Test Match Special

The first time Sri Lanka came to town

Simon Mann looks back to 1984, when Sri Lanka played their first ever test in England. At Lord's, England captain David Gower chose to bowl after winning the toss on a warm late summer's day, much to the delight of one of England's bowlers at the time - Jonathan Agnew. Sri Lankan batter Sidath Wettimuny gave Aggers, and the rest of England's bowlers, grief scoring 190 in his first innings on the way to leading the experienced side to draw.

The three of them recall the first time Sri Lanka came to town for a test.

Duration:: 39m
Broadcast on:: 30 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Shop Game Day faves on Instacart and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three grocery orders. Offer valid for limited time, other fees and terms apply. BBC sounds. Music radio podcasts. You're listening to the TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. Now 40 years ago this week Sri Lanka played their historic first test in England here at Lords. It came at the end of a summer in which England had suffered a five-nil defeat to West Indies. But if they expected an easy ride against a team inexperienced in Test Cricket, they were very wrong. Very good squared driver. See that weather meeting. Lovely risky strokes. This is a marvellous shot but really raised away to the boundaries. Really wide, but he got right across to it and right over it's a tremendous shot. To this be history in the making, both them coming in to bow to Sidard Wettamuni, who hits him a firmly up the back foot. It's going down in Burban boundary for four and he has come back for the second. He'll be in fact by Agile just in front of the fence but Sidard Wettamuni has become the first Sri Lankan ever to score a test 100 in England. That's gone through. So success there in four Agile and well deserved to. Good delivery. It's the end of run at number 84. Time up a really substantial fourth-week it's down here. And a well deserved look at this for Jonathan Agnew, just coming down the hill a little and he could right at the top of that armstamp. That's nothing available. It's so easy of gone over. He's shoveled that one away and that's squared the field at two for six more. Well both of them have been hard words there with David Garre. I think David Garre in fact should be having hard words with both of them. It is very dark at lords but that isn't putting Philip Mendez off at all. He's 98 not out now as both of them comes in from the pavilion end and he cuts it hard. It's going down to third man. Is he going to get the two? Yes he is. He's coming back for the second as Agnew picks it up and Mendez has completed an absolutely dazzling hundred full of rusty brilliant shots. The second Sri Lankan to get a hundred on his first test appearance at lords and this has been a captain's inning car excellence. Sri Lanka 434 for four. Sri Lankan is a beautiful strike for an ML Silver and that's his hundred. His runner the silver goes through. I take two runs. ML Silver, the wicked keeper, goes to one hundred and one. But Diker is three. It's two hundred and eighty-nine for seven. Got some very familiar commentary voices there and some familiar names playing as well. Sri Lanka had the best of a high scoring draw with Siddhat Wettamuni making a hundred and ninety. Did it mend this a century and a ninety-four. Arginarana, Tunga 84. We could keep it at ML Silver, a second innings hundred. England did have their moments with the bat, a century for Alan Lamb, half centuries for Chris Broad and David Gower and Agas among the wickets as well, dismissing Ranatunga and Arginar the silver. Those were a couple of high points for him. He did go around the park as well. Now Agas is here and so too is England captain from that game David Gower and so too, I'm delighted to say, is Siddhat Wettamuni. He was the player of the match for his marathon one hundred and ninety. Welcome at all. So what was your overriding memory of that game? Well, I guess we wanted to come and create an impression in this country and the fact that we did do that was I think the most important thing for us because we just got test status two years before that and it was important to come to the home of cricket and maybe show the world that we are going to be a team to reckon with. And a bit of context, so Sri Lanka played eleven test matches to that point. They'd lost eight, four of them by innings and they'd drawn three and they did play England in their first ever test match in in Colombo and they were right in the game actually at one point. Looks like Sri Lanka might cause an upset in that match. They were 113 for one in their second innings and they were six behind on first things. They were right in the game. They ended up losing by seven wickets. So you came into that test match on quite a bad losing run really. So what gave you some confidence that you could take England on and do well against them? Well, we were fortunate to have played some good count teams earlier. So we were familiar with the conditions. I think that helped and the fact that the wicket was very good too and the sun was out and I think that meant a lot to us Sri Lanka. Yes, we'll move on to that in a moment, the sun being out. No, we're going to move on to it now. I'm not going to lay anymore. So the wicket was good, said that said, and the sun was out. So when the coin went up or when the decision came to David to make a decision, you said we're going to have a bowl first, David. You just lost five nil to West Indies. That was the black one. Very good context, I'm injured. Yes, there's some content there. So okay, what were you thinking then? Well, there are times where one has to deflect. I'm going to attempt this probably against the odds because Jonathan's memory might be at odds with mine, but it's not. I've waited 40 years for this odds. I vaguely remember coming to law's beautiful sunny day and in the nets behind us on the nursery ground. Both of them were swinging around corners with a suitably doctored ball. You were probably swinging it as well, Jonathan. No, I think it was. Well, I think he pretended. Alison Rich jealous and one of the finest swing bowlers ever to play for England who would, a year later would destroy Australia. And I was persuaded, and I regret this bit later, I was persuaded to say we all bowl. So I persuaded by whom or by both of them, by who was channel selected? Was it me? Was it Peter? I think Paul down to them. Even Peter said, captain, I think it's a swinging day. All these comments, at the end of a frazzled year after you've been chanced by the West Indies. Confidence was a little low in the decision-making department. And it was a delight to watch CDAP bat so beautiful on this flattest of pitches on the most gorgeous of late summer days. I mentioned the short boundary, I had a short short boundary. Both and both and both and both and both a pile of, tried it, probably tried to bite you, bolt him and he bounces. Agnew, of course, bolt beautifully, you know, the shortage of talent there was a bit of a problem. And anyway, it's very nice to see that again, looking so well and it's untroubled by the efforts of scoring 190s. It's absolutely delight to be with him. Sir, could you believe they put you in? No. Well, I was hoping that we'll bat first. My captain was also not sure what to do, and I was pleading with him saying if you win the toss bat and we were lucky, we were put in. You know, I have to say, I'm delighted to be here too. With Agi, I have been a couple of times, but with David, I haven't. And in my mind, David was the most elegant left-hand ever to date. Well, you didn't get to watch him back for about three days because you're giving her in the field for quite a long time. David, what? The pace the game was different. 491 for 70 clairs. At what point did you think, I'm not sure about this. I wouldn't mind to just rewind the clock half an hour. 10 past 11 minutes then. Both of them was bowling at dead straights. Ball wasn't swinging. The humidity had obviously disappeared. The conditions had changed. If we played on the nursery ground, we'd have rolled them out around it. I think we've got the gist of it. This was probably a mistake. But as I say, they did bat well. You're right. We played the inaugural test match against them in Colombo a couple of years earlier, which was a good contest. Unpass got involved, I think. It was quite interesting. And we did work hard. I wouldn't dare say. We had to work quite hard to get the win. That was my turn to get the runs. But that was very interesting for me, since I've been to Sri Lanka a couple years before that, and seen a lot of the guys like Wright Dias and Demel and all these guys who were playing proper cricket at that stage to gain that test status. So when we went for the test match, a lot of the same players were there trying to prove again, as Sita said, just now, that they are worthy of the position, and they were. So it's nice to have been around at the start of something rather special, actually. Did you feel really ready for test cricket? Or we did as a country? We did. In fact, I felt that even in the 70s, we had some super players. But we just didn't have the infrastructure to support international cricket at that stage, I think. And that was one of the complaints that the ICCO, MCC had at that time, that we didn't have proper infrastructure. As for ability, I really believe that in the 70s, we had some super players who are unlucky, not to play test cricket. You actually look at that match out of into the silver play in it, and ran a Tunga play in it. Two players who went on to be greats, really of Sri Lankan cricket. So it's important to remember, coming to that game, it was easy to look back on Sri Lankan cricket with hindsight, when the World Cup and all these great years they had, but they were sort of feeding their way into international cricket at that point, only a couple years in, and hadn't won a test match. So when David won the toss and put Sri Lankan career, what did he think? Well, I was a bit disappointed. I mean, look, I was excited about playing the game, because David and most of the players in that team were pretty shell-shocked from the five-nil shellacking by the West Indies. Did you feel like that, David, as well? Did you feel a bit shell-shocked? Well, a little bit, but I mean, one of the things you have to learn to do, even if you've had a, well, a bad series, which is just a bit of an understatement, we genuinely would have thought, okay, right, it's the final chance of that summer to compete and maybe win, obviously we didn't, but to put that behind you, because you have to do that, whether you've had a bad tour in the Caribbean or Australia, wherever you've been, you start again. And I guess there was a bit of collateral damage from the West Indies shellacking, as Alex put it, but conditions were good. People still wanted to do well. You know, Lamy got his hundred. I mean, I actually researched a little bit of this the other day. I found some stuff on YouTube, which was sent through on X. And I was playing all right. You know, it didn't look as, you know, looking at those, but see that, well, I mean, yeah, he looks all right. You know, I was, I fell to all right, was playing all right. But when you've just given away 500, you need to make more than 55. So, and the most ridiculous thing of that entire game was the second innings, where both of them having not covered himself in glory in the first inning, he's trying to bowl properly and I bowed off spin and picked up six. And that is the contradiction. That was a killer. Beggar's belief. You know, I can, again, I can feel for Agassé, Agassé, obviously, his status at the game at the time had to try and bowl properly. Beethie comes on the same, well, give us that ball ball off spin. Because he'd gone off in the first innings as well, if you remember, he'd been off for the bad back. Okay, back. That's why he came back and bowl off spin. For you, Ag, it was a big opportunity. Oh, massive. Because you played what one test match before? Well, the test, yeah, the week before everyone. So it was massive, you know, I still couldn't quite believe I was playing it. And also, there was also that. And I think if you look at some of the scores and like, you know, Chris Taveray's innings, for instance, 14 off 95 balls, there was the tour to be selected immediately afterwards as well. And so those of us who, who had just done his come in and didn't really feel like you were part of the whole set up, that was a quite a big pressure thing as well. You knew that if you, if you do well, he'd probably go on the tour. If you didn't do well, he probably wouldn't go on the tour, which is of the case with me. Oh, but we got you there. You did in the end. You did in the end, a ball out of a sip on a bar of soap or something. So I had to get there in here. But you know, all those, all those sort of things, you know, part of it. I mean, David's innings was, I mean, 55 from 151 balls. It was, I mean, that's a very ungowel like innings too, isn't it? Like the whole of England's innings seem to grind, sort of ground to a halt. Looks better on highlights. Well, England batted for 147 overs for 370. So that's all it was. I mean, there was, okay, there was the obligation when you're basically a long way behind when you start your first innings of the match, the old, the obligation to make sure that things didn't get worse. Yeah. So yes, so some, I mean, yeah, it was quite slow, wasn't it? Yeah, it was standard. Yeah, obviously, if it doggedly resisting the everything that Sri Lanka could throw at us. So let's, let's go back to Sri Lanka's first things that for that four hundred and nine tag is you're opening the bowling. Yes. And you're bowling to see that? Yes. What was you like to face to that? Well, I had first, I guess, in 81 when we came on a pre-test tour. And I remember, I got some runs against him, but he hit me on the head. And I knew he could, could be sharp, especially when he bounced. So I was playing the left to show against? Yes. Yes. So, and I was telling my mates as well, you know, this guy got me quick. Yeah. And extraordinary. There's some sort of candle after since we creeping in every time your name gets mentioned. I know. Well, they've been building up to this for a long time. But I didn't remember that. But it is lovely. Just to sort of fast forward a bit that Sid and I always meet up, but always good friends. You have a big hug with sort each other down there. It's a really lovely relationship that we have. And I'm also just going to mention now before, I guess, that we then went to Sri Lanka after this test match for an England A tour or B tour, where they called it in those days. Our first match was against him. And I wanted to get one wicket on that tour. I didn't care if I didn't get any others. I wanted S wettim uni. Because he was what happened here. He wacked me around here. We didn't wack me around. He just carefully guided me around here. First ball. And this is not as adoration as it said. The first ball of that match, he nicked it straight to Slip who dropped it on naught. And he got another 100. Well, I thought it was Mark Nicholas. But I think that's perfectly structured. He thinks it's Mark's in boxing. It's a better story if it's Nicholas. But the better part of the story I gave, which you haven't said, is after that delivery, the first delivery, he came up to me and he said, "Every dog has his day." Oh, it's sledge, he said. I didn't know. And I smiled at you. And at the end of the day, I just looked back at him and smiled. Yeah. It's actually a very green pitch, that one. It was very green. It was very green. For Sri Lankan standards, you have a first ball. Can you believe it? I mean, this man is my nemesis. But it has been a really lovely friendship all the way through it. That's what sports all about. You respect each other one day, someone wins and it's just the way that it should be. But just before I ran into both the first ball from the pavilion end and said the pitch was down towards the tavern. He's ready, aren't ready. I'm about to run in. And some demonstrators ran on. They said, "From the mound stand, ran on and invaded the pitch. Dicky Burb was on par. And he got on a bit of a flapper, you can imagine." And so that was a bit of a strange start to proceedings, wasn't it? But that was the best thing that happened to me because I still remember, as we were about to start, these guys ran in and I was getting really worried thinking, "Is somebody going to assault me?" or something like that. And I moved towards the slipcordon, just feeling a little vulnerable. And believe it or not, David, the whole pent-up pressure and all that, just fizzled out because I was more concerned about what was happening. And then when I went to bed, I actually felt relaxed. And all that adrenaline rush and all that seemed to have disappeared. So I am eternally grateful. The square driver, beautiful square driver, and he played quite a few of them. But that's my main recollection of the way you played that day. So it just threw out towards point and cover point in that area there. Yeah, I was surprised that England kept bowling there. Well, we told it was swinging, that was why we kept pitching it up. Maybe that's why. Do you remember that? Was that your innings of your life? I guess so. I guess it's maybe maybe the more celebrated, I would think. There have been some tougher games and tough times, but that was good. And I was delighted to play with these guys because I don't think you'll remember David. Your first tour to Sri Lanka was with Derek Robbie. I do remember very well, yeah. And I was just out of school myself, and I played against you. And I wouldn't recognize him then. He had frizzy, and we could solve some swaddling. No eyes. If you want to say that before and after. I still picture him with curly, long hair like a nest of some sort. There were several wild birds in there. But still, when he bettered, I always had the impression that he was betting in his sleep. He was so relaxed. Early starts, 11 o'clock starts. No, I remember that tour very well. Derek was a philanthropist. He took these sides, mixed sides of experience and youth. And I was, in those days, the youth, part of the youth. And I remember we'd been to Singapore to Hong Kong, to Malaysia, had a lot of fun for four weeks. We got to Sri Lanka, and Derek said to us, "Right, this is now important. These guys are good. They're heading towards Tescry. They literally had the lecture. Now you've got to play properly." So none of that sort of lacks easy, relaxed. It doesn't really matter stuff. It was now, we've got to take them on and play properly. And that's where we first saw you, and I say dials, dumbell, all these guys that were making a strong case for Sri Lanka as a country to play Tescry and making a really good fist-fit. So that was the first indication I'd seen of how good it could be. Hence, it was what, '77, I think that. So it was what, five years later, that first test match happened in Columbus after our tour of India, a very dull tour of India in '81, '82. But yes, I mean, the basis, the very strong basis was already in place in those years. Absolutely. In the '70s, we had some really good players, and I really feel sorry that they couldn't, they didn't get the opportunity to actually play Tescry. The likes of Anuruth and Akon, so many. My brother Sunil, he opened in the '70s, and they just didn't get the chance. The TMS Podcast. From BBC Radio 5 Live. Okay, you can do this. 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Shop game day faves on Instacart and enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three grocery orders. Offer valid for a limited time. Other fees in terms apply. So there's no question of you underestimating Sri Lanka when they came here in '84 then. Was it because you'd seen the talent or was it? Oh, no, I mean, what did it feel a little bit like after the Lord Mayor's show, after West Indies? Well, it was going to be very different compared to West Indies, for sure. But I mean, I don't remember what wonderful words I would have issued the night before over a glass of lynch barge and a fine piece of steak. But yeah, it was good back to everybody out, wasn't it? Oh, yeah, it was good. Is this true, David? Because I mean, Tag has said this a few times. He said, "I went down the list, banks him, banks him, banks him." Were team meetings really like that? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I mean, for instance, not just Sri Lanka, but on that tour of India, '81, '82, we played in Madras as it was Chennai now. And he kept trying to bounce it there. He kept disappearing. Yashpao Shah, do you remember? Oh, yes. Yashpao took him on and kept plonking me on top of the roof at Deep Square Lakes. So it wasn't the first time me and had tried to impose himself on an opposition batting lineup. But as Ag has mentioned, the tavern boundary was quite short. It wasn't a quick pitch, as far as I remember. So he disappeared. He just disappeared. Oh, that steward throwing the ball back of the mounds down to it. What happened there? Well, it was like a steward just sort of took it, he took it upon himself just to field in this position, because did it meant he still got 100 as well? Just kept picking him out, really. Did he even bounce? Did he get disappearing into the mounds down? Well, no, the answer is we wouldn't have underestimated. Yeah, partly as you say, because I had first-hand experience of how they could play. So yeah, going back to that toss thing, it was obviously the hope, misguided hope, was to get an early advantage. Playing it lost the first time for the ball is going to swing. But maybe, but maybe disappeared, as I say, by about 10 past 11. Having said all that, yeah, I mean, we were very king, desperate to try and finish that summer on a good note. And we had, as a reminder, India coming up in the winter, so that was not going to be easy. So you want to- It turned out actually to be one of your- Well, it was a triumph, yes, and I'm incredibly proud of. Another day, we can talk about India and assassinations and political problems and all that. All the stuff that happened on that '84, '85 tour. But at the end of that, to come to that on top was very, very special. I think there's a golden rule, to be honest. Assumptions are dangerous. Taking things to granted is incredibly dangerous. Confidence is a vital ingredient of any cricket team, any individual playing cricket, so you want to believe you can win, and you want to start a game believing you're going to win. But you always have to respect the fact that- Talking of team meetings, the number of times I've been through team meetings, where you've had that thing where I will get him out of this, we'll get him out of that way, you get 100, I'll get a double 100, we'll get 600, a ball amount, 150 twice, win by innings and 300. Most of the time, all these fantastic and fantasy team meetings disappear in the space of half an hour, because the opposition actually has had the same meeting in the different room the same night before, and they have their own plans. And you have to respect the fact that cricket is a great game because plans change on a dime. They change in 10 minutes, half an hour, 40 minutes, you know, everything can change when you have to reassess conditions and when, unfortunately, someone plays well against you. So those are all factors that make the game still very, very special. What were you saying in your team meetings set out before the game? Can you remember? What was the sort of mindset going into the match? Well, I must say, I still remember we had the dinner hosted by the BCB, this is yesterday. And I still remember our president, who's no more, Mr. Garmini Disanayak. It's such a fantastic speech. Your chairman actually came and said, "How does one follow Mr. Disanayak?" And I used to say, you know, we felt so good, we were walking tall at the end of that... An inspirational speech? It was an inspirational speech. And we somehow felt that we had been playing well in the pre-test games. And we were fairly confident that we could do well. And it was one of those days. It wasn't just you as well. I mean, so many of your colleagues, I mean, take people through the game a little bit about what happened, didn't it? You got 190. And Amal got 100 in the second. And he was keeping wicked, wasn't he? And he only got one out and got 100. And that was, I think, Aravinder's debut. You know, he attacked all the time. He would attack all the time. And I remember he just came and got two or three fourths and then through as we got away. We saw the... It got extremely fine delivery, would you edge the pool down to him? Yeah, through as wicked away anyway. He was that kind of guy, even in his very first tour, which was that tour. He just didn't care who was balling. He would want to attack the game before that. He and I put a fella, you know, we got about 160 runs in a stand for the third record. And he just came and belted everybody. Special player. So you could see that he was going to be a really special player. Just don't think, how old were you being in that test match in 1984? So a real youngster and obviously, you know, no size at all. But you thought then, yeah, he's a really high-class player in the making. Absolutely. He had a lot of time to play. It was 58 now. And he was 18. 18, yeah. It was very cocky about his betting, you know. He just wanted to take you on. And he showed it even then. Yeah, and our junior, Anna Tunga, I mean, we saw him as time went on. He had a really feisty little champion of the second cricket and fought the corner. What was he like then? The same even then. As a youngster, he was very, very feisty and very aggressive in his approach. And he was ranked as a really good player. I remember Sir Gary came to Sri Lanka for a coaching spell and he raved about him. He had seen him as a school boy and he said he is one of the best school boy critters he has ever seen. So yeah, we did have a good team. We lacked some of the exposure that other teams had, but we were hopeful that we were going in the right direction. Yeah, I mean, it was 12 years before Sri Lanka won the World Cup. I know a different form of cricket, one-day cricket against a test cricket. But if I'd said to you in 1984 in just over a decade Sri Lanka would win the World Cup. Would you believe that? Did that seem a bit like a fantasy then? Difficult one to answer. We believed that we were good players. We had good players and we just lacked opportunity. We kept saying we need opportunity. We need more test cricket, we need more international exposure and then we felt we could brush shoulders. Because even in the late 70s I think David came as well. We competed when teams came over to Sri Lanka, I remember the Ozzies came, you came. We did really well. Most of the time, in the one-day games we were beating them in Sri Lanka. So we were confident that we can play, but we didn't have the international exposure to say that we didn't travel much and play. And maybe that's where they thought they can get the better of us fast, because we were new to conditions like loans. It was the case that the batting was stronger than the bowling. The bowling wasn't bad. There was a bit of pace, there was accurate seamers, there was spin, leg spin. And for instance, going back to 82, the first test match, the inaugural test match in Colombo, we were battling heat, humidity, the pressure being expected to beat Sri Lanka in their first test match. Finally, when you can always say when you come up against a new leg spinner, the first thing you have to do is get used to what he does, because it's all slightly different. So you have to start to read, you quickly got to learn how to read that individual, as opposed to anything you might have read in the manuals or seen before. And the point has been made already, there was a strong competitive spirit and talent, so nothing was going to be easy. And that game, I remember David, we felt, and somebody in your squad, I think it's your captain Fletcher, if I'm not mistaken, you had mentioned. In the inaugural test match? Yes, they said these Sri Lankans are either stopping or trying to hit big shots, and what they did was they had a slip-cordon and the rest were nothing in between, and we were playing into their hands. But I guess that was all part of the learning curve. Jonathan, your experience, that game, we haven't talked much about, I mean, you were competing for a place on a tour, your bowling figures were two for 123 from 32 overs with three males. Did you think, well, he's put them in on a flat pitch on a sunny day, and my tour place is disappearing. Well, the tour place was sort of there towards the end of the game. I mean, I started, I think it was going to be all right and go well. That was, I'd take a couple of good wickets at the oval. It wasn't in my second game. I didn't know, there was still quite a lot of the members of the team I didn't know, and that was always an issue, I think. Playing friggin' back then. I mean, the first time I met them, both of them, was the week before when I played the oval, you know, which is bizarre. Then he wrote me the bowling with him. Yeah, and it's a crazy situation, really, because he's such a massive presence in the dressing room. I mean, he wasn't captain, but he was just sort of owned the dressing room, he was kit with everywhere, he was all lying in the middle of the floor, he was in the room, but it is, he does your own did. You know, and you had people, he's the people who were his mates around him, and it was, it was, it was a bit of a strange setup, really, from that perspective. But, so you're sort of feeling your way, really, but I did know these fellows, because I'd played against sort of Sydney in '81, and I probably before that as well, you knew they could play us, that's the point, but I, because I, because it was new to me, and I was so desperate to make an impression, and in those days or so, I think an added thing about, about being a newcomer in the England team, and it was, in some ways, it was a good thing, it was a good thing for County Cricket, and that you knew that if you strung a few good performances together in County Cricket, you were going to, you got a good chance playing for England, because there was, they were not a revolving door, but there was, it was, it was, it was, you had more chance of playing for England via County Cricket than you do these days. The downside of that was that when you did get your chance, if you didn't take it straight away, then the door would revolve and someone else would come in, it's on the same process, so there was, there was, you, you did feel, you did feel that you really had to make an impression early, and the course, the more you felt that, the more you strived for it, and therefore you tried too hard, and therefore you didn't actually, you didn't actually go very well, and that was, that was what it was, I remember these, these fetters played so well, and they were still going up, coming towards the end of the second day, you know, they got dark, and in those days the umpire would, would ask, would offer the light to the bats, when bats, when we don't think it's light enough, you know, we, we'd, we'd like to go off, and Dickey was at Square Leg, and I said to Dickey it's dark out here, he can't, he can't, he can't, he can't get us off, he's not been trying, they won't take it, they won't take the light, he was trying to get, trying to get off, but he wouldn't go either, they just kept batting, they battered into the third day, it was, it was, it was, it was a triumph, triumph for Sri Lanka, it was a, it was a difficult game for people who found themselves under pressure, dear old Tav was also back in the side, the, the previous game, and, and, and there was all the time that, that business of, of, of, well, yeah, trying to get on the winter tour, because I didn't have any jobs. When you're right, the selection process, sorry, excuse me, in that era, was quite harsh in him. Were you involved in selection David's captain, did you, did you say he plays, he doesn't, or I'd like him to play, I wouldn't like him to play? It's a leading question, my lad. Yes, that's captain you are involved, but your influence is diminished if you've just come off five-year-old driving from the West Indies. And one thing you learn very quickly when you get into selection meetings with, I mean, people like Peter May is always a former great England captain, various others, I like, I like bed saying, there are some quite firm opinions, and sometimes you find yourself fighting a political battle, not necessarily a cricketing battle, so you, you do literally have to juggle, you know, the bit of sort of bartering goes on sometimes, if things are going well and a side picks itself, that's fine. You're on to the cleric quickly and you're sending out the memo and everyone's fine. If there are problems to solve and people who might be on the cusp of playing or not playing, sometimes you have arguments about, well, I'd like him for sure, in which case we'll have him, so you have to sort of barter what you think is most important, I mean, the classic was the disaster of the eight and nine ashes, which I think we talked about last year on. Yeah, well, that's a completely new programme, isn't it? A different programme, yeah, we've been there before, but yeah, where you had so many players over the whole world. Well, there was injury, there was bad form, there was a trouncing, there were disagreements, you know, the bartering got out of hand, but I mean, thankfully, things move on, you had sort of the David Graydon era as chairman where there was more time given to players than they came in to settle, and of course you've got this era now, and we're in an era now where settling is not a problem. I mean, I love this culture that they've got at the moment, where all the pressure is removed as best it can be. I'm sure there's still the human element and personal pride. You want to go out there and get the runs, you want to go out there and take the wickers and take the catches, which you have to you, but the system now is very, very different. I just want to read a couple of emails, one here from Carol and Nick Smith. Enjoy listening to your memories of Shrankrit Lords in 1980. We're proud to say we were there. It was the day after our wedding, the first day of our honeymoon, also proud to say we're still married. One of our memories was sitting next to an American visitor at his very first ever match, spent a lot of the day explaining the laws to him. That's Carol and Nick Smith, and then here's one from Karl Rogers in Lancashire. He said, "The 1984 test Sri Lanka, special place in my heart, decided to take my then girlfriend Debbie, now my wife to a first cricket match. We arrived on the Monday morning buying tickets on the day, as you could easily do so in those days. We're able to get seats in the mind stand. Debbie brought along a book to read, convinced she'd be bored stiff. As we entered the ground, he had a loud groaning and both of them was out. First thing was how impressed she was with the ground, the view we had. We settled in and tried our best to explain the field and positions and tactics. Anyway, she enjoyed it so much. I guess you enjoyed your bowling so much. That's batting so much that she was listening to TMS the next day as she drove to my flat. She's been an avid cricket fan and TMS listener ever since, and we've married the following year. We celebrate our 40th anniversary next year. All started off in that test match. Oh, he's tragic time. Thank you very much. It's lovely to see you. I'm delighted to see David because I haven't met him ever since we've finished playing. He was very generous. I've been in therapy. The TMS Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. Hey, I hear you think podcasts are all about true crime, huh? Well, wise guy, the iHeart Radio app's got all kinds of podcasts. We got stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know. We got Bobby Bones, Big Boy and Lou Lader. We got SpongeBob, Binge Pants, and Exotic Eratic Story Time. We got doe boys, two dudes in the kitchen, green eggs and Dan. Hey, we got Elf Quest. We got podcasts for everything on the iHeart Radio app for free. If you don't download that, well, that's not just a true crime, my friend. That's criminal.