There seems to have been a fair amount of tut-tutting and eyebrow raising over Eoin Morgan and Alex Hales opting out of the winter tour to Bangladesh, but not in the circles I’ve been moving in. As a retired bank employee acquaintance of mine put it so eloquently the other day: “I know just how they feel. I once got posted to Milton Keynes.”
In anticipation of a mild note of admonishment from the Milton Keynes Tourist Board (slogan: “Shopping, entertainment, family fun, sports, and much more….”) I’m happy to point out that the town’s many attractions include an open air sculpture exhibition of concrete cows, and the nearby landmark of the UK’s first all-traffic motorway service station, Newport Pagnell.
However, whether or not Morgan or Hales would have decided any differently had England’s first assignment of the winter involved a taxi to Milton Keynes as opposed to a flight to Dhaka, the fact that they’ve opted out makes you wonder whether it’s time for the ECB to issue some kind of official guide outlining the various plusses and minuses involving overseas cricket tours, thus enabling the players to make properly informed decisions as to their availability.
Take this winter’s second leg, India, for example. The ECB will naturally feel inclined to keep players onside by promoting the exotic side of things, such as a sightseeing trip to the Taj Mahal, or an elephant ride in Mumbai, but it would be only fair to point out, for the benefit of any player currently teetering on the fence, that this winter’s itinerary also includes visits to places like Kanpur.
It was there, in 1988, that the then chairman of selectors Ted Dexter arrived in order to watch two England ODIs, and spent the entire time lying in bed with a throat infection. So virulent that it robbed him of the power of speech, obliging him to issue hand-written Press statements along the lines of: “I hear the boys did very well,” from his sick bed. By the time he’d recovered, England had moved on somewhere else, and he arrived back home without seeing a ball bowled.
Kolkata was called Calcutta when I once had occasion to phone down to reception to inform them that my hotel room single had suddenly become a twin, and that my new room-mate not only had a full set of whiskers, but a very long tail, and a handsome set of gleaming white teeth.
First time tourists should also know what to expect when they hire one of those smoke-belching tuk-tuks to take them to a restaurant, and the driver assures them that it will take ten minutes maximum. Approximately one hour later, with the respiratory system now full of diesel fumes, they will realise that the driver actually has actually never heard of the restaurant in question, never mind where it might be located. The one piece of good news being that, even after an hour’s driving, the charge on the meter will be the equivalent of 5p.
Then there are the perils of committing your laundry to the hotel’s own bespoke service. The late Christopher Martin-Jenkins once had an expensive shirt returned to him consisting of one cuff, half a collar, and a broken button. He summoned the manager, who told him, with a beaming smile: “It is not the fault of the laundry, sir, it is the poor quality of your shirt.” Motto. You can complain all you like in India, but it won’t get you anywhere. Or in Pakistan, which is, of course, currently off the rota.
Your centrally contracted cricketer, who let’s face it is a fairly pampered creature, may think there is no reason to lie awake at night wondering whether to make himself available for a tour to the West Indies, but here, too, there are grounds for mental turmoil.
Some of the smaller island hotels, for example, are not always the five-star establishments they look from the outside, as at one idyllic looking establishment in St Lucia, when several members of the Press corps felt obliged to report back to reception after checking in. With an observation which went something like: “Lovely room, great view of the ocean, but could you tell me why there isn’t a bed in it?”
Antigua’s a lovely island, and the hotel beach bars are heavenly. Just don’t expect to get served. The waiters there are trained to completely ignore guests, and I’m pretty sure that Antigua was where HG Wells got the idea for The Invisible Man, after sitting down on a bar stool and saying: “Excuse me, may I have a rum daiquiri, please?” About four hundred times.
Australia is also the kind of place to make an England cricketer wrestle with his conscience before committing. The Sultan of Brunei and the chairman of Microsoft might get through a couple of months there without going broke, but the daily ECB tour allowance won’t hack it. Eating out used to be cheap, but if you want to keep the bill down to under £100 a head these days, don’t order anything more substantial than a grilled sparrow leg and a carafe of water. Tap water, that is.
The one thing in its favour, though, is that it’s not as dangerous as some destinations. Unless you’re daft enough to go snorkeling for jellyfish. Speed limits are rigorously enforced, crossing the road before the little red man turns green is on the list of deportation offences, and should you fancy a game of golf on your day off, the boot cleaning machine will have a notice warning you of half a dozen different ways of killing yourself through mis-use of the nozzle.
New Zealand? Bet you thought it was nice and quiet. Well, not when you get to South Island it isn’t, where the Scottish influence can mean that you rarely get through the day without being subjected to that instrument from Beelzebub, the bagpipes. On top of which, the closest I’ve come to freezing to death at a cricket match was in Dunedin.
With all this to consider, it’s high time the ECB came clean about the perils and pitfalls of touring overseas, and issued a pamphlet headed: “It’s Your Choice!” and subtitled: “A Players’ Guide To The Terrors Of Touring.” Although when they do, and gather everyone together for the traditional eve of tour party photograph, the only ones on it will be the pilot, a stewardess, the bus driver, the official scorer, and a couple of conscripts from the Barmy Army.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, September 9 2016
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