I can’t remember whether the sun was in or out by now. I think it was out. I think the temperature had risen considerably. But suddenly, with less than seven overs to go, the South African batsmen decided to make a fight of it. It was as if a bell had been rung for the final lap, or a signal had been flipped. Warne responded to Pollock’s disrespectful slugging by getting Kallis out for 53; but Kallis was replaced by Klusener (batting at eight) - who took one run from Warne’s last ball, and then a very confident four from the first ball from Fleming. What was it about this man? He had been man of the match on other occasions; he was destined to be man of the tournament. He lost his ideal batting partner when Pollock was yorked by Fleming in the 46th over, but he showed no sign of discomfort. He was Macaulay’s Horatius, basically. Blokes might stand briefly on his right and left, but this keeping-the-bridge business would ultimately all be down to him.
The last three overs were pretty tense, to say the least. The South Africans needed 25 runs from 18 balls. Unfortunately Boucher was on strike, facing Fleming. Top priority was therefore to get himself out of the firing line and swap ends as quickly as possible. This didn’t happen, agonisingly, until the fourth ball of the over. However, once it had been managed, the fifth ball was struck by Klusener for a four. The sixth was intercepted by Moody at the boundary, for a two. South Africa now needed 18 runs from 12 balls, and some of us in the press box could feel hot blood starting to leak out of our ears. There was something very special unfolding out there, but what? What? How was this going to turn out? With Klusener whacking fours about, 18 from 12 balls was achievable, but he was at the wrong end again now, with McGrath bowling the first two deliveries of the 49th over to the hapless Boucher, who succumbed to a yorker on the second!
South Africa were now 196 for eight, with only 10 balls left in the match. The number 9 batsman Elworthy went in to face McGrath. He got one run, putting Klusener back on strike. Good man. I think I even wrote down, ‘Good man, Elworthy.’ Then Klusener opted to take two runs (this being a sensible even number, which would mean he kept the strike) and Elworthy was taken by surprise by the second and was run out by McGrath! I promptly crossed out ‘Good man’ and wrote ‘Git’ instead. How could he not realise that they had to go for two runs? There were an anxious couple of minutes while the third umpire ruled on the run-out, because from some angles it looked as though McGrath had caught the ball all right, but had maybe knocked the bales off with his hand. But the third umpire finally ruled that Elworthy was out - which was just as well, as the player had already returned to the pavilion and taken his pads off. With South Africa needing 16 from eight, Allan Donald (the last man) replaced him at the wicket. Did Donald make a mental note, ‘Don’t get run out like the last bloke, eh?’ We shall never know. McGrath bowled to Klusener and he belted it high and long, right over the head of Reiffel at the boundary rope, who parried it but didn’t catch it. It was a six! Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell. South Africa now needed 10 from seven. From the last delivery of McGrath’s over, Klusener got a nifty single, to put himself in position to bat to victory.
It is the last over of the match, then. Six balls left in this semi-final. Nine runs required. The contents of our brains are starting to dribble out of our noses. I am pressing wads of tissue to all the orifices of my head. Fleming bowls to Klusener, and he smashes it as if he were playing baseball. It’s a four. A four! All one can do is whimper, watch it fly, absorb the cheering, and keep trusting the Kleenex. The second ball is bowled and Klusener drives it hard and long to the boundary for another four. Oh my God, oh my God. The scores are now tied, and the South Africans require one run to win. They have four deliveries to do it from. But they have no more wickets, you see. There’s the rub. No. More. Wickets. And it is still not possible to extrapolate from these figures the outcome of the game. Requiring one run from four balls, Klusener mis-hits the third delivery of the over and decides not to run. It is at this point that we notice, with alarm, that Donald, at the other end, has been anticipating a run, and has therefore ‘backed up’ (i.e. jumped the gun) by a considerable distance. Oh no. On realising his mistake, he scrambles back to safety with bat outstretched, and is saved only when the rolled ball misses the base of the stumps. Laughing hysterically with relief, one reflects on what a dick-head Donald must feel at this moment. Imagine getting run out in these circumstances, Allan, with the scores dead level. How would you ever forgive yourself?
And now we are down to the last three balls of the match. Fleming bowls to Klusener, who whacks it - and runs. This is it! This is it! Klusener is running for the match! But for some reason, Donald is going backwards again. Why on earth isn’t he running? What is he playing at? This is a fucking nightmare. Run, mate! Fucking run! As Klusener reaches his end of the pitch, Donald visibly realises, Oh hang on, where did he come from? Better make a start. He is like that Great Dane I saw at the dog agility championship making up his mind to attempt the slalom through the bendy poles. ‘Yep, all right, I’ll do that.’ But he’s much too late. Having already dropped his bat, he abandons it and moves off, but by the time he’s covered a quarter of the distance, the Australians have already run him out and are celebrating their astonishing hair’s-breadth escape from defeat with their backs turned firmly towards this lonely, stranded, batless figure dressed in green. No one can believe what they’ve just witnessed. Débâ;cle is the only word for it. It might have been a famous victory; instead it is a débâ;cle of horrifying proportions. Klusener has left the field already. At the end of his run, he just kept on walking. It is the most desperately ghastly ending to a World Cup match ever.
It is cricket, though. That’s what they all say. It is, quintessentially, cricket.
As you can tell from reading between the lines of the above, I know nothing whatever about cricket. And this is one of my bigger regrets. During the thrilling 2005 Ashes series in England, I actually pined to be back in the press box - an emotion that really took me by surprise. I felt seriously envious. My friend Gideon Haigh - talented and prolific cricket writer from Melbourne - was here to cover the series for the Guardian, so was on the spot for every delivery, and I couldn’t quite cope with the idea that I wasn’t there too. He would tell me who he’d been sitting next to, and I’d snivel, lamely, ‘I know him.’ In the end, I consoled myself at home in front of the telly by sending nuisance texts to Gideon at moments of high tension. He would be concentrating on unfolding events, tirelessly tapping out his blog with one hand, making notes of scores with the other, and he’d get a text from me that said, ‘What about Pietersen then?’ In the introduction to his bestselling Ashes 2005, Gideon thanks me for letting him use my flat in London and says generously that I ‘lived every ball’ of the series. He knew this to be true, because his phone went ‘beep-beep, beep-beep’ every bloody ten minutes when he was trying to do some work.
I could imagine Gideon being exemplary in the press box. He would be in his element as I never was. In most cricket press boxes, I had no idea how to behave. They are very much smaller and quieter places than footie ones, which makes them more sociable, but at the same time made me more self-conscious. There is less representation from the tabloids, which also has an effect. At the risk of oversimplifying (and getting it entirely wrong), cricket writers are generally quite tall, very amusing, a bit Aspergers, and well informed on highbrow topics such as art and music. They are also utterly pampered, compared with the writers covering rougher sports - being allowed to sit under cover, behind plate glass, and being supplied with regular trays of food. I was at a match sponsored by Benson & Hedges once, and someone came in and gaily tossed free packets of fags to all corners of the press box. This wasn’t even a surprise: one bloke said, ‘They were a bit late with the Bensons today,’ as he stuffed a few packs into his briefcase. But, congenial as all this ought to have been, I didn’t relax at the cricket and have chats about Mahler with these tall and amusing men, for the simple reason that I couldn’t: sadly, I needed to concentrate much harder
than everyone else just to follow the game. In fact I panicked if anyone tall and amusing started telling me a joke or something, because it might mean I’d miss some subtle development on the pitch, such as a wicket falling, or a legendary diving catch at deep backward square leg, or England being all out (again) for 76.
What a tragedy. What a waste. Most of the matches I attended were big enough to have commentary on the radio, so that put the tin lid firmly even on listening to other people’s conversation. From start of play, I sat studiously with my earphones in, and with a trusty, dog-eared diagram of fielding positions open in front of me. And I listened very carefully, matching the description to the reality, checking that it all made sense. This isn’t what radio commentaries of cricket matches are for, of course: they are meant to supply the pictures for people who can’t be present for some reason - the ideal listener would be a lonely lighthouse-keeper in the Azores, his ear pressed gratefully to the patrician tones emanating from the tinny speaker while grey waves crash against the rocks below (‘Shoaib Akhtar runs up, he bowls, and good heavens, I don’t know about you, Johnners, but I’ve never seen nostrils like it!’). Listening to this stuff when the game is actually spread out right in front of you is a bit strange, especially when you’re aware that the broadcasters are upstairs in the same building, probably less than ten feet away, observing precisely the same view. But I loved it. When the commentator said Tendulkar had cut the ball to Twose at deep square leg, I could look at where the ball was going, then consult the diagram, then hold the diagram up the other way, then check it was indeed Twose who was occupying deep square leg, and then think, ‘Right. Got that. Phew.’ I performed this lame sequence of actions for every ball of the match - and I mean that. I did it for every ball. I felt it was important just to keep track, you see. I knew that keeping track of cricket was the very limit of what I was capable of doing.
* * *
When I gave up sports writing, it was partly because I was ready to face facts: I was never going to get any better at this. With cricket, I would always have to consult that diagram of fielding positions, and lean on Test Match Special. Looking at the disposition of the fielders (three chaps close together at one o’clock, two o’clock and three o’clock; one chap on his own over there at a quarter past seven), I wouldn’t have the first idea how a captain might have chosen it - to suit either the style of a bowler or even the orientation of the batsman. On a simpler level, I watched umpteen men explain spin bowling, but it still looked like witchcraft. I have just opened my (signed) copy of Shane Warne: My Own Story (1997) and discovered that every page has underlinings and little comments, showing my frustration at still not understanding how spin bowling was done. Next to the words, ‘I bowled a maiden first up and gathered some confidence. They were landing where I wanted them to land,’ I have written in pencil, ‘I want him to describe bowling.’ Next to his words, ‘I tried a flipper to Richie and it just came out of the hand perfectly,’ I have written, ‘Oh good. HOW?’ But it’s not all criticism, you will be relieved to hear. When Warney explains that young blokes on the team should ‘earn their way up the autograph bat’ - i.e. not sign at the top when they haven’t played as much as the others - I have written a thoughtful ‘interesting’.
But the main reason I could never feel comfortable about cricket is that there is clearly no substitute for a lifetime of enthusiasm. It can’t be faked or mugged up, no matter how many times you pick up C.L.R. James or Neville Cardus, or struggle to find humour in Siegfried Sassoon’s famous description of the Flower Show Match. This stuff has to go deep, you see. And for me, it doesn’t. When they open me up after death, they will find no Test scores carved on my heart - and they won’t find any stored in my brain either. I have no personal memories of Don Bradman or Fred Trueman, or even (really) Ian Botham, except as a fairly controversial TV personality doing ads for Shredded Wheat. On my first trip to Headingley in 1997, chaps filled me in on the famous events of 1981 and it was honestly the first time I’d heard of them. No wonder I was more comfortable with football. With football, a sense of history is so unimportant as to be virtually meaningless. No one seriously sits around comparing the achievements of (say) Alan Shearer and Jackie Milburn; or Fernando Torres and Kenny Dalglish. They can usually tell you how long it’s been since they won the league, or the Cup, but that’s different. That’s about showing off how much they’ve suffered. ‘Eighteen years, mate! Can you imagine? Eighteen bloody years!’
I keep thinking of a friend I had twenty years ago, who used to complain about her cricket-loving husband. Apparently the only books she ever saw him reading were yellow-jacketed, quite thick, and had the word ‘Wisden’ on them - and it annoyed her very much. She was in despair at his monomania and general dullness. ‘He even reads old Wisdens in bed!’ she said. ‘He reads old Wisdens in the bath! He has old Wisdens in the car!’ In those old days I was firmly on her side. I think I used to advise her to kill him. Nowadays, however, I feel nothing but sympathy and warmth for this poor, hounded chap. It wasn’t his fault. One of the attractions of cricket, surely, is that it requires a lot of thinking about afterwards. In fact it’s a sport that largely takes place after it’s finished, in the splendid and reassuring comfort of the inside of one’s head.
Football Again and the Necessity of Weeping
In September 2000, I decided to stop sports writing for The Times. I phoned them up, I said I was sorry, and I jacked it in. There seemed to be no alternative. I felt I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and that if I had to argue with just one more man with just one more clipboard, I might start screaming and hitting - and then I’d end up in court, or in a mental hospital, or on a park bench with a bottle in a brown paper bag, and no job was worth that, not even one that other people would kill you for. But what on earth could have precipitated this sense of - well, precipice? I know what you’re thinking. It was England’s poor performance in Euro 2000. It was bloody Gary Neville. But no. Depressing though the Euro 2000 England campaign assuredly was, my reasons for quitting my job and burrowing under a duvet for the next two years were not connected with sport. The short explanation, which cannot be avoided, is that my sister died. I apologise for not mentioning this before. The right moment never seemed to come up. Kay, my only sister (indeed, my only sibling), was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at the start of the rugby World Cup in 1999 (I was on a bus coming home from a launch with the All Blacks when she told me on the phone), and she died less than a year later on the morning of Sunday September 24, 2000, on Day Nine of the Sydney Olympics. I can be so specific about what was concurrent in the world of sport because, the evening before, I had assured my boss that I would definitely be ok on that Sunday morning to file my usual 900 words about the bbc coverage of the weightlifting (or whatever) before setting off for the hospice.
‘What a shame you missed the Olympics,’ one of the other sports writers said to me, rather tactlessly, a couple of months later, at the Christmas party. I had been accredited for Sydney, you see. I had been due to go. My sister had even ghoulishly promised not to die till I got back. But I had wrestled with the dilemma and finally decided it is a good thing to be at the deathbed of one’s closest relative if you can manage it, even when there is the alternative of being on the opposite side of the planet watching fireworks. And so I cast the whole idea from my mind. Four years later, in 2004, I was invited to Melbourne for book promotion purposes, which meant that my publisher needed to apply for an Australian visa. ‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ they reported back. ‘You’ve already got one. Why didn’t you say?’ I was at a loss to explain it. How did I have a visa? I had never been to Australia. I had never planned to go. For a week or two I entertained paranoid fantasies that someone had stolen my identity - and then I remembered the Olympics. Missing the fabulousness of Sydney 2000 had clearly not been a festering regret, then. Four years later, I had forgotten that it had ever been on the cards that I should go.
In any case, I didn’t mis
s the Olympics in Sydney. I watched them with a great deal of grim emotional intensity at home. Other people may think they have a special raw, racking, sobbing connection to the sight of a coxless four from Great Britain taking the gold by the tiniest of margins, but let me tell them they don’t have the first idea of the feelings it can evoke. Kay and I watched the games in the night together, when she couldn’t face going to bed. In the early hours I would drive to my mother’s to sleep; then I would wake up to the bbc coverage in the mornings. And so the Sydney Olympics framed the long days in the worst week of my life. I found solace in them, and I also hated them. I wanted them to stop and I also wanted them to go on for ever, because I didn’t think Kay would survive them. Every morning I would start work to the accompaniment of Heather Small’s anthemic song ‘Proud’