ONCE upon a time, so long ago it seems to be part of another age, Denzil Batchelor wrote a short story called The Greatest Cricketer Who Ever Lived.
In the author's imagination there was a challenge match between an Australian side led by Joe Darling and an England picked by W. G. Grace. Sometime in the 1890s the Test series had been unsatisfactory so the teams elected to play a one-day match at a ground within Prince Ranjitsinhji's estates to settle the arguments.
(The Greatest Cricketer was a lad who happened to be watching and who was dragooned into the England side at the last minute. In despair Grace asked him to bowl. Of course he bowled out the Australians but in trying to take a catch hurt himself so badly that he remembered nothing about the match afterwards. The other players all swore an oath of secrecy so that the story remained untold for 50 years.)
Yes, it is just a vivid piece of make believe but my point is that nothing remotely like that could happen now; the changes in cricket and the rest of the world have been too great.
Just suppose Nasser Hussain had said to Steve Waugh at the end of last summer that England did not get a fair rub of the green because of their injuries. They would have a full side in September.
"OK," says Steve, "let's play a one-day decider. I'm sure Paul Getty will lend us his ground."
Well, just wait a minute. You can't do that any more. The Corinthian days are gone; now there are too many commercial interests, too many sponsors desperate to stick their noses into sporting affairs, too many people wanting their turn at the trough.
There are contracts that forbid players to take part in any unauthorised game, even for charity or a player's benefit, as Darren Gough found in mid-summer. There is insurance to be considered and as for keeping it secret, don't make me laugh. So many players from both sides have almost as rigid contracts with newspapers and television as they have with their States, their counties and their countries. A secret is a story that does not emerge for a week.
The last time I was told a tale which was preceded with the words "absolutely confidential, please don't tell a soul, and I am only telling you this because I want your reaction in case something does come out" the same story had been in one paper the previous day. Once the secret is out, there is a question of the status of the match. Will it be a genuine one-day international, with records and a proper scoring system and international umpires and a match referee? Will the players be paid, and will they be bringing their coaches, their wives and families. Will members of the public be admitted; and don't forget the Press.
No, in the televised, sponsored, filmed world of the 21st century, with the agents, the physios, fitness and dietary experts and the conditioning gurus never far away, and especially as public relations is now as big a consideration as ticket sales, spontaneity is a century out of date. Of course, the greatest changes have come in the last 18 months since the full extent of the betting scandal was revealed.
You can imagine a conversation between Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the ECB and Lord Condon, head of the investigation into corruption.
MacLaurin: "Paul, the players have fixed up a sort of mini-Ashes match between themselves at Paul Getty's place next week-end. What's your input? Have you any objections?"
Condon: "Certainly not, Ian. I'll just send down a dozen of my men to make sure there's no bookmakers hovering around the scene, confiscate all the cell phones and put guards on each dressing room door. I'm sure everything will be all right."
Fantasy? A great deal more realistic than Batchelor's fairy story.
It is what the International Cricket Council will be doing from around January 1 at every Test and one-day international. Their watchers will be everywhere.
There will be heavy security, cameras focussed on the area around the dressing rooms - although not actually inside - checks on phone calls in and out of the team hotel and the dressing room, checks on players who want to leave the dressing rooms, checks on friends and relatives.
The British Customs and Immigration officials will be aghast at the number of passes visitors to the dressing rooms or the team hotels need. Once these measures are in place it will be easier to infiltrate a Prime Ministers' conference than a Test match.
There will be no room for a picnic match any more than there is room today for what the old-time players used to call a gin-and-tonic tour, usually under the auspices of some titled lord or some aged cricketer with a double-barrelled name and plenty of initials.
According to the ICC Press Office - a vastly improved organisation since the days when they sent out their statements by post - the Test captains have been consulted in drawing up proposals to implement the recommendations which were originally contained in the Condon report. It seems that all except Carl Hooper of the West Indies have responded, with a majority support for these measures: The use of dedicated security managers, restricted access to players on tour, strict accreditation of guests and visitors at match venues, restricted use of mobile phones during matches, the creation of Ethics committees for all international teams.
The clamp-down on security and unauthorised access to players will also include: Security guards covering dressing rooms and players' viewing areas, logging of players leaving the ground during matches, exclusive use by teams of hotel floors or wings, security guards assigned to cover those areas, CCTV coverage of hotel lobby and access points to team areas, telephone call logging and screening facilities at hotels, logging of visitors to team areas of hotels.
"Corruption has been cricket's toughest challenge and it needs an aggressive approach to make sure the game and its players are adequately protected.
"The recent Board meeting accepted these proposals and we are now in the process of implementing them as a matter of priority," commented Malcolm Speed.
Well, fair enough I suppose. It may be necessary to kill off the threat of Mukesh Gupte and his like, but do we really want a game littered with guards and bans on movement and a limit to the number of children who are allowed to visit a player during a Test?
As England were waiting for the rain to stop so that they could beat Australia at Edgbaston and win back the Ashes in 1985, I walked into the dressing room and asked how the lads were passing the time. "We've been watching children's television," said Phil Edmonds, the unelected, unofficial spokesman for everyone, everywhere. "I've just seen Postman Pat for the first time in my life. It's magnificent."
Later that day, the clerk to the weather being an Englishman, the rain ceased and England duly won after the Australian wicket-keeper had been caught at short leg off Allan Lamb's boot. No-one stopped me on my way in and out of the dressing room and, although the Australians whinged that Wayne Phillips had been wrongly given out no-one took much notice. After all, Kim Hughes had got away with something similar in Sydney in the previous series and besides it was only a game. Lovely, innocent days.
There were one or two replays on television but no-one complained about the umpiring and certainly no-one raised suspicions of match-rigging. Cricket was like that, we said. Sometimes the luck goes your way. Life was much the same as it had been in the 1890s when, in a short story anyway, two teams could decide to play one another to settle an argument.
On a visit to the Taj Mahal in 1985, the relations between the Press and the players were so good that Graeme Fowler hitched a lift on our bus. When he got off he shouted to the manager Tony Brown: "I'm not travelling with the team any more, manager. I've just had so much fun on the Press bus. They whinge louder, complain more and tear into one another worse than we do."
This winter England will keep within what they call The Bubble. They will be alone in their bus, without a stranger among them, united as one and admitting not even an ECB man much less an umpire who needs a lift. I rather think they might be missing something. Isn't it called fun?
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