Gala opening turns into a damp squib (15 May 1999)

15 May 1999

Gala opening turns into a damp squib

Martin Johnson

The 1999 World Cup is expected to make a profit of £30 million but if you take away the cost of yesterday's opening ceremony, that figure will undoubtedly plummet by several, er, pounds.

We weren't expecting an American Super Bowl, for which £30 million would barely cover Diana Ross's hairdo, but with the rest of the cricketing world looking on in breathless anticipation, it would have been nice had the budget extended to a little bit more than the price of a Nursery End hot dog.

A fireworks display has to be pretty special to work at 10 o'clock in the morning, but this one was so feeble that the organisers would have been landed with a smaller gunpowder bill than the one - even at 17th century prices - delivered to Mr G Fawkes.

However, never let it be said that there is no smoke without fireworks, and London has not seen a pea-souper like the one into which Lord's subsequently disappeared since Jack the Ripper. Spectators, invited by the MC to welcome the parade of flags, couldn't see who was sitting next to them, never mind what was happening in the middle.

When the smoke finally cleared, three Sea King helicopters hovered around doing nothing in particular, although the reason for their presence would have been more obvious had the inclement weather not prevented them towing various welcome messages behind them.

The official welcome, however, was the one big success of the ceremony, at least for a short time. Tony Blair emerged from the pavilion to address the crowd, and spoke for some considerable time before someone, sadly, remembered to turn on his microphone. "Let's look forward," mimed Tony (had said, according to the official press release), "to a fantastic carnival of cricket".

'Carnival of cricket' is the official England and Wales Cricket Board slogan for this tournament, and their avowed goal is to ensure that spectators of all ages have a rattling good time. However, there are a number of caveats to the kind of good time the ECB will allow spectators to have, as printed on the envelope supplied with the match tickets.

Among the items not permitted to be brought into the ground are the following: "Fireworks [which probably explains the display], klaxons, banners, face masks, megaphones, fancy dress." Also banned are "flares", which presumably refers to the incendiary rather than trousered variety, as there is no similar restriction on kipper ties.

Anyone planning on coming as a cuddly bear or Donald Duck is also unlikely to make it through the turnstiles. "There will be no oversized headgear of a nature which has the potential to cause injury to its wearer or other spectators, or which could severely restrict the view of, or be construed as 'offensive' to, other spectators."

The carnival mood was, as it happens, running along official ECB guidelines for most of yesterday morning: umbrellas up, covers on and nothing much to do but sit around perusing the Comprehensive Guide to the Duckworth-Lewis Method (West of England University, £5.95). Now on sale, this is more than can be said of England's official World Cup record, although the potential embarrassment of having it released after England have parted company with the tournament is now less after yesterday's winning start.

If many of England's players spent Thursday night tossing and turning in nervous anticipation, nothing more than a contented snore would have been heard outside Alan Mullally's hotel room door. Mullally, who broke the back of Sri Lanka's innings yesterday, is so laid back that he makes David Gower look like an adrenalin junkie.

However, he has a bit to do to catch up with another laconic Western Australian fast bowler who played for Leicestershire. Graham McKenzie once failed to leave the field for a lunch break at Grace Road because he had fallen asleep on his feet at third man.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)