Pique practice
Michael Henderson
'WE're asked to console with each tremulous soul who steps out to be loudly applauded./ Stars on opening nights weep when they see their names in lights./ Though people who act, as a matter of fact, are financially amply rewarded./ It seems while pursuing their calling their suffering is simply appalling.' Noel Coward was singing about mummers, with a knowledge rooted in a lifetime of practical experience, but the Master's words translate fairly comfortably to sportsmen.
There have been two acts of petulance in the past week. First, Audley Harrison. the boxer taken up by the BBC after he won the super-heavyweight gold medal at the Olympic Games in Sydney two years ago, turned on one of his paymaster's reporters after he had struggled to beat his latest opponent, a no-hoper called Dominic Negus. Then Nasser Hussain, the England cricket captain, swore at and made aggressive gestures towards the press box at Lord's after he had completed a century against India.
Harrison is a jolly lucky chap. Signed up by the BBC on a ten-fight deal and yet to meet any opponent of note, he is £1 million better off, if no closer to the status of champion, which is, avowedly, the aim of his exercise. Regrettably, he has also taken to referring to himself in the third person singular, which is usually an indication that something peculiar is going on. Pretty soon the BBC programme controllers, not just the reporters, are going to ask what they are getting for their money.
Hussain is a sportsman of a different stripe. He has been the captain of England for three years, and has done very well, allowing for the fact that he has a side of modest means under him. But his position in the one-day team has been questioned of late, for he is not the most effective batsman in the shorter game, a point underlined by the fact that his century in the NatWest Series final was his first in 72 one-day internationals.
His innings was a scratchy affair, but you wouldn't have known it by his reaction. Never has an England captain behaved in so open, or in so preposterous, a manner. His abuse was, apparently, directed at the likes of Ian Botham and Bob Willis — who played. respectively, 102 and 90 Tests for England — and Jonathan Agnew, a former England player, who has been the BBC cricket correspon dent for the past 11 years. Between them they may be said to hold a more detached view of events than Hussain, for all his many qualities.
Hussain's outburst was all the more odd as he has a regular column in a Sunday newspaper, in which he is given ample opportunity to right any perceived wrongs. His column tends to recount the meals he has enjoyed with Stewie' and 'Thorpey', the poor jokes that `Goughy' tells, and how funny it was when `Trez' ordered room service and there was a frog in his tea. Players 'rock up' for the Test, 'focus' on the match, are 'gutted' when they fail and 'chuffed' when they succeed. It's the usual balls, in other words.
It's a good job Hussain is not Australian. If he were, he wouldn't have had a run out in the sun for many a moon. The Australians, far and away the strongest side in the world, saw fit to demote Mark Taylor, their Test captain, from the one-day side, and have now dropped Steve Waugh in a similar manner. Waugh, it may be recalled, was the conquering leader when they won the World Cup in England three summers ago. So far he has resisted the temptation to abuse anybody as colourfully as Hussain did before a full house at Lord's.
You can do better than that, Nasser. Indeed, you're going to have to. England, in case anybody didn't know, lost.
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