Tim's Tour Diary: England's chaotic reception, James Taylor and Nick Compton
Tuesday 22 December 2015 10:11, UK
Sky Sports News HQ reporter Tim Abraham makes the trip to Kevin Pietersen's home town and catches up with Nick Compton...
It was good to move onto Pietermaritzburg for the second warm-up game of the tour; don't get me wrong it was great in 'Potch' - relaxed small-town life is a good way to start the tour, especially for the players, with the excellent cricket facilities on offer, but I sensed they were keen to move on too, for a change of scenery.
Once we had put the warm-up game to bed with after-match interviews with James Taylor and bowling coach Ottis Gibson, we drove back to Johannesburg airport in the morning for our early afternoon flight.
With all our bags and equipment we had thought of actually driving to Pietermaritzburg, a journey of around six hours. It would have been a great way of seeing the country, and saved us the hassle of checking in all our gear for a short internal flight, but in the end it looked a good decision from our journey scenes to Jo'berg airport. There were plenty of traffic hold-ups and small accidents, but the most dramatic was the sight of a lorry full of bricks that had completely turned over.
As we approached the city, a red car raced past and cut inside onto the hard shoulder, where right in front, people were gathered around their own broken down car; it just managed to swerve back onto the main carriageway and avoid what would have been a horrible incident. Not far behind a police car was desperately trying to keep up, but it had no chance. As it turned out our check-in was all very smooth.
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The heat and humidity hits you as soon as you step out of the airport. The next leg was the hour-long road trip, north-west to Pietermaritzburg.
England's hotel check-in proved to be a chaotic affair as they pulled up with full crew - bags and all - right in the middle of a wedding reception, and had to dodge the photos, to prevent any 'photo bombing'. If the bride or groom were cricket fans perhaps that would have been an added bonus to their special day.
We are staying in the Hilton area up in the hills, and it's a spectacular climb from the city centre - much cooler with its own micro-climate. It can be steaming hot down in the city, but it's much cooler and cloudy where we are staying.
This is Kevin Pietersen's home town, and I have been here once before, though not to cover an England game. I travelled from Durban to interview KP's parents when he was making quite an impact on his first tour of South Africa with England back in 2005. He very kindly arranged for his bother Brian to pick me up and drop me back again. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then!
England's first training session at the picturesque Oval was a hot and steamy affair; this was more like the temperatures and conditions faced recently in the UAE. As highlighted in my reports, this is the only other ground to have staged International cricket with a tree inside the boundary, along with the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury. It really is a lovely ground with a club cricket atmosphere. It is a very English ground.
It was appropriate and a good time to speak to interview Nick Compton, a 'local lad' who had been at school here for a while; now he's back in the England fold and he impressed in the first warm-up game to seal his place at number three in the new look batting order.
His Dad Richard was once again an interested spectator, only this time on his door step; we interviewed him in New Zealand when he became quite the star of the TV coverage, celebrating his son's back-to-back hundreds in Dunedin and Wellington. The Compton connection does not end there as Nick's uncle, Patrick, has been working in South Africa as a cricket journalist for years.
We are filming the game right behind the bowlers' arm just above the sight screens, and it's the ideal spot for the coaching staff to come up and have a close look at batters and bowlers, so Trevor Bayliss, Mark Ramprakash and Paul Farbrace are regular visitors.
One local chap though was not so recognisable and came up, sat down and proceeded to ask my views on the series, but he was much more forthright in his own.
At first I thought he was connected to the club and was just seeing if we were okay, but it was when he pulled out a few "tinnies" and proceeded to top up a massive jug of beer that I realised he was a local who was a bit worse for wear and had to be moved on.
Don't miss a ball of England's tour of South Africa on Sky Sports - at home, on the move and across our digital platforms. It all starts at 7.30pm on Sky Sports 1 on Boxing Day with the first Test.
