and present. Of course, he is best known for the brilliant way that he brings the game to life on television but I have always enjoyed his writing too. He is fair, honest and kind about the game, which is why he is one of the writers the current players read. This is a superb book—full of raw emotion, humour and great analysis.’

  MICHAEL CLARKE

  ‘Mark Nicholas, as cricket lovers around the world will know, has been at the centre of the game as a player, writer, commentator and analyst for years. Very few have ever equalled his passion, perception, knowledge of the game and matchless ability to communicate it with wit, charm and flawless fluency. All these qualities and more have flowered in A Beautiful Game, a love letter to cricket marked by incident, insight and all the craft of one of the best and most likeable figures of our times.’

  STEPHEN FRY

  ‘Over the last 25 years I’ve gotten to know Mark, the man, and have enjoyed working with him too. The book brings out Mark’s wonderful knowledge and infectious passion for cricket—two of the things that make listening to him and reading him so enjoyable. I know it will bring a lot of enjoyment to an awful lot of people.’

  SHANE WARNE

  ‘A Beautiful Game is a page turner and there can be no higher praise than that. Mark’s craft as a writer, with his sharp eye for detail and keen sense of humour, shines throughout. To take a couple of examples, the opening chapter on his family is tender and revealing; a later chapter on Kerry Packer and his influence on the game is both entertaining and spot on in its appraisal.

  The book is top class from first to last.’

  SIR MICHAEL PARKINSON

  ‘Quite possibly the best cricket book you will ever read—a masterpiece.’

  MIKE PROCTER

  ‘As a respected international cricket broadcaster, Mark has been a powerful salesman for the game on television. He has brought that same passion for the game to his thoughtful and entertaining book, A Beautiful Game.’

  IAN CHAPPELL

  ‘Whether writing or commentating, Mark has always been able to take us inside the game. His book is further proof of that. The chapter on fast bowling is really fantastic. I loved it. If I was buying one cricket book this year, it would be A Beautiful Game.’

  WASIM AKRAM

  ‘Vision, knowledge, enthusiasm: three of the attributes that give Mark authority and respect. In my time as England captain, I bounced many ideas off him and he always had something worthwhile to offer. The book reflects his love for the game, and it’s his ability to tell the stories that makes it so special. It’s a great read.’

  MICHAEL VAUGHAN

  ‘Mark is the best out there, both in front of camera and behind it. He has always written well, one of the few I read, and his book is a typically entertaining collection of thoughts, opinions and memories from inside the soul of the game we love. The Viv Richards stories, for example, perfectly sum up the man I knew and his genius. Mark should have written a book years ago; his love of cricket shines through on every page.’

  SIR IAN BOTHAM

  ‘Our leader, as I call him, is proof that you don’t have to have played Test match cricket to be able to become an expert on it. If he’d moved his feet a bit more—y’know bent that left knee—he might have played a fair bit at the highest level but, as it is, he has taken his skills into the broadcasting and writing of the game. No one does it better. I know a bit about batting but I could hardly fault his ideas and opinions on the subject. Every chapter is interesting in its own way. I didn’t always agree with him but that’s not the point. The point is that I wanted to read on.’

  GEOFFREY BOYCOTT

  ‘The thing about Mark is his uniquely positive take on cricket. He knows the game inside out and always talks it up. The various television productions with which he is involved, the interviews, the charities he supports, the articles he writes—they all celebrate cricket and its players. He conveys the message that the game may not be easy but it’s sure worthwhile. His book is the same, a celebration. A Beautiful Game is the perfect title because that is how he sees cricket.

  More power to him I say.’

  ALASTAIR COOK

  ‘Superbly written by someone with intimate knowledge and great affection for the game. Outstanding.’

  BARRY RICHARDS

  ‘“Markie boy”, as I call him, is a master with words, both written and spoken. He always strives to bring about the good of the game we all love and in doing so he brings a smile to most faces. His positivity is what separates him from others and it’s this aspect that shines through in this book. God bless you, Markie boy.’

  SUNIL GAVASKAR

  First published in 2016

  Copyright © Mark Nicholas 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the publishers at the address below.

  ‘If I Should Go’ by Joyce Grenfell © The Joyce Grenfell Memorial Trust 1980. Reproduced by permission of Sheil Land Associates Ltd.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760291747

  eISBN 9781952535314

  Set by POST Pre-Press Group, Australia

  Cover design: Deborah Parry

  Cover photographs: Nicholas Wilson (author photo); Ryan Pierse–CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images (Adelaide Oval)

  To Mum and Dad for making it all possible

  And to Kirsten and Leila for continuing to make it all so worthwhile

  CONTENTS

  PART 1: PLAYING THE GAME

  1 In the beginning

  2 Hampshire, 1977

  3 Australia

  4 The Hampshire captaincy

  5 The Smiths

  PART 2: THINKING ABOUT THE GAME

  6 The art of batting

  7 The week we wished that wasn’t and the spirit of cricket

  8 Fast bowling

  9 When spin meets glove

  PART 3: TALKING AND WRITING ABOUT THE GAME

  10 Media days

  11 Australia again, and a call from Kerry

  12 2005 and all that

  13 A crystal ball

  Epilogue: A beautiful game

  Love is lost

  Postscript

  PART 1

  Playing the game

  At home, aged twelve, in the garden where the Test matches were played. (The door on the right was the entrance to the pavilion!)

  CHAPTER 1

  In the beginning

  The Nicholas family moved house in the spring of 1967. We left a small terrace in Holland Park for the leafy fringes of Roehampton, barely more than a six-hit from the gates to Richmond Park. The new home had a wonderful garden with a lawn and flowerbeds big enough for my mother’s interests to sit comfor
tably alongside mine.

  My father and I mowed a narrow strip of grass just beyond the brow of a small tier that hid the white lines we had painted with emulsion as batting and bowling creases. Then I rolled the strip with the barrel of the lawnmower until it appeared flat enough for play. I was nine years old and the game of bat and ball had stolen my heart. The move from street cricket, with stumps chalked on the brick wall outside our old home, to something like the real thing on grass, with a pitch and boundaries, had cast a spell.

  My father, Peter, was a decent, if cavalier, club cricketer in the Richie Benaud mould. He struck the ball well and tossed up leg breaks with a splendid lack of concern for their outcome. His interest in cricket came from his own father, who was a wicketkeeper-batsman for the army and Essex and a fine all-round sportsman. With some surprise, I recently found Captain F.W.H. Nicholas, or Freddie Willie Herbie as the lads knew him, in the front row of a huge team photograph in the Lord’s museum. Apparently my grandfather was much sought after by philanthropists who took the game far and wide. He was a great mate of the Honourable Lionel Tennyson, who captained Hampshire from 1919 to 1932, and of the entrepreneur Sir Julien Cahn. The picture in the museum is of Sir Julien’s XI in Jamaica and I have no idea what it is doing there.

  I went with Dad to as many of his games as he would allow, never missing a ball when he was in action and otherwise eagerly playing around the fringes of the boundary with anyone who would have me. He played league cricket for Southgate and wandering cricket for the Free Foresters and the Frogs. Nowhere in the world enjoys wandering cricket like England. It is a throwback to an amateur age of free time and great privilege, and exists to this day. At the top of the tree, clubs such as the I Zingari and the Arabs tell us as much about ourselves as the games we play.

  When my father came home from work, he would play in the garden with me each evening. I loved this more than I can describe here. He gave me a coaching book by Sir Donald Bradman, The Art of Cricket, and an autobiography by Denis Compton. I was submerged in a world of images, characters, sensations and ideals that were to accompany me throughout my life.

  In the late summer of 1968 he took me to Lord’s. We sat in the Warner Stand with friends. When Ted Dexter came out to bat for Sussex against Warwickshire in the Gillette Cup Final, I lost the plot, cheering wildly and generally making a goose of myself. Dexter didn’t score many but he could do no wrong in my eyes. We had a marvellous day, although Sussex lost. We travelled home together and hurried to the garden, where there was enough light to re-enact the most memorable scenes from the match: a Dexter boundary, John Snow cruising to the wicket and so on. Our shared love of cricket—and music, incidentally, for he was a fine pianist—was an unbreakable bond.

  Nine days later my father died. He was 41.

  He had moved from Southgate Cricket Club to Wimbledon Cricket Club with a view to playing a little less and more locally. On the Sunday afternoon after the Gillette Cup Final a fellow team member brought him home early from a match. His face was ashen and he went to bed. The immediate diagnosis was that he had picked up a stomach bug from my two-year-old brother, Ben. On Monday, he seemed a little better. That Monday night—or at 2 am on Tuesday, to be precise—he died in bed alongside my mother. Unsurprisingly, the night lives with her to this day.

  I was a few weeks short of my eleventh birthday. My sister, Susanna, was twenty months younger. We had no idea why we were whisked off, first thing, to family friends for much of the day.

  We returned home around teatime and Mum was waiting for us in the hall. She took us into the sitting room and explained that Dad had died. We were later to hear that a congenital heart condition had betrayed him, and us. These days he would comfortably have survived.

  A deep aching sadness overtook our home. It was as if it rained all day and all night. I talked to him in my bed, imagining he would hear, but the deafening silence overcame us all. We slept together in my sister’s bedroom for comfort, though little could be found. Our family was always as one and blessed by love, laughter and warmth. Now, the void exposed us as mortal and highly fragile. Honestly, how does a mother cope? We were beyond pain.

  Three weeks into the autumn term, my mother took me back to Fernden, the boarding prep school I had started the year before. Neither she, nor my father, had any idea how much I hated it. The saving grace was a headmaster with kindness at his core and cricket set almost as deep in his heart as in mine.

  Charles Brownrigg ran an old-fashioned school—not quite Tom Brown’s alma mater though along similar lines—but such emotionless authority over young boys did not come naturally to him. Age had taken its toll and so his wife, the matrons and the other masters made the place tick. Mr Charles’s true colours were to be found in the summer term, when cricket was played at every opportunity: in the schoolyard during midmorning break; again for half an hour before lunch; throughout the afternoon in organised and disciplined form; and then, for those of us with greater interest or skill, private coaching sessions with him each evening after tea. This was wall-to-wall cricket for three to four hours each day, with matches against other schools twice a week and house matches that were ongoing throughout the summer term. It was heaven.

  In the spring and summer holidays at home, I rolled the pitch with even greater vigour and invited friends to play out Test matches. Play began at 11.30 am, lunch was at 1.30 pm and tea at ten past four. Mum never let me down. Even the sausages and mash had to wait until 6.30 when we finished. Invariably, I/England would declare with around 500 on the board and knock over my mate/Australia or West Indies for next to nothing and win by an innings. Friends went by the wayside almost weekly.

  I could mimic Geoffrey Boycott’s exaggerated defensive positions, Colin Cowdrey’s easy manner, Tom Graveney’s unusual grip and Ted Dexter’s magnificent poise. I copied John Snow’s beautiful rhythm and Ken Higgs’s angled approach, with his bum stuck out and his snarling response ready for every opponent. I worked right-arm on Derek Underwood’s left-arm deliveries and mastered the arm ball with which Fred Titmus trapped Garry Sobers—at least, I thought I did.

  The score was recorded each over. At the fall of every wicket, the dismissed batsman had to walk across the garden, into the house, up the stairs and into the small bathroom, where he removed his gloves, put on a different pair and set off back to the middle. Always, the new batsman was applauded to the crease. I think this was more for the sense of theatre than etiquette.

  The only times during the summer holidays that these matches were put on hold was during a real Test match, when I sat glued to the television—black and white until the early 1970s—and watched every ball of every game. When we travelled, the car radio crackled with the magic. I could imitate Benaud, John Arlott and Brian Johnston, and did so for anyone who would listen.

  At school, I smuggled in a small wireless and hid it under my pillow. During the winter nights of 1970–71, I listened in awe as Boycott and Snow helped Ray Illingworth bring the Ashes back to England. That crackling sound, Alan McGilvray’s distant voice, and the news that Snow had nailed Ian Chappell, opened this young mind to a cinematic vision of Australia.

  There was an added edge to the second of the two Tests at the Sydney Cricket Ground, when Snow was collared by spectators after his bouncer hit Terry Jenner in the head and Ray Illingworth led his players from the field in a protest for their safety. For me, the SCG assumed almost mythical proportions, and those who played upon it became gladiators in the imagination of a young boy captivated by his heroes. As he ran down the battery and drifted into sleep, his heart beat with the rhythm of the great southern land and from the roar of the crowd whose hard-nosed opinions on the action out in the middle was the stuff of the Colosseum.

  I was pleased to move on from prep school. The place represented a deeply troubled time. My nights were filled first with tears and then a challenging nightmare in which I ran downhill from a huge boulder that chased me until the very moment it was to flatten me. I awoke
in panic night after night. There was some bullying, of course, as is the way of young boys, and some unsympathetic schoolmastering from men completely unable to deal with such complex emotional trauma.

  Cricket was the release. Cricket, cricket and more cricket. I devoured the game in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. I collected those cigarette cards, read the Playfair Cricket Annual and even dipped into The Cricketer and Wisden. Though football and rugby were key components of winter life, cricket still found a place when England toured abroad.

  In the spring of 1970, I asked Mum for a new bat. That tested her. She worked her way through the drawers of Dad’s desk and found a receipt for cricket kit from a shop in Soho. Soho! She asked me what I knew of Alfred Jameson Sports, a question that confounded me as much as her. She called the number and a man answered who introduced himself as the Mr Jameson. He said he had the summer’s new range of equipment in stock. And so off we went: me with uncontrollable excitement and Mum with some trepidation. The Soho of 46 years ago was no place for a lady.

  We arrived in Greek Street and parked our green Morris Minor outside an old-curiosity-type shop. We descended a small flight of steps and rang a bell. An ageing man with a white moustache greeted us. Peter Nicholas had been a customer for a while now, he said, through a mutual friend at Southgate Cricket Club. Phew. Mum explained that Peter had died. Mr Jameson seemed genuinely sad and promised us the same discount afforded to my father.

  I touched the bats, feeling the smooth, cold wood in my fingers. I studied the grains, the bows and the handles. I pulled on gloves, opening and closing my hands inside the soft, fitted leather. I touched pads of all sizes, and admired photographs of Bradman, Hutton, Edrich and Compton.

  Mr Jameson pulled out a Gray-Nicolls and began tapping the ball on its face. Then he bounced it, increasingly higher until the odd one hit the ceiling: goodness, he said, what a beautiful piece of willow! This was a long-practised sales pitch and Mum was falling for it. I had other ideas. I picked out a bat with a new logo—a thick black triangle—that I had seen used by Basil D’Oliveira. Mr Jameson disapproved. He said it was heavy and that at my age I needed a lighter bat for greater flexibility. I persevered. On closer inspection the triangle was an image of three stumps and two bails. The bat was called a Duncan Fearnley.