WE FLIPPING MURDERED ‘EM...
Twenty years on from Bumble’s stumble
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Rarely has a draw seemed so much like a defeat. The Test match in Bulawayo was the first time England and Zimbabwe had ever met in the sport’s most historic format but over five days in the country’s second city there had been enough intrigue and excitement to last a lifetime.
Watching on, almost incandescent with rage, was England coach David Lloyd, a man who had been appointed by the then Test and County Cricket Board to inject some much-needed passion and ‘oomph’ into a moribund team back in April 1996.
The Zimbabwe tour was his first overseas assignment and he, like those shivering in the cold back home, was desperate for a positive outcome in a match that remains one of Test cricket’s most fascinating encounters.
As it was, the most memorable thing about that opening Test wasn’t the action on the pitch, rather Lloyd’s comments after it.
It has become known as “the flippin’ murdered ’em” match but the man himself insists that he never uttered those words.
“I never said it, you know,” he said to The Cricket Paper’s own Martin Johnson during an interview with the Telegraph in 2001. “What I said was, ‘we murdered ’em, they know it, we know it’.”
He had a point, too. Zimbabwe may have been relative newcomers to Test cricket but they were already pastmasters of slowing down play to such an extent that England’s fourth innings runchase, which should have been a canter, ultimately became a manic sprint.
With England having already been beaten in the opening one-day international of a three-match series just days before the opening Test, the pressure had already been ratcheted up, not just on Lloyd but also on Mike Atherton, who had recently beaten Peter May’s record of 35 successive appearances as England captain.
Lying in wait to ambush him in the home dressing room that winter was Andy Flower, a man who would go on to play his own role in shaping England’s future just over a decade later. Indeed it was Flower who put England on the back foot in front of an expectant Bulawayo crowd by compiling a wellcrafted 112 in Zimbabwe’s first innings effort of 376.
“With the exception, again, of (Robert) Croft it was uniformly unimpressive,” wrote Simon Wilde of The Times of England’s toothless bowling attack as Darren Gough and Alan Mullally failed to trouble Zimbabwe’s batsman.
Chris Silverwood, then just 21, took three wickets on his debut to provide the merest glimmer of hope for the tourists but as Atherton and Nick Knight made their way to the wicket to lead England’s response, it was Zimbabwe who found themselves in the ascendency. And when Paul Strang dismissed the skipper, the skids were on.
“To lose that wicket to leg-spin was a disappointment,” said Lloyd as England finished the day on 48-1. “This legspinner takes his wickets at 65. We don’t want to put any demons into the heads of batsmen. He is quick for a leg-spinner – we have to get forward.”
England’s struggles were symptomatic of a tour that was already going from bad to worse. The banning of players’ wives and families from Zimbabwe had gone down like a lead balloon and the players’ attitude to the country they were touring had also managed to get right up the nose of the home side.
“I think there was a real sense from our end that England saw the tour as a stepping stone to the tougher tour in New Zealand in the New Year,” former Zimbabwe batsman, Dave Houghton, tells The Cricket Paper. “I don’t think they were as prepared as they might have otherwise been.You should also not overlook the fact that that was a very good Zimbabwe side.”
Flower labelled England’s tourists as whingers and few could argue that after almost a decade of chronic underachievement England might have been better off focusing on their own shortcomings rather than those of the country they were touring.
England at least pulled their socks up on day three in Bulawayo, with centuries for John Crawley and Nasser Hussain – who shared in a much-needed partnership of 148 – giving England a first innings lead of 30. When Stuart Carlisle and Grant Flower fell with Zimbabwe’s reply still in single figures it looked as though Lloyd was going to get the result he craved.
When 6-2 became 111-6, the match was England’s to throw away and although the hosts eventually crawled to 234 – in 101 overs – the odds were still heavily stacked in England’s favour.
Writing in his diary, Lloyd was in no doubt that his side would be enjoying their Christmas turkey with a 1-0 series lead in the bag.
“There is no question we will get those runs,” he wrote. “We needed to get them on the back foot early. It would be like a Sunday League match. At tea we were 36-1 and Nasser Hussain took over in the dressing room.
“He said, ‘if we score 80 in the next 17 overs with this field and without losing wickets, then we will have nine wickets left to score 90 in the last 15 overs’. We thought that there would be only one winner.”
England were as good as Hussain’s word, with Atherton’s men needing just
Flower labelled tourists as whingers and after a decade of underachieve ment they may have been better off focusing on their own shortcomings
87 in the last 15 overs. Surely, the large contingent of England supporters massed at the ground reasoned, nothing could go wrong now.
With Grant Flower, Paul Strang and Heath Streak bowling to frustrate rather than take wickets, though, the victory chase at times resembled a crawl. Only 49 were required off the final seven overs but by then Zimbabwe captain Alistair Campbell was intent on doing all he could to stretch the laws of the game while keeping the umpires arms firmly by their side.
Despite Knight struggling to reach some of Streak’s deliveries, Ian Robinson’s steadfastly refused to call a succession of wides – much to England’s growing agitation. Campbell, though, was adamant that England would have employed the same tactics.
“When you’re behind the game there is only one way to bowl in that situation,” he said. “Other sides have used it around the world and I defend it to the hilt. When you are trying to draw a Test match you use every tactic in the book.”
As it was, only three wides were called in the England innings and, with 11 required off the final over, it looked as though Campbell’s wide boys were going to, if not win the day, then certainly end it in parity.
Did England still have a Knight in shining armour ready to propel them to the now most unlikely of victories? The answer to that was, very nearly. The third ball of the final over sailed away for six but with three needed off the final ball, England could only scramble a desperate two before Knight was run out. So ended the first ever Test to finish drawn with the scores dead level.
Enter Lloyd for his post-match Press conference.
“He has got a huge amount of stick for what he said over the years but he was right, really,” says Houghton.
“They were all over us for the final two days of that Test and some of those wides that weren’t called really should have been. If they had then England would have won.”
Scant consolation all these years later.