Whenever I would arrive at London’s Heathrow Airport by PIA, I would be greeted by Neville Gotting who was our station manager and his deputy, Ajmal Malik. They were not obliged to do so but they did so, because, as they said, they were always happy to see me. They made a good team.
London was a problem station, not only because many Pakistani passengers arrived with dubious travel papers but because there was a constant flow of incoming and outgoing Pakistani VIP’s who felt that they had some divine right to special treatment. When someone else carries your hand luggage, it ceases to be hand luggage but that’s the kind of service that was expected. Thus, both were required to be long suffering. VIP Pakistanis can be prickly and their vanity can easily be bruised. But, sometimes, there were problems at Heathrow that had PR repercussions and Gotting would alert me to them and seek my guidance. On one occasion, PIA had uplifted a wrong coffin from Istanbul and had to face the wrath of grieving relatives when they discovered that a total stranger lay in the coffin that they received with such tenderness. The problem was: that there was another coffin at Istanbul Airport and a further surprise awaited another set of relatives.
On another occasion, PIA’s entire cockpit and cabin crew had been ‘detained’ because of a suspicion that one of them had been carrying drugs. Gotting had seen it as a serious enough problem and had telephoned Asghar Khan directly. Asghar Khan sent for me and asked to get to London immediately and to take Wing-Commander Saeed who was PIA’s Chief of Security with me. I should try and keep the story out of the press.
I took the first available flight that evening and was met by a distraught Gotting. He said that he had arranged a lunch with a Mr Edwards, who was the Customs official dealing with the case. We had lunch at a lovely Inn near the airport. An inn differed from a pub in that it served a proper, sit-down lunch instead of bangers and mash. Edwards was a Welshman and, as luck would have it, was not only a cricket ‘nut’ but a fan of John Arlott. This was my cue and I told him that John Arlott was a good friend of mine and I had worked with him. But, ultimately, we had to talk of the matter/matters in hand. He told me that he had the discretion to impound the aircraft, that like a sea-captain, an airline captain was responsible for the cargo that the vessel was carrying. That both the cockpit and cabin crew of all Third World airlines were kept under surveillance. I told him that I could not vouch for the passengers but our crews knew full well the danger of becoming couriers. He took me on a tour of London airport and showed me a heavily padlocked room which he said was called the Pakistan Room. In it was stored the confiscated drugs.
“When the case comes up for hearing, we would want specific members of the crew made available,” he demanded.
I told him that the crew were flying around but we would do our best to make them available. He seemed satisfied. The objective was to warn PIA of dire consequences. It was a long lunch and Gotting informed me that we had done well.
On a subsequent trip to London, Gotting informed me that Edwards had specially come to receive and as I was going through Customs, I caught sight of him and he waved to me. The Customs’ officer duly asked me to open my bags and asked me if I had a receipt for the wristwatch I was wearing. “You are wearing a wristwatch. Are you carrying the receipt for it?” I asked him. Obviously, Mr Edwards had not been satisfied by our meeting, notwithstanding our mutual admiration for John Arlott.
Ajmal Malik had been a first-class cricketer and had toured with a Pakistan Eaglets team and had decided to stay behind. It was Ajmal Malik who had arranged my accommodation for the 1967 tour. It was a flat in Bayswater, close to Hyde Park and Marble Arch. The landlord was a Sardarji and he owned a few dilapidated flats that had been condemned as being ‘unsafe’ and were due for demolition. Slum-landlordiism was a thriving business and I wasn’t certain whether it was entirely lawful. My flat would not have met with safety standard, but the rent was almost nominal for such a valued location, at the heart of London’s West End.
The Sardarji was a jolly man but a relentless rent-collector. He loved his tenants but did not trust them. He would show up with an exercise book in which he kept his accounts. But he would occasionally drop in for a social visit on the off-chance that he could cadge a free drink. When I first moved in, I told him that there were no curtains in the small bedroom. No problem. He covered the window with a newspaper. But I wasn’t too pushed. I would be travelling for most of the summer and would be away from London. Moreover, I liked the Bayswater area and Hyde Park was close enough and I would go for long walks in this magnificent bit of countryside in the heart of London.
There was a pub called The Swan and on sunny days, tables were set in the open and I would go there and sit for hours, watching people walking past, going about their business, sometimes courting couples, holding hands. I once came upon Dr Ross Berkes. He had been my professor at the University of Southern California. He seemed delighted to see me and asked me what brought me to London. “Cricket,” I said. He seemed not to understand and I told him that I had been hired by the BBC to do the cricket commentary.
“I thought you had told me that you had wanted to be a teacher,” he said, with some sadness. I had been one of his brighter pupils and he had had high hopes for me.
“You sound disappointed,” I told him.
“Not really, but certainly surprised,” he said.
I telephoned the BBC and let them know that I arrived and gave them my contact address and telephone number. The Pakistan was playing some county match and I was able to get in touch with Mr I.A. Khan who was the manager of the team. I.A. Khan was a senior civil servant, belonging to the elite ICS service and was not only a great cricket lover but had played for the Aligarh University and even now turned out to play weekend matches for the Karachi Gymkhana. I got along well with him and looked forward to catching up with him and other team members.
As far as I can remember this was the first time that a cricket tour to England was to be shared by two visiting teams and as a result Pakistan would be playing only three test matches instead of the customary five. This was a bit of a demotion but the English, as usual, justified it, saying that twin-tours would enable teams to tour England more frequently. But the Australians and the West Indies continued with their full tours. The British may have lost their empire but in cricket, they still ruled the waves and Lord’s was not just a cricket ground in St. John’s Wood, it was like St. Peter’s in the Vatican city and when the president of the MCC was chosen, one half-expected white smoke to emerge from the Long Room.
A twin tour meant that Pakistan would not be playing so many county matches and meant less work for me and less travelling. Or to put more positively, more time in London for me. Pakistan began the tour with a match against Essex at Colchester and then against Kent at Canterbury. Although I was not on BBC duty, I went to Canterbury, one of the loveliest cricket grounds in the world. Lovely to mean peaceful rather than scenic beauty. It was early July and summer had come to stay and there were smiling blue skies and cotton-candy white clouds floated about, making crazy patterns.
I met the players and saw Majid Khan makes a hundred and got my first sight of Derek Underwood. The next match would be against Middlesex at Lord’s and I would be on duty. The last time I had been to Lord’s had been to see the West Indies. I was on my way to New York and had dropped in at Lord’s on my way to the airport, just to see if I could get in an over or two of Hall and Griffith and had stayed on so that I had missed my flight and had gone back to Lord’s.
