Not only are press boxes crowded, they are packed with experience
Not only are press boxes crowded, they are packed with experience. Pakistani journalist Qamar Ahmed (73) and Englishmen Brian Scovell (76) are no longer regulars on the media circuit in England, but they have got their fingers on the pulse on matters on and off the field. Qamar has played a good level of competitive cricket and Brian is a regular weekend cricketer on the English greens.
Veteran journalists Brian Scovell (left) and Qamar Ahmed at the Lord's
press box yesterday. PIC/Clayton Murzello
On Saturday, he nearly got hit by a beamer. He also owns Woodpecker Cricket Club which fielded players like Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Sarfaraz Nawaz and Michael Slater in the past.
Scovell, who has been a journalist since 1960, ghosted columns for Sir Garfield Sobers when the West Indian legend played for Nottinghamshire in 1968. He later wrote his autobiography, Twenty Years at the Top. "Sobers was very co-operative for the book. The only problem was getting him to talk to me because his evenings were spent partying, dancing or whatever," said Scovell.
Scovell flew down to Trinidad to write Brian Lara's book, Beating the Field, but the batting genius gave him the runaround. Like Scovell, Qamar has covered more than 300 Tests.
"This is my 378th Test apart from reporting on eight of 10 cricket World Cups," says Qamar, who is reporting for The Dawn newspaper in Pakistan.u00a0
Qamar, who was based in England until a few years ago, scooped the story about batting legend Sunil Gavaskar refusing the life membership of the Marylebone Cricket Club.
According to Qamar, he got the story on the day when Gavaskar had trouble getting through the gates before the 1990 India vs England Lord's Test in which he was one of the commentators. "A couple of years earlier, he was stopped at the gates as one of the players in the MCC vs Rest of the World game. "Sunil was livid and I wrote the story for The Times.
The story created a huge buzz and things got hotter when Bishan Singh Bedi, the manager of the Indian team criticised Sunil for not accepting the honour. However, he accepted it a few years later.
The Times got a lot of mileage for that story and the editor sent me a letter of appreciation," recalls Qamar, who made his flat available to house Pakistani stars like Imran Khan and Javed Miandad when they were in England in the 1970s.
Scovell's big scoop
Scovell's most satisfying scoop was when the Cameroon football team arrived to play a friendly against England at the Wembley Stadium in 1991, the year after their first- game win over Argentina in the World Cup played in Italy.
"The Cameroon team members were not being paid by their establishment and they decided to strike for the Wembley game unless they were paid ufffd2000 each. And their star player Roger Milla demanded much more.
The Football Association (which runs the game in England) had to run helter skelter to arrange the money because there was a lot of interest in the game. Someone I knew who worked for Guinness, the sponsors of the event, gave me the story of how English officials had to visit banks late in the evening to get the cash organised.
Eventually, the players got (in cash) what they wanted just before the game kicked off. They couldn't give in to Milla's demand hence he came on in the closing stages of the game as substitute.
That day in 1986 Bipin Patel, an Indian photographer settled in England cannot forget his Lord's debut in 1986. Patel was a doing his pharmacy then and wanted to add cricket to his photography passion. On the final day of the Test when India were batting away to victory, Patel had to rent a lens for 40 pounds a day which was 70 per cent of his weekly salary.
He took the risk and landed up at Lord's (no media accreditation needed in those days) and sat besides legendary cricket photographer Patrick Eagar to capture India's successful run-chase. On Sunday, Patel got his favourite photograph of Sunil Gavaskar's cut shot and the batting great autographed willingly while listening to the story about how Patel paid through his nose for his lens.
Today, Patel has costly equipment of his own. And he still doesn't miss a Lord's game featuring India. "During the famous Natwest Series final against India here in 2002, I saw Geoff Boycott walking out before the end of the game. At that stage India had lost a lot of wickets. But I told Boycott, 'you haven't seen enough of these young Indian batsmen yet.' As it turned out, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif guided India to victory," says Patel.
All in line
The queues for tickets were serpentine-like several hours before the start of Day Five yesterday. Those willing to shell out 20 pounds could stand in line and give themselves a chance of watching Sachin Tendulkar bat for the last time in an India vs England Lord's Test.
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An Indian family queued up as early as 7:30 am and managed to get in by 9:15 am. They could only watch the first ball nearly two hours later. The father of the kids had never watched Tendulkar in the flesh before.
Wonder whether he felt that the effort was worth it.
By the way, rumour has it that black marketeersu00a0 outside Lord's were selling a good seat for 900 pounds when India batted in the first innings on Saturday.
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