B.A. Khan (Bash) arrived in Nottingham. He had been in London and had himself a medical check-up. Being an advertising man, he was a man of many words. I told him that he looked hale and hearty to me but he took me through his medical check-up in grim detail, from the time he entered the doctor’s office to the time he left it with a clean bill of health. I was happy to see him and he stayed for the remainder of the tour and he and I spent some happy times together. Adjoining our hotel was a shoe-shop and on its shop-window it displayed a pair of Bali shoes. Bali was an up and coming brand name and to own a pair was to join the ranks of sartorial snobs. But it was outside my budget. As I stood looking at the shoes in the shop-window, Asif Iqbal happened to come along. “Let me know if you want to buy anything. I’ll get you a discount,” he said. I didn’t imagine that one haggled in shops in England. Sure enough, he was able to negotiate what was the factory price and I became the owner of my first pair of Bali shoe and I displayed them in my hotel-room like a trophy. Strange that little things cling to one’s memories while the big ones get away.
Peter West, the television presenter was staying in the same hotel as I was and he offered me a ride to the ground in his Daimler. On the morning of the first day, as we were preparing to leave, I found Niaz Ahmed in the lobby of the hotel. He was supposed to be making his Test debut. The team had left and yet here he was, dressed in a three-piece suit and he was carrying a transistor radio and listening to music. I asked him whether he was planning to fly to the ground on gossamer wings. He said he had missed the team bus and was waiting for a taxi. I asked Peter West whether he could give him a lift. He, of course, agreed but not without saying that he had been making a Test debut, he would have slept at the ground. “That’s why you and I are commentators and not Test players,” I told him with some irony. Niaz Ahmed who was a likable young man had stood in danger of missing the bus, both literally and figuratively. I read him a mild riot-act in Urdu.
I liked Trent Bridge. It was a small ground or it appeared so that one felt close to the action. It had an intimacy. Pakistan won the toss and batted and we caught our first sight of Allan Knott and of Geoff Arnold, a medium-fast bowler with the ability to both swing and cut the ball and make it fizz off the pitch. He got his first Test scalp when he had Burki leg-before and Knott opening his account when he caught Khalid Ibadulla off Higgs. We were in our first stint of commentary when these two wickets fell. Saeed Ahmed offered some resistance and he and Mushtaq Mohammad put on a modest partnership but in perfect batting conditions, Pakistan was shown the door and bundled out for 140. As the Nat King Cole song had it, “love has ended before its begun.” There was a hotel that was adjacent to the ground and John Arlott was staying there and he invited me to dinner. In conversation, John sounded just like he did on radio, self-assured, good natured and graphic. He was never patronizing. It was a very pleasant evening and we had hardly talked about the Test match. No mixing of business and pleasure and for both of us cricket was earnest business like the smoking of a good cigar.
Pakistan fought back and England made heavy weather of their batting and both openers, Geoff Boycott and Colin Cowdrey were gone and England had only got 31. Then Ken Barrington got stuck in and I don’t use “stuck in” lightly. This Ol’ Man River who kept on rolling along. A good commentator uses his voice to reflect the mood of the game, and short of yawning into the microphone, I was able to convey that I was having a hard time staying awake and finally when he reached his hundred and I was passed a slip telling me how long it had taken him to make it, I mentioned the figure and added, “that’s about how long it takes to fly from London to Beirut.” I was later told that that bit of commentary had been saved for the BBC archives. I used to get a fair amount of fan-mail but one letter was from a Barrington fan who warned me to stop knocking Barrington and signed off with what looked like a pirate’s flag.
Perhaps, it was this piece of commentary that persuade Max Muller, the head of BBC’s Outside Broadcast to write me a letter telling me how much my commentary was being appreciated and that, in his opinion, I was the best guest-commentator Test Match Special had ever had. The letter had arrived out of the blue and came in the category of unsolicited praise. I acknowledged the letter, with my head bowed in humility but I felt usually good about it. I invited Max Mueller to lunch when I got back to London. I took him to Cafi Royal which was on Regent Street, next to the offices of PIA. Cafi Royal had many claims to fame including having Oscar Wilde as one of its regulars. I would imagine Oscar Wilde as a snob rather than the playwright who mercilessly mocked the upper classes and who had described fox-hunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” At this lunch, Max Mueller asked me whether I would consider working for the BBC on a full time basis. He did some mental arithmetic and mentioned the kind of salary I might start with. I did not know whether it was a firm offer or an academic discussion. I did not pursue it. Once before, in Los Angeles when I was a student I had been offered a job as an intern script writer by one of the ‘Moguls’ of Metro Goldwyn Mayer. I had told him with the foolhardiness of a zealot that my country needed me. It must have sounded incredibly pompous. He had been smoking a cigar and he took a puff and blew the smoke out. “There’s nothing like a good cigar,” he had said. It was a way of telling me that I was young.
But to get back to the Nottingham Test match, the fourth day’s play was lost to rain and England had declared at 252 for 8. Pakistan needed to bat through the day but fared even more badly than it had in the first innings. The rain had changed the character of the wicket and it had got spiteful and Derek Underwood was virtually unplayable as he made the ball jump and turn square and close-in fielders crowded around the batsmen like a lynch mob. Only Saeed Ahmed batted with any gumption and made 64. The commentators used to have lunch in a special sponsor’s tent, usually a cold lunch, beef or lamb or salmon with boiled potatoes and Brusells sprouts. John Arlott and I had done the last stint before lunch and would not be on the air for some time and were having a leisurely lunch. We heard a great roar and John said to me that it sounded as if Pakistan had lost another wicket. I told him that there was a certain triumph in the roar and felt that Hanif was out. We dashed back to see Hanif walking back. He looked a lonely figure. Distance is relative and a walk back to the pavilion appears to be a longer one than a walk to it. He had been caught by Knott off a leg-cutter from Higgs to give him his only wicket in the innings. Pakistan could make only 114 and England needed 3 runs to win the test match. It did not get the runs off one stroke. It took 2.1 overs. Pakistan had fought with spirit at Lord’s and had emerged with an honourable draw. At Nottingham, Pakistan had gone down unceremoniously.
I got back to London and received a message that Asghar Khan was due in London and wanted to meet me. The date of his visit coincided with our match against Worcestershire and I was contracted to do the commentary of the match. But it was over the week-end and there would be no play on a Sunday. ‘Lumboo’ Ansari solved the problem. He would drive me to Worcester and we would drive back, I could see Asghar Khan on the rest day and he would drive me back to Worcester. I could have asked the BBC to let me skip the Worcester match. I don’t think they would have found the reason for missing the match convincing. I could have used the standard excuse of not feeling well and I settled for ‘Lumboo’ Ansari’s solution. It wasn’t as if Worcester was a city next door, within commuting distance. But as the British might have said, for God, King and Country, I had no other option and I was pretty whacked but much less than ‘Lumboo’ Ansari who had to do all the driving while all I had to do was sit and listen to the radio and watch the countryside hurrying by.
