Almanac Sport: I wear my Wimbledon Sunglasses at Night

 

I wear my Wimbledon Sunglasses at Night

 

A lot of my favourite sporting memories through life happened in the dark of night from watching sport around the world. As most of the country was sleeping, I’d stay awake to watch something broadcast from overseas on television, which was mainly the cricket from around the world.

 

I was having a few drinks at a friend’s place in Carlton when I witnessed Shane Warne’s ball of the century in 1993. His first ball in England. The massive swing and curl of his delivery at Edgbaston, bowling Mike Gatting, the expression on Gatting’s face as he strode from the pitch, the bemused puzzlement of umpire Dickie Bird. The subtle exaggeration of Richie Benaud’s commentary, ‘and he’s done it. He’s started it with the most beautiful of delivery. Gatting has absolutely no idea what has happened to it.’ I’d never been struck sober so quickly, though it didn’t stop me from reaching for another drink.

 

Watching the beginning of the fall of the West Indies empire when Australia toured the Caribbean in 1995; the last free-to-air telecast of overseas cricket in Australia, and I think if my memory holds true, it was Mike Coward who was the lead commentator. Australia finally beat the West Indies, burying the demons of Roberts and Holding, Marshall and Garner, Richards and Lloyd, Ambrose and Walsh and Lara and Richardson.

 

I was listening to the radio when Lara nearly won back the Frank Worrall trophy when Australia returned four years later in ’99. I had my Sony Walkman at work- I started early in my job as a postman and was slotting in my mail as I listened to the pitch invasions and chaos at Barbados, as Lara, run by run, aided by a dropped catch from Healy and the blocking heroics by Courtney Walsh off Gillespie and McGrath, led them to heart stopping victory and a 2-1 lead in a four test series.

 

But my best memory of watching or listening to sport at night is not the brilliance of either Warne or Lara, it’s an action of my mother that live in the mind. When I was younger, my parents would pack up the car and drive from Melbourne to the Gold Coast during the school holidays. Three days in the car travelling across three states, looking out from the back seat window at the never-ending Australian bush is what sticks in the mind. Board games that broke before we crossed the border into NSW, two-lane highways, stuck behind slow moving trucks, dawdling through the clogging main streets of inland cities. I remember Dad praising the technology of the radio of the Valiant station wagon he was driving. With a push of a button, the dial would automatically tune to whatever country station we could get reception. One of our trips coincided with the 1975 Ashes series in England. We would stay at motels in Armidale, Coonabarabran, Tenterfield, and when we settled in our room, the cricket would be on the telly. This was the series of David Steele, the spectacled wearing grey haired batter plucked from Northamptonshire by Tony Grieg who looked like a bank clerk as he faced up to Lillee and Thompson. On his debut for England at Lords, he got lost walking from the pavilion to the ground; he took one flight of stairs too many and ended in the basement.

 

In a darling act from my mother, before she went to bed, and with me, an eight-year-old devotee of cricket already long asleep, she would write the scores on a piece of paper and leave them on the motel table for me to wake up to the following morning.

 

Australia 4-293

Ian Chappell not out 76

Alan Turner 53

Ross Edwards 99

John Snow 2 for 57

Peter Lever 1 for 85

 

The play off final in English football between League Two teams Wimbledon and Walsall kept me up last Monday night. A week’s free trial from BeIN sports through Amazon Prime was incentive for me to subscribe and stay up for the yawn inducing timeslot of a midnight start to watch the match. In the nineties, I had the energy to stay up all night; thirty plus years later, it’s a ‘Bake Off’ episode, a cup of tea I take to bed, a forlorn attempt to read a book by my bedside table; three pages in I fall asleep by ten at the latest.

 

Poor Walsall. They scored the most goals of the season, were 12 points clear in January, were in the three automatic promotion spots for 83 percent of the season, suffered a form slump in the last rounds of the competition but still could have gone up if not for a 96^th minute Bradford winner on the last day of the season, and here they were, playing Wimbledon at Wembley in a cutthroat final for a spot in League One.

 

The new Plough Lane stadium only fits about 10,000 fans, but there were thirty thousand Dons supporters at Wembley. It was a scrappy and risk-free match, most play-off finals are as teams are over cautious of not making any mistakes, and it was Wimbledon winger Myles Hippolyte who struck the only goal in the match on the stroke of half time. A ball ricocheted to him from the penalty box and his left foot strike squeezed past the Saddlers’ keeper. I jumped in the air, pumping fists but doing it all silently so as not to wake the household. My heart was in my throat when Dons defender Riley Harbottle cleared the ball from the goal line mid-way through the second half. After 97 minutes, with increasingly confident singing from Dons fans, the referee blew his whistle, and the game ended. It was Wimbledon’s defence that shone for them. the best defence in the league, conceding only 35 goals and their last four fixtures of the season were all 1-0 victories. After three years in League Two, we’re back in League One. A much harder competition; we’ll be playing strong teams like Reading, Bolton, Barnsley and Blackpool. Luton were in the Premier League two seasons back, but successive relegations have them in League One next season.

 

It’s a bittersweet moment in reflection. After the celebrations have wound down and Wimbledon manager Johnnie Jackson casts his eyes over his playing roster in the next week or two, the players who ran out on Wembley, who fronted up for 46 games over nine months, squeezing in FA Cup and League cup runs, might not be the same players who run out for Wimbledon’s League One campaign in August.

 

It’s a fabulous and unforgiving competition.

 

League Two champions- Doncaster Rovers.

 

Promoted- Port Vale, Bradford and Wimbledon.

 

Relegated to National League- Carlisle and Morecombe.

 

 

More from Paul Harman can be read Here.

 

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