The Ashes Revisited (1981)

One film about cricket being shown at the cinema is an unusual event but this week there have been two: Fire in Babylon and From the Ashes.  Remarkable.  Both are documentaries that make extensive use of original footage, supplemented by insightful, honest and revealing interviews, contemporary and recent, with the main protagonists and journalists.  Each has had a one off showing across the UK, followed by a live satellite Q&A session from a London cinema.  Both will shortly be on general cinema release, quickly followed by DVDs.
 

Fire in Babylon is about the emergence of the great West Indian cricket team, with its stars Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd and Michael Holding, and directed by Stevan Riley.  From the Ashes, directed by James Erskine, is about the 1981 England v Australia series, which is generally known as "Botham's Ashes" but is actually about far more.

I certainly didn't watch, analyse and dwell upon every moment of the 1981 Ashes series as I have with the more recent ones.  It was, however, when I first became aware of cricket, and started to try to work out some of complexities of the game.  Oddly, I don't have my own memories of either Botham's anguishes and failures before he was relieved of the England captaincy, or of his heroic and liberated batting and bowling afterwards, although I have, of course, seen much footage of all of that many times since.  My memories from the time are of Kim Hughes, the blond, stylish and dashing Australian captain, in the field, Bob Willis's amazingly focussed, some have said crazed, bowling spell at Headingley, and the calm, shrewd and effective captaincy of Mike Brearley, the amazing effect of which was obvious even to a confused novice like me.

All of this, and much more, appears in the documentary, alongside political and social events at the time in the UK, backed by a terrific soundtrack, with which I didn't manage to resist singing along.  I gained insight into the huge challenges that Kim Hughes endured from members of the Australian team, such as Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh, who were disrespectful to him and his office - and freely admitted so.  I appreciated just how fragile the situation was at Headingley and that it could just as easily, if not even more easily, gone horribly wrong rather than marvellously right.  I heard Willis, Brearley and Botham express insecurities about their position in the team and how they were viewed by management and fellow players.  And it was clear once again that every successful Ashes series has at least one player for whom it was not a personal playing triumph: encouraging to hear the great David Gower admit that in 1981 it was him.

There can't be an England cricket fan who doesn't know the outcome of the 1981 series, nor that it turned on Botham's performance at Headingley, but there was plenty new in the film for me, and I imagine that many others - of all ages -  may find that their understanding, appreciation and memories are enhanced by these 90 minutes of cricket.  The portrayal of some of the social and political events of the time - riots on city streets, recession, a fairly new Conservative Prime Minister, and a Royal Wedding - are interesting, not least in their parallels to today.  It's also intriguing to see how life has changed for England cricket stars: much enhanced pay, benefits and lifestyle, but also much less freedom, and opportunity to live as normal men.

Such was my enjoyment of what I gained - from the film and the Q&A afterwards - that I'll gallantly forgive the film-makers for a shot of an inappropriate dial telephone.  It was certainly old enough to have been used in 1981 and the number was for the Marylebone exchange, so might have been Lord's, but the dialling code was wrong.  In 1981, London still had its famous, and rightful, 01 code; 071 was not introduced until the other end of the decade.  Once a telephone engineer's daughter, always a telephone engineer's daughter!