CHRIMBO ON TOUR? IT’S JUST ONE BIG CRACKER!
Joe Root has aged so rapidly in Australia that he may even have been able to get through a spot of Christmas shopping without some department store doorman asking him if he’d like to pop into their Grotto to sit on Santa’s knee. And probably just as well.
The events of the past month or so have been bad enough for the cherubic England captain without having some red robed fatso with a white beard chortling “ho, ho, ho” in his ear. Had it been mistaken for yet another Australian taunt, rather than the traditional cheery greeting, some kind of retaliatory response may have been required. Involving, if not a head butt, at the very least, a can of Fosters tipped into the old boy’s hood.
A pat on the head and a genial “Merry Christmas” might have been equally dangerous, on the basis that merry will be well down the list of emotions that the players are going through right now. But at least the wives and girlfriends will be there to soothe them back to sleep in the event of nightmares. “There, there, darling. It’s all right.You were dreaming that the three wise men in the panto had turned into Starc, Cummins, and Hazlewood, but there’s nothing to worry about. Not until eleven o’clock in the morning at any rate.”
Christmas Day abroad with the family is a relatively new experience for an England cricketer. Not that long ago, when it came to pulling a cracker over the lunch table, you shared it with a team mate rather than the missus. And you didn’t have to watch your language when you found yourself reading that corny old chestnut: “Q: what’s the height of optimism? A: An English batsman putting on the sunscreen.”
No wives or girlfriends in India on the 1981-82 tour, when Keith Fletcher and Mike Selvey shared Christmas Day lunch in a Calcutta coffee shop and were served two plates of mutton curry. They asked the waiter whether they had something “a bit more Christmasy”, whereupon he whisked the two plates back into the kitchen and returned five minutes later with the identical meal. Except that this time they had two sprigs of holly stuck on the top.
These days, however, ironically in an era where England cricketers can comfortably afford to foot the bill themselves, the ECB is more than happy to fly out wives and girlfriends for the festive season, although it’s a fine line to tread when you’re supposed to be concentrating on something as intense as taking on Australia in their own back yard.
On the 2006/7 Ashes tour for instance, the Adelaide airport terminal shortly before Christmas looked more like a Thomson Holiday check-in for Benidorm than a gathering of highly focused professional sportsmen. The original tour party of 16 players plus officials having expanded so dramatically that the operations manager, Phil Neale, was dashing around trying to organise 95 boarding passes, and arguing over the excess baggage bill for prams and pushchairs.
There were considerably fewer wives, girlfriends, and children on the 1986-87 tour, when the now-defunct tradition of the Press putting on a Christmas morning panto for the players was still very much alive. The team – even more so than this one – had been written off at the start of the series, and the theme was based around A Christmas Carol, with Ebenezer Gatting being visited by the three ghosts of Christmas, ‘Can’t Bat, Bowl, and Field’.
In those days, the players then went off for their own Christmas lunch
Players would go off for their own Xmas lunch combined with a fancy dress party, and the ensuing pictures in the papers caused quite a stir
combined with a fancy dress party, and the ensuing photographs in the Boxing Day newspapers caused a bit of a stir. None more so than a ravishing brunette in a tight, sequin-studded evening gown, which turned out to be Phillip DeFreitas coming as Diana Ross, and David Gower dressed as a German officer with a swastika armband.
The final nail in the Press/player panto coffin came on England’s controversial tour to Zimbabwe in 1996, when the players had a last-minute poll on whether to attend, and only the captain, Mike Atherton, and the wicketkeeper, Jack Russell, voted Yes. Shame really, as the script was a micky take against the Press themselves, based around the players’ complaints that they spent more time on the golf course than watching the cricket.
In 1984/5 in India, the Press’ Christmas day players panto included a ‘singalong’, including such catchy/corny numbers as “I’m dreaming of a Shivaramakrishnan”, and, in honour of Tim Robinson scoring heaps of runs in that series, “Old Man Robbo, He Just Keeps Rollin’ Along.” “He’s not like Gower, He’s Not Like Gatting, For Some Strange Reason, He Keeps On Batting….”
The following winter’s tour was to the West Indies, which always takes place after Christmas, otherwise a singalong involving Robinson might have had a different set of lyrics. He didn’t even average double figures against the West Indies’ quicks, and the script may well have ended up being based around the time the Press endured yet another interminable wait for their luggage to appear on an airport conveyor belt.
Without a suitcase in sight, the only thing going round and round was a piece of splintered wood, prompting one journalist to pipe up: “What do you think that is?” To which came the reply: “Not sure. But I’ve an idea it may be Tim Robinson’s off-stump.”
As is now the modern way, the Press and players will go their separate ways this Christmas Day, thus ruling out any potential fall out from a pantomime singalong involving – to the tune of Bing Crosby’s old number – “I’m Dreaming of a white wash”.
My own hope this Christmas is that the tour doesn’t end with Root ending up as hangdog and disillusioned as some previous England Ashes captains in Australia. Fearfully, I have this picture of him over a dinner table in Sydney, with the waiter arriving to ask whether he’d like any accompaniments to the cheese board.
“Crackers sir?” “Er, not yet I hope. But I’m getting there.”