March 22, 2006

Rejoice!

It has been a fascinating, fantastic and fitting climax to the series here in Mumbai. England won by 212 runs to level the series 1-1. In the morning India looked incredibly resilient, and Dravid was at his stonewalling best. He scored his first boundary in his 77th minute at the crease to double his score up to that point.

At lunch India needed 238 to win with seven wickets in hand, and it looked like all three results could be possible, especially as Sachin was beginning to look as fluent as he had all series.

The noise when he came in to bat and started scoring some runs was possibly the loudest I have ever heard anywhere or at anytime. I leant forward and tapped the shoulder of the Indian fan sitting in front of me and waved my notepad and pen at him. “What is the name of the new batsman?” I asked him. He looked absolutely horrified. “That is Sachin” he told me, as if he had just met the most ignorant visitor to the sub-continent that he had ever come across. Perhaps he had. Eventually, I realised he was joking.

After lunch England were incredible. They came out and took 7 wickets in rapid succession. India had gone from 75-3 at lunch to 100 all out, and Shaun Udal aged 37 and playing in his just his 4th test had taken four for fourteen. Prior to this match he had taken just three test wickets at an average of 92.23. It was a fantastic thing to witness, like the ending of a modern fairy tale. And the first of the four was the greatest prize of them all; Tendulkar himself, the greatest player of his generation, prodding forward and getting an inside edge to Ian Bell under the helmet.

Yesterday I sat in the stands and listened to other spectators berate and mock a long list of England off-spinners. Today Udal was the unexpected punchline to their joke and it was delivered beautifully.

The day also contained another surprise, the visit of Stephen Fry to the media enclosure, one of my heroes and a huge fan of the game. I was lucky enough to have a brief chat with him, which was delightfully punctuated by the wicket of Dravid. Fry leapt to his feet shouting “He’s got him, he’s got him” at an astonishing volume, before immediately apologising to all those around whose view he had obstructed. A gentleman, and an unexpected end to my tour.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:15 AM | TrackBack

March 21, 2006

Phew, what a scorcher etc

Today we have seen some very slow, patient cricket from both sides. It resulted in India needing 295 more runs to win with nine wickets in hand. Tomorrow England might draw the series. Or they might not.

It has been hot. So very hot. Look at the state of me. That’s it. I must lie down. Get help.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 1:37 PM | TrackBack

March 19, 2006

It really is rather warm, mother

Mumbai is without doubt the hottest of the three Test venues that we’ve encountered on this tour. It’s staggering. We might be just by the sea, but there’s no way that any breeze can find its way into the cauldron-like atmosphere of the Warkhede stadium.

The stadium, with its steeply tiered rows of wooden benches, is also by far the busiest of the Test venues. It was packed today, and not just with Indian fans. There are said to be about 6000 English supporters who have made the trip, swelling the numbers of the Barmy Army.

The Barmy Army have already been busy in Mumbai. Prior to the Test they held a cricket match and also had a sponsored one mile run through the city streets, all to raise money for Sport Relief.

They’ve also been in fine voice and have brought with them a brass band, who let rip every now and then, especially to signify bowling changes. When Freddie Flintoff comes on they play Meet The Flintstones. Rather more whimsically, Yorkshire man Matthew Hoggard is greeted with the theme from Last Of The Summer Wine.

Not every player has his own theme yet, but I’m sure they all will have by the end of the Test. We’ve been discussing possibilities in my area of the Stand. Shaun Udal’s nickname is Shaggy so perhaps the theme from Scooby Doo might be the trick although someone suggested, perhaps a little unkindly, that his bowling could be accompanied by Pulp’s Help The Aged. It would be a little harsh as Udal probably isn’t even as old as Jarvis Cocker.

Someone working particularly hard in this match is Ian Blackwell, the twelfth man. he seems to be getting more exercise than in the match he played in. Yesterday he had to sprint on and off the field practically every over to bring our batsmen fresh gloves, a towel to mop their brows with or a drink. By tea time he looked knackered, and in the last half hour he was replaced by Matt Prior. It must be hot if the twelfth man needs a replacement. Either that or he’d picked up an injury and was receiving physio.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 1:02 PM | TrackBack

March 14, 2006

The view from the throne

While India were knocking off the runs they needed for victory in Chandigarh, I was stuck back at the hotel for a couple of days suffering from the result of some gastric difficulties. It’s not been anything terribly serious, but I did feel the need to have a couple of days eating only naan, drinking only water and having a lavatory all to myself.

It’s been strange watching on the television after spending so much time watching from the press box recently. The reality is that the view on the television is a lot better although you miss the atmosphere, the banter and the noise of the drumming is a little quieter. I’ve also missed the lunches which have been absolutely superb at the Punjabi Cricket Association.

I am not alone in this view. A number of the commentators, including Dean Jones and Nasser Hussein, have been mentioning it on air. Whatever I’ve picked up must have come from another source, otherwise Dean and co would be back at their hotels sweating and alone, and not on air endorsing the delights of the PCA lunches to a considerable audience of people that don’t have access to them.

Television has been my usual vantage point for cricket over the last ten years, but it’s been a little odd going back to viewing it that way after just a few days with the press corps. There you see all the commentators and queue up with them for coffee and biscuits, but on television you actually get to hear them, and in my sickened sate I’ve found it comforting to return to this more familiar relationship. The Sky boys have all been in good voice, although someone whose commentary I’ve not experienced before is Dean Jones, who amuses me an enormous amount. Yesterday he did a five minute piece to camera on the subject of cricket bats. He opened it with the remark “Personally I reckon that over the years bats have got better by about 30 to 40 percent”, which sounds to me like a bit of a guess, but he did it with the necessary conviction to make it sound like hard scientific fact.

He also said “Back in Australia 70 percent of bats are bought for people by their mums. Well it’s really worth getting your dad’s help as well”. These are the sort of insights into the game that I’ve been crying out for ever since I first became interested in cricket.

When he brings out The Dean Jones Book Of Bumper Cricketing Facts I’m definitely going to ask my Mum to buy it for me, although I appreciate that it will be worth getting my Dad’s help as well

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:23 AM | TrackBack

March 12, 2006

Mr Kumble

Anil Kumble took his 500th Test wicket yesterday, which is a phenomenal achievement. Although four other bowlers (Warne, Murali, McGrath and Walsh) have taken more, Kumble is the second fastest to reach this landmark. It’s great to see someone of Kumble’s ilk earn himself a place in the pantheon of the greats. He’s not a showboat, he’s not flamboyant and he rarely courts controversy. Nor has he necessarily been as lauded as he might have been, possibly because he doesn’t turn the ball the prodigious amount Warne does. He just gets on with the job in a quiet but enthusiastic manner.

At the start of the second Test he needed just four wickets to reach the milestone, but he was made to wait for them by the weather, England’s modest 300 taking until after lunch on the third day. On the first day he bowled Bell with one that went straight on, on the second day he bowled Collingwood with a ball that really bounced and turned and then yesterday it finally all happened at once after lunch. He bowled Geraint Jones off an inside edge that trickled back onto his stumps, and then trapped Steve Harmison LBW first ball to take his 500th. The crowd rose as one to salute him. Two balls later Panesar edged one to 1st slip and Kumble had taken five wickets in the innings.

I met Kumble once. It was 1995 and he was playing with Northants for a season. My friend Tom Harrison and I had gone to watch them play Middlesex at their second eleven ground in Uxbridge. We watched the game for three days, and would hang around near the pavilion during the intervals to get autographs. On the third day we bumped into Kumble and asked him for his. He signed very carefully and slowly, and thus left a silence that I felt needed filling. I had no idea why I thought it might be a good thing to say to him, but I eventually opted for “I’ve come all the way from Northamptonshire for this”. This probably sounded like a sort of complaint – the kind of thing you might say if you’d gone to Alton Towers to find out that it was closed. Anil Kumble looked at me with a confused look, signed Tom’s book and then headed off to the pavilion.

“Why did you say that?” asked Tom. “I don’t know”, I replied, “what do you reckon he was thinking?”

Tom thought for a bit and then said “He was probably thinking ‘And I’ve come all the bloody way from India’”.

I’m glad that I’ve have finally reciprocated.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 2:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

March 11, 2006

Like sardines but with laptops

The conditions in the press box here have been somewhat cramped. On the first morning of the Test match here I eventually found the desk with my name on it, sat down at it and immediately realised there was a big pillar in a direct line between me and the wicket. When play started I could see the bowlers start their run ups and I could see some of the fielders, although only those who weren’t in close or on the boundary.

I have travelled a considerable distance to watch England play India and the only thing I could get a good view of from my designated seat was the television, which was showing New Zealand versus the West Indies.

The situation was made more bizarre by the fact that Test Match Special had encountered some sort of technical difficulties in their own box which meant that they had to broadcast from the front of ours. When I arrived Sir Geoffrey and Mike Selvey were on air but there was too much noise between me and them and so I could neither see the cricket that they were describing nor hear their descriptions of it.

Next to me was sat Five Live’s Kevin Howells who had been forced by these circumstances to do his regular updates via his mobile. He was just relating the dismissal of Ian Bell to their listeners when a well-timed tannoy next to him suddenly boomed out the statistics of Bell’s innings so loudly that most of us dived for cover. Kevin, however, responded by being his usual professional self - only louder.

Some of us realised that we were in a prime position to interrupt all of his future broadcasts. I was going to wait until he’d started and then bellow “Would the owner of a blue Datsun Y-Reg please make them self known to the club secretary”, but luckily the technical issues were soon sorted and Kevin was able to return to the safer surroundings of the commentary position.

P.S. In a paper I read this morning there was a column written by Sir Geoffrey Boycott which delighted me greatly. It was subtitled “Yorkshire Pudding” and was accompanied by a photo of Greg Chappell.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 1:34 PM | TrackBack

March 9, 2006

un bon oeuf

I was talking to Andrew Walpole today, who is the media relations manager for the ECB. I have had to talk to him quite a lot recently as I’ve been having a few difficulties getting my press accreditation sorted. This is because I made the somewhat stupid decision of attempting to do everything via the correct channels. As the correct channels all lead their way into the heart of Indian bureaucracy, this has resulted in many hours spent, in many offices, waiting for many different people, to tell me many different reasons why I should be speaking to someone else.

Andrew has been incredibly helpful, despite the chaos in which he has been forced to operate in since England’s arrival here. He spent a lot of the match in Nagpur sitting next to me in the press box and we chatted about a number of things, including the fact that the crowds at cricket matches here have a frequent tendency to make sudden and enormous amounts of noise at moments when nothing is actually happening. It certainly makes the rest of us look up.

He told me that it caused a lot of confusion in the pavilion as well, where people were continually running back from the lavatory thinking that a wicket had fallen. One member of the coaching staff was only gone five minutes and came sprinting back thinking that England had lost four wickets whilst he’d been in there. In fact they had been having a drinks break.

As I’m hoping to file the occasional story that will be of interest to the Western Mail I have been desperately attempting to find as many Welsh angles as possible, which has become rather difficult since the sudden and unfortunate departure of Simon Jones. These means that I have been pestering Andrew by regularly asking him things like “Does Kevin Pietersen have any Welsh relatives?” Someone else pointed out that he hardly has any English ones. He’s been very patient about it, although a few days ago he told me about a quiz night that the team had had. “And who won?” I asked excitedly. “No-one Welsh” was all he would tell me.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 12:41 PM | TrackBack

March 6, 2006

Boycott goes all the way up to eleven

At the press conference after England’s draw on Sunday there was noise interference from a source that should know better - in fact one who would undoubtedly claim to know better than you or I or anyone else about matters cricketing.

Sir Geoffrey Boycott (8114 Test runs at 47.72, 108 caps) was being interviewed for Indian television a whole two partitioned walls away from where Freddie Flintoff was attempting to address the British media. Despite the fact that Freddie was speaking into a microphone, and through loud speakers, his voice was easily drowned out by an unplugged Geoffrey hammering his points home.

England’s media relations manager, Andrew Walpole, even attempted to get him to turn the volume down a little but he might as well have been smacking a blancmange, and a loud one at that.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 12:21 PM

March 5, 2006

But it's from here isn't it?

England’s cricketers have suffered all kinds of misfortune so far on this tour; illness, injury, personal difficulties and emergency last-minute call ups to name but a few. Four of England’s key players are already missing.

But in Nagpur, members of Sky’s commentary team were not just missing the likes of Simon Jones: they were finding it absolutely impossible to get their hands on any so-called Indian tonic water. Botham, Gower, Hussein et al. like to return to the media hotel at the end of each day’s play and have a gin and tonic to help them take the edge off, but for days they struggled to find their beloved mixer.

All they kept getting offered were varieties of isotonic drink, but they turned their noses up at the idea of drinking any kind of turbo gin cocktail. Their travel operator even sent a man out into town with strict instructions to find the mixer at all costs. And all he managed to do was return with about a bin liner’s worth of yet more isotonic drink.

The Sky boys have kept a lid on their frustrations so far, but if they’re still thirsty by the time we all reach Mumbai then it might be a different story.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 11:30 AM

March 1, 2006

About Miles

Twenty six year-old Miles Jupp (RHB, OB) would be playing for England now if it wasn't for the fact that he is unathletic, with poor hand-eye co-ordination and suffers from a very serious addiction to beef (medium rare).

Instead he is in India in the company of the press corps watching England, sampling the snacks and attempting a bit of light journalism.

He has been interested in cricket since the early nineties, although he never managed to convert his enthusiasm into many runs or wickets. He has converted his enthusiasm as a writer performer more successfully, appearing in his own Radio 4 series and also playing Archie the Inventor in all 453,987 episodes of the Bafta winning "Balamory". (He doesn't keep the award, some producer usually gets those)

He is finding India a bit hot.

Posted by Miles.Jupp at 10:48 AM | Comments (3)