The Tony Becca Story (Part 1)
Wed, Sep 14, '05
He became a household name to sporting enthusiasts quite by accident, and we have one of his form masters at Wolmers' -? the late J.D. Woods -? to thank in a sort of roundabout way. Tony Becca initially ignored Mr Woods' advice for him to become a sports journalist and instead went into sales. A sporting enthusiast himself, Becca started freelance writing for a monthly magazine called Sportslife in his native Jamaica.
Then the late noted journalist J C Proute invited him to lunch one day. His mission was to offer Tony Becca ? and get him to agree to ? the job of Sports Editor at a new daily newspaper. The rest, as they say, is history, and Becca shares some of those moments spanning over 30 years with CaribbeanCricket.com.
Sit back and settle in for a good read on many topics including his early years as a sports journalist travelling the globe; the relationship between journalists and cricketers then and now; why it's still Rowe over Lara even after two world records; how his personality and personal tragedies helped shape his writings, and the legacy he would like to leave when he retires from covering cricket.
We pick up the Q&A with Tony Becca talking about lunch with J C Proute...
Tony Becca: He was a Barbadian, and he had gone to Barbados talking about this new newspaper in Jamaica and Garry Sobers ? this is what he was telling me ? and Wes Hall asked him who is going to be the Sports Editor and he said well he was talking to me and they encouraged him to get me to do that job, so that's how I got into the newspaper business. I didn't become the Sports Editor until about six months after the paper was launched because the feeling was because I hadn't worked in the newspaper office before, I needed some time. So that's how it started.
MM: What year are we talking about?
The Daily News was launched on the 31 May 1973.
How did the opportunity at Daily News grow your career?
It did a lot. I started working at the Daily News about six months before the first publication. During that time, they had the Sunshine Showdown heavyweight title fight between Joe Frazier and George Foreman and I was asked to be the press officer for that and I think that sort of gave me a push. People believe I did a good job and shortly after the first publication, the Jamaica Table Tennis team was invited to China for a tournament called the Latin American Friendship Tournament. There were about 82 countries there, all third World countries. I went, and again the stories I sent back home apparently made a good impression here and my reputation just started from there.
I must also mention Jack Anderson's help when I just started out. He was at the Gleaner and his assistance was invaluable.
So you've been travelling to cover sports since 1973. Now let's talk about when you went overseas to cover cricket, what did you have to do back then to file a story?
(Laughs) I don't even want to remember that Michelle. It was something else! My first Test match outside of Jamaica was in Port of Spain in 1974 ? England vs West Indies ? and I had to take my typewriter along. It was an Olivetti. In those days you had a bureau sort of thing at the ground just next door to the press box and Cable & Wireless would have staff there with machines. You type your copy, you handed it to them and they then punched it. It was a cablegram, really. You don't know of the cable?
No sir.
It was a yellow bit of paper and they type this thing on strips and then they paste the strips on them. That is how my copy used to come back. It was a simple system. First in, first out, so all of us, it was a mad rush to finish the copy at the end of the day's play to get it in as quickly as possible and sometimes, and certainly outside of the Caribbean, you used to sit around waiting to ensure that it went off before you went home.
Because people back in the Caribbean might then be reading the day's play two days after!
Right. And I was a bit fortunate certainly in a place like Barbados and, to a certain extent, Trinidad. The guys there who used to punch in the thing on these machines, apparently they used to like the way I wrote my copy, the style. This is what they have told me years after, not at the time. They used to fight to get my copy to read it while punching it in and then we moved from there and went to telex and virtually it was the same thing. You sat down and waited until they did it and you would say "everything ok" and they would say "yes man, it's gone".
That would be about what time you would be leaving the ground?
Oh, depends. Eight o'clock. Eight thirty. I remember one night in India, in Kanpur, I didn't leave there until about 10 o'clock and then I had to take one of these little rickshaws with the guy pulling you on a bicycle to get back to the hotel.
During those telex days, say in London, on the rest days, because you used to have a rest day in the Test match, after the third day you would do another piece for the fourth day. We then had to go to a special place in London on the Embankment, the head office for the Post Office. We used to go in there and punch it out ourselves on the machines. During the cricket of course they had the facilities at Lord's, Old Trafford, wherever.
And then came the computer where you could do it and send it straight to the office.
Did you get e-mail at the same time you got the computer or it was computer to fax?
No, e-mail came long after. It went straight into the Gleaner's system but it was very unreliable. You were never sure when it got there, so you would call to find out, or if they expected it at a certain time and it didn't come, they would call to find out if you sent it.
And you could be in India, with the time differences and all of that...
Travelling abroad was better for me because of the time differences. After that came e-mail, which is so beautiful. You do it at your own leisure. Half an hour after the day's play, you are out of there.
And you could also go straight home if you're in Jamaica and do it from there. So you're definitely thankful for that invention.
Definitely! I don't think I could manage it these days!
So back then, the environment was different. Who are some of the people that you were working with as fellow Caribbean journalists in the early days?
Not many, you know. There was Louis Brathwaite from The Advocate in Barbados, certainly Tony Cozier, who was there before me, and Reds Perreira who came just about the same time that I did, and we have formed a friendship over the years.
We're on the subject of differences between then and now. Talk about the relationship between journalists and players back then, as opposed to now. How is it different?
For me, the relationship in those days was much better than it is now. Saying that, I still have a good rapport with all the players, both West Indians and foreigners, and particularly so the Indians and Pakistanis. But when I say the difference for me, is that maybe because I was closer to the players' age when I first started, we were like friends. After a day's play we would meet at the bar and have a drink or we would go out for dinner. We were closer.
Today, and again maybe because of the age difference, there is not that closeness, certainly with me. But we get along very well, there is still a respect for me; I still respect them as players.
Have you ever got a telling off from a player because you wrote something about him that he didn't necessarily agree with?
No, I've never really got a telling off from anybody. There have been differences. I've had differences with Clive Lloyd after the Australian tour in 1975; I've had differences with Vivian Richards when he was the captain of the team; I've had differences with Gordon Greenidge when I believed that it was time for him to move on. I think those were the three main ones, but I believe that over the years, all of that has passed.
I remember Viv's father once sending a letter to somebody to me in Trinidad to tell me don't worry about Viv, because he knows that I don't have anything against Viv. I went to Viv to talk to Viv, at that time we weren't speaking and Viv said "Tony Becca, what you want?" I told him and he said we'll talk when we go to Guyana.
We talked in the Pegasus Hotel. I was on one floor, he was on another and we had breakfast in his room and we chatted for about two hours. There was a press match that was on the day and I was late for the press match because of that chat. It was worth it because we spoke frankly and he understood where I was coming from. He understood that it is not that I didn't like him, it was that I liked him so much that I wanted to protect him because people were saying that he shouldn't be the captain.
I knew why they were saying that and I didn't want him to put himself into a position where the Board would remove him as captain because I believed he was a good captain for the West Indies; I believed he was a good, role model may not be the right word, but young cricketers admired him and loved him. He was powerful in the Caribbean, he was a great cricketer, so the things that he wanted to change, he could have changed them ? and he did change some of them ? but he could only have done it if he was the captain of the West Indies not if he wasn't and that's what we talked about and he agreed with me.
And of course those were "off the record" conversations.
Right, right.
Obviously the writing you do about players, some is positive, some is negative. Do you ever feel bad after writing something negative about a player, thinking "maybe I was too harsh?"
I don't think so because over the years, before I became a sports journalist, I was involved in sports. I was a member of the Jamaica Table Tennis Council, I was the Secretary at Melbourne and a Vice President too before I started. I read what journalists before me wrote about the players; I saw what happened with them and the players in public places where they don't talk to each other. I believed that some of the journalists wrote some things that probably should not have been written, ok, and therefore from those days I said to myself when I just got into Sports Journalism that I'm not going that way. I am going to focus mainly on what happens out there. I don't business with the cass-cass and their personal business. I write about what happens out there and also where the sport can move and if something is happening that is going to affect the growth of the sport, then I will write about it.
The other thing Michelle, is that anything I have written, I always stand by it because when I write a piece, a commentary about a player or about situations or developments, I always read it over just because of what you're saying, to say to myself, 'if I meet that player tomorrow can I look him in his eye', and I've always been able to, because whatever I have written, I can defend it.
Suppose you have written something that you then found out that maybe you got wrong information so it affected what you wrote, do you then go back and say "I stand to be corrected?"
Yes. In my columns, yes.
So generally you wouldn't say that you write about controversial stuff?
Controversial stuff...Yes, I write about controversial stuff, but I don't write about controversial stuff that involves the personal lives of people. I always stay away from that.
Is there anything that you found out that you could have published but you decided not to? Also, what determines whether or not you publish something which you find out, that you think it would be good to it get out there, you'd be the person on the beat, having the story out first?
Yes. If I don't have strong strong strong back up, if I'm not positive that what I'm going to write is true because I have been so experienced that I know people hear something and by the time they tell somebody else is a different thing, so if I have heard something and I cannot confirm it for myself, I leave it alone.
Yes, things have happened in my life that I'm sorry that I didn't do it at the time and the reason that I didn't do it is because...Well, let me give you an example. When World Series started, that was about 1977, I knew about it. A player told me about it, and before people start to guess who it is, it was not a Jamaican player. It was another West Indian player who told me about it...
Meaning before the WICB knew about it?
Yes, nobody knew about it. The player told me everything about it, who were the West Indians involved, etc. After he finished telling me about it, he said "by the way Tony, this is not for publication, this is just between you and I." Now this person was a friend of mine in terms of he being a cricketer, I being a journalist. He was younger than me but we moved very well, we still do up to today and once he said that to me I could not see myself doing it because I believe I would have been letting him down. I kept that secret for about a month or more than that.
One morning I am driving down to work and I said I am going to call this person and tell him that I am going to make a check somewhere else to confirm this and I got to the office the morning...this was at the Daily News. Every morning I went there as the Sports Editor, the first thing I did was go to the telex machine and look to see what sports news has come, and there, right before me was the big news coming out of London about this World Series cricket and Kerry Packer, and I said to myself "Jesus, I missed it." The guy who did it won some English Sportswriters of the Year award because of that, so that I regretted in one way because I still believe I did the right thing in not letting down the person who told me.
The other one was in 1995 in England with the Lara walkout incident, and up to now I know people in the Caribbean took myself and Cozier to task, because they claim that we must have known and we didn't write a thing about it and that we were protecting the West Indies Board.
That's not true. We heard about it, and I called him and asked him if he did and he said yes he did. We checked, we checked with the management of the team and they denied that anything like that happened. And I remember the manager of the team at that time, months after when it finally came out, saying that it was the best kept secret. It wasn't the best kept secret. it was...I wouldn't want to say dishonest?
After you found out that it was true, wouldn't you then say 'we didn't write about it because the management denied it?'
No, I just let it go.
Or it will come out in the book?
In the book I'm writing, yes. But what I'm saying, I just let it go. I'm not a person who likes controversies. I let it go but if I were on a radio or TV programme and I was asked why we didn't do it, if we didn't know, then I would defend myself that yes we heard, but when we checked, it was denied.
And anything that you might have written would have been seen as speculation.
Yes.
Ok. In your opinion, has your friendship with a sporting personality biased the way that you wrote about him or her?
No.
Some people feel that because you know former WICB President Pat Rousseau personally, you were less critical of his tenure as President. How do you respond to that?
I don't think I was less critical. I think what happened in that situation is that I believed that Rousseau was doing a lot of good; I believed that most of the things he did was good for West Indies cricket and once I believed that, then there is nothing for me to criticize.
You are not swayed by public opinion then?
No, no. I'm not swayed by public opinion.
You were going on to say something else.
I didn't agree with him when he stepped down and I have said it to him in private. Again, I believe he was doing so much good for West Indies cricket, trying to professionalize both what happened on the field and what happened in the, well, call it the Boardroom, in terms of selling West Indies cricket... getting some money into West Indies cricket and also how that money was used and invested.
After he explained why he stepped down, did you change your opinion of his departure?
I still thought he should have stayed and fight but I can understand why he left. I probably would have done the same thing too because I think I have always been one who believed that Caribbean politics is stronger in cricket than in anything else probably because cricket is the only thing that we seem to come together to work.
I did criticize Pat Rousseau in one of my columns because when the players left Bangladesh going to South Africa [1998] and then he flew to England to talk with them, I criticized him in my column that he should have taken another West Indies team to South Africa, and he should not have gone to London, they should have come to him. He was the President of the Board and I still believe that that is part of the problem. We set a precedent there. But I wrote about that.
The only thing that I probably didn't do was to also mention ? and this is what he explained to me ? that as the President of the Board, the politicians in the Caribbean wield a certain power. They are not going to tell you to do it, but they are going to influence you to do it and if you are in a position like that in the West Indies you know that sometimes you have to bend a little, bend a little, because there are always favours that you're going to need from the different governments, if not financial, then other things.
Ok, so we are talking about the South Africa tour, you thought it was wrong for Lara and Hooper to be re-instated...
Not only them, but all of those who went.
Ok. Talk about that incident of being held up in South Africa. Was that the first time that you had been held up?
It was the first time that I was held up, yes.
My bags would have been packed and I would have been on the first flight home.
Not necessarily, you know. I got to South Africa about three days before the first Test match and Ali Bacher sent a driver for me at the airport, then we spoke on the phone.
I was in South Africa before, in 1991 when Mandela was released and they formed the United Cricket Board of South Africa. They had invited one ex-cricketer from the West Indies which was Garry Sobers and two journalists from the West Indies, I was one, Tony [Cozier] was one. It was one cricketer, one journalist from all the Test playing countries but I think I was invited as a second West Indian because I had a lot to do with Ali Bacher, Joe Pamensky in the days when they were not in Test cricket.
I used to do interviews with them in London when the West Indies played there because I had always believed, like Frank Worrell, that the West Indies should have played against South Africa if they were allowed to. I didn't believe in separating. I believed that sports bring people together, so when other people ignored them, I used to speak to them, did interviews with them. So I believed that they probably invited two West Indies because Cozier was one and I was one.
On that trip in 1991, they had formed a cricket club in Soweto, the idea of spreading cricket. So I said to him that night in 1998 that I would like to go to Soweto to see what is happening now with that cricket field. He said fine. He told me that he would send a driver for me to take me to Soweto. The morning I got up, my phone rang and it was Pat Rousseau; he had arrived the night before with his wife. We went to breakfast and he said "what are you doing today, Tony?" and I said I want to go to Soweto to look at the place. He asked me how I was going and I told him that Ali was organizing to get a driver to send me. He said "no man, the South Africa Cricket Board has given me a car and a driver and we are going out there so why don't you come with us." So he called Ali, told him not to bother send the car, I would go with them.
It was Pat and his wife, myself and the driver. We got there, came out of the car, nobody is there. We saw a lady and we walked out on the field, just looking, and we are coming off now and I am in front beside Pat's wife. Pat is behind us with the driver. They are talking and all of a sudden I didn't hear them. I didn't hear them. So I turned right to look behind to say "what happen to you guys?" and when I did that there is a gun in my face and the guy just came across and put us down ? this was midday you know, hot hot hot midday ? put us down on the asphalt because we had come off the field now and going towards the car.
I was scared at the time but after that, really...I know that Nelson Mandela spoke to Rousseau and apologized, Ali spoke to me and somebody ? I don't remember who ? asked me not to write anything about it and I remember my words. I said "no I wouldn't do that. Where I come from, this thing happens and I wouldn't like somebody to come to Jamaica and do that because it happens." One of the things I remember is people calling me from radio stations in Australia and England and I tried to put them off and one guy said to me "Mr Becca, please remember you are one of us you know!" (laughing) I'll never forget that.
Fast forward to the 2003 World Cup in the same country. You had previously written that Lara shouldn't have been selected and I am sure everybody wanted your head. When you saw him making that 116 in the opening match which we won, what were you thinking..."maybe I was wrong?"
No, I wasn't thinking I was wrong because I would never, ever question Brian Lara's presence on a West Indies team because of his skill. There is no question about that. From I saw Brian Lara playing a youth match, Trinidad against Jamaica at Kensington Park years and years ago, I knew that he was something special and he has not disappointed. Lara, Sobers, Richards are undoubtedly, aside from George Headley, are undoubtedly the greatest West Indian batsmen of all times so I could never say that.
Would you mention Lawrence Rowe in that group?
No, I wouldn't put Lawrence in that group. I think he is the best batsman that I've ever seen in terms of the art of batting, but in rating people as great and the greatest, I wouldn't put him in that. He didn't achieve enough.
So Lara's skill is not the problem. It is the other aspects.
It is the other aspects and at one time I would blame him for it and right now I don't blame him for it you know, right now I blame the people who allowed him to get away with what he got away with. I think if they had spoken to him, dealt with him ten years ago, he would have been a different player. But I think he has been allowed to get away with so much.
As I said it's not so much him, but it has probably reached a stage where his presence affects the team; not that he's doing anything wrong, or bad but that the fellows sort of, because of what has happened and what he has got away with, the younger players on the team probably say 'hey well, whatever he does I can do too" and it's interesting that if you look closely at the performance of the West Indies team and the times that Lara has not played, the team has done better than when he plays, which is peculiar because he in the team would make a big score, but when he doesn't play, other players seem to do well. And maybe it's because he is there and you always say...
I shouldn't interrupt you, but isn't that probably because of the same skill factor? They know that he's going to make the bulk of the runs, so they don't bother?
No I don't think that. When you speak with some of the players, there is something there...
So there is a mental/psychological aspect?
Right, which affects their own performance.
Is that your opinion, or is that your opinion based on what you know to be a fact from the other players?
When I look at the West Indies team when he is in and when he is not, I don't see the fighting spirit that I see when he is not in it. There have been the odd times you know. I mean when he played that innings against Australia at Bridgetown and the one before that at Sabina Park, there is no question about that. But generally speaking, I don't see a fighting spirit in the West Indies team when he is in it as when he is not in it.
Still on Lara, after two world records, would you still drive four hours to Jarrett Park, Montego Bay to see Lawrence Rowe even if Brian Lara were playing at Sabina Park?
Lara's two world records, Lara's double centuries and many centuries...as I said that put him in the company of the greatest batsmen of all times. I have never seen, probably with the exception of Frank Worrell, a batsman with the grace and the style of Lawrence Rowe. If God could let me be born again and ask me "would you like to be a batsman?" I would say yes, if he would allow me or make me able to bat like Rowe.
So two world records, great. Because of that, he may be not only one of the four best in the Caribbean, maybe one of the six best in the world of all times, but I would still, if Sobers and Richards and Lara are batting at Sabina Park and Rowe is batting at Montego Bay at Jarrett Park, I am going to get in my car and I'm going to drive down there.
Well you have Highway 2000 now so it won't take four hours.
Right (laughs) The only other batsman I've seen that I've loved as much as Lawrence Rowe was Rohan Kanhai.
What did you think about Rowe going to South Africa?
Early on, I said that I didn't believe in mixing politics with sports, and that the West Indies, if it was possible, should have played against South Africa because I think sports can do a lot of things to bring people together, bridge gaps and so on. I was invited to go to South Africa with the rebel team, the first one that went and I would love to have gone.
If it had been left to you alone, you would have gone?
Yes, and this is the thing with Rowe going. I believe that as a cricketer, Rowe had a right to go to South Africa. I still believe that some of the changes that have happened in South Africa happened because the rebel team went there. When university students and black people on a whole in South Africa saw these fellows who looked like them, eating at the nicest hotels, swimming in the nicest pools, they probably said 'but they are like me so if they can do it why can't I?'
Why I didn't go to South Africa is because my government was against me going to South Africa and I believe that as a Jamaican citizen, I should respect the bidding of my government. I travel on a Jamaican passport and I would never like to go anywhere in the world as a Jamaican, something happens to me and my government turns its back on me so I am not going to turn my back on them.
So while I supported Rowe's right to go to South Africa as a cricketer, I did not agree with him going because of all the problems that were around because of all the governments in the Caribbean saying 'no don't go we are against it', with the Mandela situation saying no don't come.
I think he should have listened and he should not have gone to South Africa. I said it at the time. I remember on radio people saying to me "but is your friend, you're going to turn your back on him" I said 'no I am not going to turn my back on him' but I still believe he shouldn't have gone.
