Some writers on sport can no longer take in a game without also taking notes. Others have forgotten the simple joy of being part of a crowd.
Times Select
TELFORD VICE in London
IS that Maradona? There! Leaning out of that balcony and thrashing his arms at the players down on the field like a crazy crackerjack. Is it him? Could be. But it’s difficult to be sure here in the cheap seats behind the goal.
Which is where I was a few years ago, at La Bombonera watching Boca Juniors play Independiente. It was hard to know whether you were less safe inside the stadium or immediately outside it, in some of Buenos Aires’ meanest streets.
To be there was impressive enough. To survive the experience was a triumph. I celebrated the fact the next afternoon by going across town to watch a quarter-final in the Argentinian polo championship, where the only clear and present danger was in failing to recognise the designer draped celebrities in the stands. At least, they behaved like celebrities. I can confirm that Maradona was not in attendance.
To go, inside a few hours, from average beer and a burger of uncertain provenance to chilled champagne and classy canapés was only part of the story of the journey. Unlike at the football, at the polo there were no flags, no flares, and no chanting, bristling, duelling sections of the crowd.
At the old Yankee Stadium in New York — they’ve since built a new one next door — I watched Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera from high above the third base foul line. To know that Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe diMaggio played on the same field still gives me goosebumps.
The queue to get into Wimbledon; ah, I know it well. It takes so long that once you’re finally in you don’t care who is playing on the courts available to plebs like you. Any pair, or quartet, of racqueteers will do.
I’ve seen bullfighting in Seville — where exponentially more sunflower seeds were chewed by spectators and their husks spat onto the floor than bulls were brutally if artfully killed — ocean yacht racing in Auckland, and hurling played by a bunch of homesick Irish in a park in London.
And that’s all apart from my improper job of writing about, and sometimes talking about, sport.
The closest I’ve come to blurring the line is when I found myself aboard an ocean racing yacht outside Cape Town harbour, trying to work out which way was up while also hanging onto my already eaten lunch and taking enough mental notes to be able to put together a half-decent feature.
That and facing Ottis Gibson, then Border’s big fast bowler, in the nets at Buffalo Park to write what my editor called a “participation piece”. I’m not sure how many times my helpless swishing at deliveries Gibson bowled at significantly less than his full pace could be termed participating.
Watching sport and reporting it are starkly different. Some of us can no longer take in a game for the hell of it without also taking notes. Others, grown far too used to the free food, free drink, free wifi and free desk space in ever more comfortable pressboxes, have forgotten the simple joy of sitting in the stands and being part of a crowd.
For several years until a year or so ago, reporters covering Test cricket in England would have the services of a masseuse. Yes, in the pressbox. All jokes about happy endings have fallen foul of the sub-editors.
Civilians of a sport-loving inclination tend to ask us two questions: “Do you have any spare tickets?” and “Can I hide in your luggage?”. We do not have tickets: our access is strictly by accreditation. We never see a ticket. And, no, you can’t hide in my luggage: I need all the space and weight allowance I have for hats, running gear and spare notebooks and pencils.
And the presence of a masseuse isn’t the joke it might seem. At games at this year’s men’s World Cup, some of us would live blog the match, a job that stretches into many thousands of hurriedly thought and typed words on its own, write two match reports — one for print, the other for digital, both to be filed the instant the last ball was bowled — attend the press conferences and the mixed zones, write up quotes pieces from the press conferences and mixed zones, and whip up a fresh quotes piece for the morning’s online offering.
That done, we would sink back into a metaphoric leather chair with an even more metaphoric whisky to hand, to essay an entirely metaphoric piece to be published by the future of serious cricket writing itself.
By which I mean one of the slew of Indian websites for whom, essentially, you explode a mustard seed of an idea into a fully fledged faith of how that aspect of the game should be played. And adored, of course.
That all added up to days that started at around 9am with the trip to ground — the toss was at 10am — and ended just in time to sink a pint or three before the pubs closed at 11pm. We could have used a massage after all that, even if only to ensure the elbows of our drinking arms hadn’t seized in typing mode.
But there are perks. Once, while covering a Test at the Bourda in Georgetown, I saw Mick Jagger looming whitely out of the deep verandah of the stand opposite. I still have an unpaid phone bill in Barbados, circa 1992, and I was thrown out of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
So, was that Maradona at La Bombonera. Dunno. But I hope it was.
Bulletproof Truth 