Things hit you in the night like a falling stone – worry, grief, sickness, all seem worse when accompanied by darkness and the stark numbers on a digital clock. The exception to this rule is semi-slumbering while listening to a cricket Test match from the other side of the world, a surprisingly restful activity even if England are doing one of their periodic explosive‑box experiments. What you pick up during these semiconscious moments stays with you for a long time – all the more so when you’ve had to get out of bed to do a night-time over-by-over shift.
OBO cricket coverage has been a Guardian website institution for most of this century, a natural step up from flicking over to Ceefax, which had its own peculiar magic for cricket fans and whose greatest triumph came just as it was about to be overtaken by the internet, broadcasting breathless slow-moving scorecards as India beat Australia in the almost-greatest-series of all in 2001.
The Guardian, which combines its website with the Observer, kickstarted its experiment with OBO in 2002 when India toured England, and it has grown at universe-expanding proportions ever since. On 14 July this year Tim de Lisle’s and Rob Smyth’s Cricket World Cup final coverage – a work of genius that came to a thrilling climax at the same moment as Djokovic and Federer were heading for a Wimbledon men’s final tiebreak – smashed all OBO records, with millions of views on the website.
“And that, ladies, is goodnight,” wrote Rob as he tied up the loose ends before going off to lie down in a darkened room. “Cricket has nothing left to offer and will now cease to exist as a sport.”
Helming the OBO is a peculiar mixture of panic and pleasure. Often it goes off on a tangent, led by correspondents who have emailed in from around the world – which is the wormhole we’ll crawl down now. It has a seasonal theme, I promise.
The night of 22-23 November was a chilly one. When I woke for my 1.40am shift and shuffled downstairs New Zealand were in the process of patting a strangely listless England attack around; Colin de Grandhomme and BJ Watling both had fifties.
The stage was set for some fairly relentless cricket. A reader from New Zealand wrote in to say that in the afternoon he was taking his children to see Father Christmas, who was due to land in Auckland in a helicopter while dispensing lollies from his pockets – a fine example, we would later find out (cultural exchange has been a huge boon of the OBO), of the great antipodean lolly scramble.
This then inspired another Christmas-themed email, from a reader who had gone to Villa Park on 13 December 1998, and watched in horror alongside 39,000 other fans as RAF parachutist Nigel Rogoff’s half-time jump, while dressed as Father Christmas, went horribly wrong. Rogoff accidentally clipped the roof of the stadium as he descended and fell 100ft, his parachute a silken, useless tangle on the ground beside him. The email concluded: “I think the Santa parachutist survived, but with life-changing injuries. Terrible to see.”
It was such a shocking tale but I couldn’t follow it up as the overs relentlessly ticked on. Luckily another OBO reader, this one in New York, had some time on his hands and dug up an article in the Birmingham Mail. He reported that the parachuting Santa was not only alive but very much flourishing.
Rogoff, it turned out, had been carried from the pitch that December afternoon with internal injuries, two broken legs, a broken pelvis and a broken arm, after being tended to by two surgeons who happened to be at the match. He was on the operating table within the hour and given 177 units of blood as doctors grappled with complex surgery; he would be on a ventilator for a further three weeks. When he finally regained consciousness in the new year he had to decide whether or not surgeons should amputate his left leg above the knee, which was in a bad state after he “left my patella [kneecap] on the top of the stands”. He took the awful decision to amputate.
But this is not where the story ends.
At the Defence Services Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Surrey he met a nurse called Sarah. They became friends and then fell in love, later married and appeared on Richard and Judy with their two baby boys, Harry and Oliver, who are now teenagers.
By 2002 Rogoff was circumnavigating the UK by sea kayak and hand cycle to raise awareness of the National Blood Service and the Royal British Legion. In December 2015 he and three other men set off on a 3,000-mile journey across the Atlantic, from San Sebastián de la Gomera in the Canary Islands to Nelson’s Dockyard in Antigua, the first all-amputee team – they were nicknamed Four Men, Three Legs – to row across an ocean. Some 46 days, a tropical storm, 50ft waves, sea sickness and not much food later the team arrived, very hairy, very thin and waving artificial limbs. Rogoff has also got a pilot’s licence, learned how to scuba dive and taken up paragliding, while apologising to anyone who was traumatised at Villa Park all those years ago. “They came to watch a football match,” he said, “and they saw Father Christmas bounce off the stadium roof.”
Rogoff is keen to stay out of the limelight but continues to fundraise tirelessly for limbless veterans. His is a quiet Christmas story of adversity overcome and the power of hope. It is something to hold on to as this year draws away.
