Classic After-Dinner Sports Tales. Jonathan Rice
out lbw in the first over.
I remember umpiring at Old Trafford (everything seemed to happen to me at Old Trafford) in an England v Australia Test. Bob Holland, the Australian leg-spinner, was bowling from my end to Graham Gooch. Holland bowled a full toss, which Graham hit straight back at me like a bullet. It hit me on the ankle and down I went. The Australian physio came out onto the field to give me treatment, to a huge cheer from the full house at Old Trafford.
After I received my treatment and stood up rather shakily to restart play, Bob Holland thanked me for saving four runs. Graham Gooch, on the other hand, was not happy at having lost four runs. It’s amazing what can happen in the middle of a Test match.
NAAS BOTHA
South African rugby international, a former Springbok fly-half and captain during the 1980s, who scored 312 points in international rugby.
We were watching an international soccer match at Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria, when after the game I went off and got a bunch of my friends a round of drinks.
As I returned with a tray full of beers, my mobile phone rang, It was my wife, Karen. She wanted to know when I was coming home, so I naturally replied that I was already on my way and wouldn’t be long.
I then sat down with my mates and carried on chatting about the football.
My mate Dave looked rather surprised, and he asked, ‘Didn’t I just hear you tell Karen you are on your way?’
‘Yah,’ I said, ‘but I’m the type of bloke who, if he is going to get into trouble, likes to do it in instalments.’
IAN BOTHAM
Perhaps England’s greatest all-round cricketer of all time, Ian Botham is best remembered for his amazing displays in 1981, when his batting and bowling transformed lost causes and brought the Ashes back home. Since his retirement, Botham has raised millions for charity by his marathon walks.
I have many great memories of touring with the England team during my cricket career, and numerous stories to tell about my room-mates! However, one man stands out in particular – Derek Randall, or Arkle as he is known to his fellow players and friends.
On returning to his hotel room in Adelaide, following a day in the field, he decided to run a bath. Having turned the water on, he remembered that he needed to pass on a message to Messrs. I.T. Botham and A.J. Lamb. He quickly wrapped a towel around his body and slipped across the corridor to their room. We opened the door to Arkle, invited him in for a drink (a cup of Earl Grey, of course) and spent a while chatting. On leaving the room, he realised that he had left his key inside his room. Unlike most people, instead of asking either Lamby or myself to ring down to reception, he decided to go down himself.
At the Adelaide Hilton that night, there was a rather special function, with people from all over Australia arriving dressed in DJs – the works. As the towel-clad Arkle arrived at the reception desk, there was utter chaos, with people running hell for leather out of the dining room, some soaking wet.
While asking the very flustered receptionist if he could have another key for his room, he also enquired what the problem was.
‘Some stupid **** has left their bath water running and flooded the dining area!’
No need to ask who, as she handed over the replacement key to a slightly under-dressed Mr. Randall!
MAX BOYCE
Welsh comedian, raconteur and musician – and rugby fan. His album We All Had Doctors’ Papers was the first comedy album to top the charts.
When I visited Madame Tussaud’s in London a few years ago, I was amazed to see some large life-size wax models of the Welsh rugby team being loaded into a forty-foot container marked ‘URGENT – for the attention of the England selectors, Twickenham’.
I enquired what they intended doing with them and was told that the English selectors had ordered them and were going to install them at Twickenham. The England team were then going to practise tackling and sidestepping them. Intrigued, I rang the Chairman of England selectors and asked him how the new training method was going.
‘Not very well,’ he replied. ‘Wales won, 14-6.’
GEOFFREY CHATER
Prolific British character actor who has appeared in countless films and television dramas, from If and Gandhi to Harry Enfield’s Television Programme. Keen cricketer for the Lord’s Taverners.
I was invited, as a young actor and Taverner who played cricket a bit, to play at Bishops Stortford in August 1953. Godfrey Evans – Taverners’ captain that day – asked if anyone else would put on the gloves as he had hurt a finger. No hand was raised except mine, and armed with Godfrey’s gloves (I had none with me) I had to face Denis Compton’s chinamen and seamers.
‘Not to worry,’ said Denis. ‘I’ll give you a signal when it’s going straight through.’
Needless to say, the signal reception failed quite seriously, and bye after bye disappeared with me jumping in the wrong direction. The crowd got the message and started to laugh: I too was corpsing and the game nearly came to a complete halt. The situation was saved, I seem to remember, by Denis taking himself off.
RAY CONNOLLY
Writer, journalist and novelist, who wrote the screenplay for two of the biggest British film successes of the 1970s, That’ll Be The Day and Stardust. Also a great authority on The Beatles.
There’s no pleasing some people. Or, to put it another way, for sports masters, the looniest of all sports fanatics, sport really isn’t about winning. At least, it wasn’t.
As a boy in the Fifties I went to a rugby-mad Catholic grammar school known as West Park in St Helens, Lancashire, where every team in the school was much feared for many miles around.
Naturally a weed like me never got near to being selected for a West Park team. Thank God! But a classmate and friend of mine, Peter Harvey, who would captain England Schoolboys during his time there, learned very early that it wasn’t enough simply to be good to satisfy the rugby master. You had to play with an etiquette which, if not of another planet, was definitely from another age.
He discovered this one Saturday morning when playing for the Under-14s team, the Bantams, against another school. For some reason he was chosen to play at full back and encouraged to practise his kicking by taking the conversions. Uncertain of his kicking ability, however, Harvey asked his team-mates to make sure that if they scored they touched down behind the posts to make the conversions easier for him.
This they duly obliged, often crossing the line at the corner flag and then beating a couple of extra players before touching down between the posts. Every try was converted.
By half-time, when there were something like fifty points to nil on the scoreboard, the senior rugby master, a mad martinet called Dicko, who taught us Latin and who was watching from the touchline, decided that it was becoming embarrassing for the opposition.
As oranges were passed around he went across to the referee, a much junior teacher, and suggested that when the score reached seventy points, the game should be stopped to avoid further embarrassment to the other school. So, into the second half they went. With twenty minutes still to go, and the score reaching seventy-nil, the game ended.
Of the seventy points, Peter Harvey, the boy who was uncertain about his kicking, had been responsible for forty-three of