Time to hang out the 'welcome' banners as cricket comes home (11 May 1999)

11 May 1999

Time to hang out the 'welcome' banners as cricket comes home

Sybil Ruscoe

'I want the atmosphere to be like Euro 96" - that was the optimistic and upbeat note sounded by England's chairman of selectors, David Graveney, when speaking about the World Cup on the Today programme last week.

"Yes David, that's the spirit," I shouted in support at the radio - and for good measure, in solidarity, I threw in a leg-break with an orange as I headed towards the juicer.

Oh, Euro 96, I recalled, that warm Wembley semi-final night against Germany when, for the first time, I dressed in my team's colours.

The singing on the train as we headed up to the stadium, buoyed by hope and enthusiasm. The utter, silent sorrow on the way home, as we contemplated that fatal Gareth Southgate mistake which saw our dream of football coming home evaporate.

This is what sport can do to grown men and women. A unifying force that can lift or crush our spirits. And ahead of the Cricket World Cup, I'm appealing to the players to recognise this.

Sometimes, they seem to take it all too lightly. Take, for example, Mark Waugh, that supremely gifted Australian batsman, who infuriated me last weekend when, in Saturday's Daily Telegraph, he talked to Sue Mott about his brother Steve's lack of smiles at the crease.

In a throwaway remark he said: "Not everybody smiles when they go to work." Come on Mark, I shouted - this time at the newspaper - playing cricket for a living is hardly work, it's a privilege, it should be a joyous honour to be representing your country.

I thought back to the days of my childhood, watching my dad and his mates play cricket for their works team. These were men for whom going to work meant spending the week sweating under the heat of welding helmets, showered by sparks and blinded by the bad light of welding arc flash.

For them cricket was the antidote to hours of mind-numbing piecework welding the arms of JCB diggers. They could swap their boiler suits for cricket whites and the only time the smiles left their faces was when the dark clouds rolled in from the Welsh hills and rain stopped play.

My mum would have spent all winter slaving over the complexities of cable-knit to produce a new cricket jumper for the new season, only to see the tension of her carefully constructed work of art tested to unreasonable limits as the sleeves were slung carelessly around the rotund waist of the umpires.

My cricketing mum and dad smiled all summer long, and the smiles were there years later when we took our seats in the Compton Stand for the Lord's Test against India in 1996.

It was a long way from the cricket grounds of Shropshire, but the enjoyment of playing days and spectating days was exactly the same.

So, Mark Waugh, have a word with your twin brother, and tell him to remember all those faces in the crowd, for whom that single day at the cricket is, perhaps, their most joyful of the summer.

I also appeal to the players to stay close to the game's followers. Graham Thorpe was fined last week for failing to attend a social event with the England team in Kent. His reason was that he needed a rest.

I know, from Hello! magazine, that Thorpe has a new baby, and that cannot be easy. But what has he been doing - hasn't he had a rest all winter?

And what about the farcical scene at the end of the warm-up game between England and Kent. Alec Stewart and his men cantered off the field at Canterbury, sprinting through the crowd of expectant schoolboy autograph hunters with all the speed of a fox being hunted down by a pack of hounds.

This wasn't a hostile crowd, Guyana-style; it was kids in jeans, trainers and kagouls. Fans who had bothered to sit it out shivering in the grey gloom of a wet Friday in May. It was probably the closest encounter they will have with Team England this World Cup.

I know the players do a lot behind the scenes with young people that the cameras are never there to record - though I'm hopeful that we can put this right on Channel 4 during the course of the summer - but it sent out the wrong signals. The team looked like they were escaping rather than embracing their young supporters.

So, finally back to David Graveney and his desire for us to re-live the spirit of Euro 96: David, have a word with the folk in NW8.

During Euro 96, the streets surrounding Wembley and other host stadiums were bedecked with banners proudly proclaiming the tournament was here.

Last week at Lord's, just one egg-and-bacon coloured flag fluttering limply over the empty ground. You would never have guessed that this week it is cricket which is coming home.

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