Spooky goings on rattle Bangladeshis
By Simon Briggs
(Filed: 16/06/2005)
The Bangladeshi team are glad to be back in the metropolis for today's NatWest Series opener at the Oval. As representatives of one of the world's most densely populated countries, they found the windswept moors around Chester-le-Street rather eerie, especially when they discovered that Redworth Hall - their country house hotel for the week of the second Test - had a long history of ghost stories.
Anxiety deepened when the players came across the hotel newsletter. Tracing the tragic tale of Redworth's 18th century landowner Lord Surtees and his mentally ill child, it claimed that: "The laughter and crying of children is often heard in the great hall area."
Already spooked into sleeping three to a room, the Bangladeshis were reduced to jelly when a white spectre was glimpsed outside their windows, accompanied by the ghastly sound of a child's crying. In true Scooby Doo fashion, team captain Habibul Bashar rushed out and unmasked the villain, who turned out to be fast bowler Mashrafe Mortaza armed with a bedsheet and tape recorder. But that was not quite the end of the story, as Redworth general manager Paul Mandeir explains.
"They must have played it pretty loudly," Mandeir said, "because a lady staying in a room nearby told me her husband woke up in the middle of the night holding both hands out in front of him. Two days later, this man had a heart attack - which his wife attributed to the shock of hearing the 'ghost'. Thankfully, he seems to have made a good recovery."
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