Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

70 saying that a ridiculous number of functions were imposed on the cricketers: ‘On the rest day of one Test match we did three official functions, but the Indians didn’t have to do any!’ In one respect Dexter’s team were more fortunate than the one Mike was to lead two winters later: most of the party avoided prolonged illness, only Eric Russell being laid low for a significant time. Though others were ruled out for the odd match, Mike himself never missed a game through being unfit to play on either of the tours he made to India. If Mike was always one to knuckle down easily on tour, others found the discomforts of the subcontinent more unsettling. ‘I went for those five months cleaning my teeth in Coca-Cola,’ says Bob Barber, reflecting on a country in which drinking water had to be boiled and cooled, and players could never count on the luxury of a shower. Barber still rubs his eyes with incredulity as he remembers an evening unfolding after a long, hot day in the field in the Kanpur Test. With no running water in the dressing-rooms, there was no chance for the players to shower before boarding their bus to a nearby sports ground. ‘There we sat on a platform with the sun going down, sipping tea,’ Barber recalls. ‘There must have been 300 people surrounding us. We were presumably there to be looked at like monkeys in a zoo.’ Back to their hotel they went with Barber’s mind turning to the Nottingham mining community of D.H. Lawrence as he saw his bearer placing a tub on the hotel balcony. ‘We were invited to strip off. You sat in this bath and a bloke came out with a big jug of water and poured it over you. That was their idea of washing.’ Then it was off to one of their endless functions. By 10 o’clock, as they made small talk with the locals, the players had still not eaten. Barber had eyed a curtain. ‘There’s a wonderful banquet behind that curtain,’ he was assured by one of the host party. It proved too good to be true. ‘There must have been some signal the locals recognized. Suddenly the curtains parted and whoosh! You had to get in there and look for the last bit of chicken bone.’ Years later, interviewed by the BBC, Barber was asked where he had had his most memorably enjoyable meal. ‘Frankfurt,’ he had replied, ‘at the airport. A roll and a bottle of wine – absolute luxury!’ As with others in the team, months of ‘rice and curried goat’ had made him yearn for an English meal. There had been attempts to break the monotony. On one occasion Peter Richardson, rather good at getting into the kitchen, managed to negotiate egg and chips, only for their attraction to be reduced by the sight of one of Endurance test in India