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IT TAKES ALL SORTS
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PETER
ROEBUCK IT TAKES ALL SORTS Celebrating cricket’s colourful characters
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First published in 2005 Copyright © Peter Roebuck, 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Roebuck, Peter, 1956- . It takes all sorts : celebrating cricket’s colourful characters. Includes index. ISBN 1 74114 542 2. 1. Roebuck, Peter, 1956- . 2. Cricket players - Anecdotes. 3. Cricket - Anecdotes. I. Title. 796.358 Typeset in 12/16 pt Galliard by Midland Typesetters Printed by Griffin Press, South Australia 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS Dedication Preface 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Arrivals Champions and their deeds Soaring subcontinentals Breaking barriers To be an Englishman Shafts of lightning From the Caribbean From various angles From the Dark Continent Salt of the earth Australians at work Reputations Leaving the stage Retirements Dealing with life Departures
Afterword Index
vi vii 1 22 41 62 72 92 102 118 133 150 159 182 195 206 220 231 247 250
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This book is dedicated to: Mohandas Gandhi Martin Luther King, Jnr Lech Walesa Edmund Dene Morel Muhammad Ali Seve Ballesteros And my new family members, Diamond and Tonderai, and my dogs, Mozart, Dylan and Tina
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einfeld says that research indicates people fear public speaking more than death and points out that this means they would rather be in a casket at a funeral than giving the oration. My own life has been not so much private as independent. My interest in sport rests largely upon its revelation of character. This book contains a selection of character studies in the form of reports of men in action, constructed in the hurly-burly of a press box with deadlines looming, and contemplations written in the more tranquil atmosphere of a hotel room or a desk at home. They have been arranged to reflect the passage of life, both in terms of time and geography. So the book starts with birth, more or less, and ends with death. Likewise, it begins with Sobers, or at any rate his mother, and finishes with Bradman. If not quite as accomplished as these great players, most of those in between are just as interesting. It Takes All Sorts was chosen as a title because it was manifestly true, but against the wishes of the Melbourne intellectuals who played a significant part in selecting the material. Matthew Klugman and Alex McDermott might not care for their description, because it better reflects their role in the book than their devotion to matters of the mind. Encountered during the course of the only print interview I have given (or been asked to give) in the last decade, they have subsequently spent much time trying to persuade your author to write with greater profundity. Of course, the cause was long ago lost! My erudition is not worn lightly. It does not exist. Although thwarted in this regard, Matthew and Alex continued to spend many hours in libraries, digging out articles that might be worth revisiting. Insofar as this book provides satisfaction, a lot of the credit must go to them. Likewise, I have been fortunate in my editor. In his infinite wisdom, Patrick Gallagher, the senior man at Allen & Unwin, asked Emma Cotter to oversee the project, a task she carried out with the blend of patience, persistence and perception found in all the best VII
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practitioners of this problematic craft. That she afterwards fled to France was not taken personally. I also wish to thank the newspapers and magazines that have given permission for articles to be reproduced. Changes have been made as seemed appropriate. For example, the line ‘Warne is a goose and could not dismiss my Aunt Sally’ was removed on the grounds that readers might conclude that the author was not, after all, infallible and promptly put the book aside. Most of the articles started life in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, but some first saw the light of day in The Cricketer, Wisden, Wisden Asia Cricketer and the English Sunday Times. Finally, I would like to thank readers of my various columns and books, without whom a fellow might have to stop spending his time at cricket matches and go to work!
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1 Arrivals Cricket is a game played in the mind. Give a man confidence and he will walk among kings. Drag him down and he will scurry among crabs.
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othing is more stimulating in cricket reporting than the opportunity to investigate the forces that combined to produce the player. Inevitably, sports coverage concentrates upon the careers of those involved in an ever-changing scene, yet the periods before and after are just as compelling, for then the sportsman lies naked before the examiner. Nowadays, the best time to talk to a sportsman is before fame has entered his life, with its agents, advisers and answers, or after the circus has left town, for then voice can more easily be given to the thoughts and emotions subdued in the search for acceptability. An interest in education and social history lies behind the articles included in this chapter. Most particularly, the desire arose to show that sportsmen emerge from all manner of nooks and crannies. Complacency persuades us that a blueprint can be produced outlining the correct way of raising children. Parents straying from that path are condemned and the success and evident comfort of their progeny is dismissed as the exception that proves the rule. And so every driving father is scorned and every indulgent mother is praised. History indicates that humanity is not so easily contained. Our world is full of magazines and advertisements portraying a contented 1
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world, diverting our eyes from the struggles that take place everywhere, even within those same walls once the illusion has been removed. In each study here the aim was simply to convey the truth without preconception. Bear in mind that these young men made the grade. Sometimes it is a tale of triumph over adversity, sometimes a continuation of an upbringing untouched by insecurity. Always the stories reflect the richness and variety to be found in life and the way in which the determined and gifted child can overcome. From Garry Sobers to Dewald Pretorius, from Tatenda Taibu to Bas Zuiderent, from Waddington Mwayenga to Hansie Cronje, from Sachin Tendulkar to Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the range and richness of the backgrounds detailed here is vast. From daily beatings to a mother’s love, from a thin mattress to a feathered duvet, from a backwater to the mainstream, from a village to a bustling city, the variety bears testimony to the possibilities of the human spirit. By chance, most of the youngsters mentioned in this chapter are African or Indian. But, then, that is where rawness endures, where the challenge is sharpest. Repeatedly, Western writers impose their own standards, yet their world too is full of desperation. All of the youngsters included in this section survived their raisings. The abused Afrikaner had a miserable time, while the spoilt Dutch boy is not exactly full of cheer, but the rest made their way from family to the fraternity of sport. Apart from Dewald Pretorius, none of the boys thought they had overcome any serious hardship. Poverty was a shared experience and not peculiar to them. Moreover, their expectations of life had not been raised by those convinced that constant happiness is no mere pipedream. Garry Sobers’s mother was wonderful, while Chanderpaul’s relations were obliging and proud. Both continued to lead lives of high simplicity. The Ricky Ponting interview was a bit of luck. Upon returning to Australia after six months overseas, I rang Kerry O’Keeffe in an attempt to catch up. Kerry mentioned a lad from Tasmania who was worth watching and, as it happened, was playing at North Sydney Oval that very day. My newspapers were surprised that their correspondent’s first story of the summer concerned an obscure 17-year-old from Launceston, but published it anyhow. Most of the rest of these articles were the result of relationships 2
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built during coaching trips to Africa and were, like many of my articles, as much about injustice as sport. But, then, cricket is a means whereby youngsters can explore their talent and express their courage, while older observers remaining within its precincts use it to explore the wider interests that sooner or later enter the minds of even the most single-minded kicker of leather or hitter of catgut.
Sir Garry’s mum It was, in some respects, a pilgrimage. A visit to Sir Garfield’s mum. A phone call had been enough. ‘Mrs Thelma Sobers?’ . . . ‘Dat’s right.’ . . . ‘Sir Garry’s mum?’ . . . ‘So they say.’ ‘Come tomorrow,’ she said, ‘any time at all.’ And so we did, our knock being answered by a tall, thin, chuckling, energetic, hospitable lady, a little dotty perhaps, and worried about the camera. ‘I don’t photograph too well,’ she said. It was, we were to discover, her only vanity. There was no other sign that she had raised the greatest cricketer ever to set foot on this earth. Thelma lives in a simple home with her granddaughter and greatgranddaughter, spends her time listening to the races, laughing and watching television. Until recently, she lived on her own, but she’s getting on a bit, 86 years young, and the family wanted to take care of her. Not that she’s ill or aching or anything of that sort. Forgetful, perhaps, but that’s about it. Full of fun, though humble, and as gentle as can be. Sitting down to talk was not easy for her. Like a bird, she wanted to twitter around, and her eyes and hands were restless even as she settled. She had raised Garry and five other children (a sixth died in childbirth) on her own, more or less, helped a little by her mother and by a small pension paid after her husband’s death. He had died during the war, a torpedo sinking his ship as it took sugar and bananas to Britain. ‘I tell him,’ Thelma says without any hint of anger, ‘if I was he I wouldn’t go nowhere. But he like the sea. He said he had to go. He had to work for the chil’ren. God take him away.’ He was the churchgoer, a serious and just man, who never gambled. She was vital, easygoing, and her famous son took after her. 3
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Thelma did not remarry, concentrating instead upon raising the children who had ‘come along one after another. My home was always full of them. They had me all of the time.’ Their home was lit by an oil lamp and warmed by a coal pot. There was no iron or fridge or electricity. Meat was salted and kept in an icebox. ‘It tasted real nice.’ Yams, potatoes and porridge were put upon the table. But this is no tale of hardship. They were a happy family, lively and loving. The eldest went to sea and the youngsters played their sport. Garry was four when his father passed away. Sometimes Dad had brought balls ‘back from the sea’ and the boys had played with them, in the road outside their house at first, and, when they were old enough, in the nearby field. ‘He loved the ball when he small,’ Thelma recalled. ‘He study a little, but he live for cricket. I couldn’t do anything with him. Cricket had he all the time. He wanted to play bad. They couldn’t get he out.’ Not that she tried to drag her son away from sport. She likes cricket, enjoys listening to it on the radio. But she prefers racing. Thelma was lucky with her children. ‘They never worry me. Some chil’ren, they fight. We had none of that. They never go against anybody at all.’ Soon enough, people began to take notice of Garry’s cricket and the Police Club signed him up, saying he could play in their band. No one recalls seeing Garry playing an instrument, though; only cricket. Sometimes, to get a game, he would cycle across Barbados and play under an assumed name. He would lash the bowling all around until a friend wandered past and called, ‘Hi, Garry!’ whereupon everyone would twig him. Then an umpire would give him out. And Garry had lots of friends. Mrs Sobers did not interfere with her boy’s cricket, had no reason to. This is no fierce matriarch driving her son in the absence of a father. Rather, a likeable mother, twinkling and loving, letting her offspring loose upon the world. She has only seen him play two or three times. Thelma remembers Sir Frank Worrell and says he was a great man. He ‘wanted Garry to take up the captaincy, but he didn’t really want to. He never did it.’ Daughter Sonia points out that Garry did, in fact, lead the region for some time. This surprises Thelma. ‘Dat right?’ she asks, and laughs again. Golly, her son had captained the West Indies. She’s not the sort to make a fuss. 4
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When they wanted to fly her to London in 1975 for Garry’s This Is Your Life, she resisted. ‘I don’t like aeroplanes or any of that. I don’t even like the sea much.’ Eventually they talked her into it. Moved and surprised to see her, Garry asked, ‘How did you do it?’ A picture forms of a sweet upbringing in one of the poorer parts of St Michael’s, an upbringing that produced a balanced, eventempered son. Thelma is remarkable because she is unaffected, almost unaware. But then, of course, they say the same about Sir Garfield. ‘He hasn’t changed a bit,’ they say. Sometimes they wish he had.
The fisherman’s son As Shivnarine Chanderpaul, a waif with a pixie’s face, was stroking his way to 62 on a Test debut made on his home pitch in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1994, a female voice cried out across the ground, ‘If this Chanderpaul think he marry a foreigner, he don think again.’ Another woman, selling biscuits and sweets by the side of a potholed road, said, ‘I like dis boy, he so young and he play all de shots.’ And it was the Afro-Caribbeans who invaded the pitch as the frail teenager of Indian descent reached his fifty. Guyana had taken Chanderpaul to its heart. He is a local lad, born into a humble fisherman’s family in a fishing village, Unity, an hour’s drive along the sugar-beet coast of a country whose population hugs the seas, the interior being thick with forest. Unity is a subsistence village; its wooden houses are built on stilts and its hospital and leper colony closed long ago, times having been hard in Guyana. Apart from a small field, it has no sporting facilities. Yet Unity has produced two Test cricketers—Colin Croft and Shivnarine Chanderpaul. The latter’s cricketing pedigree was promising, if not immaculate. Kemraj, his father, played good cricket and kept wicket to Croft, who lives a sand wedge away. Both uncles played for strong clubs and Davi, his sister, wielded a fine bat. ‘They could pelt it as hard as they like and she stand up. But her shoulders slim and there no ladies’ cricket round here,’ recalls Kemraj. From the start, Chanderpaul was a cricketer. ‘When he in his mother’s belly she bowl to me,’ says his father, whereupon Uncle 5
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Martin adds, ‘When he a boy I soak de bat and he drink de oil.’ Thereafter, it seems, a life in cricket was inevitable. At the age of eight, he started practising in the local community hall, which is not as posh as it sounds. ‘I start he inside,’ says Kemraj. ‘I heard Kanhai practised on concrete. It’s the same idea. We got our own calculations here. Finally, we had to stop because de damage to de balls got expensive. So I took he outside.’ But outside there were no nets, no pitch, just a small field of rough grass upon which goats and cows periodically grazed. Undeterred, they rolled and cut a pitch and sewed a net from the ones Kemraj uses every day to catch bottlefish for the overseas market. The wicket remains muddy and bumpy. ‘It’s all dis rain, and cows and people walking through,’ Kemraj says. By now Chanderpaul was batting three or four hours a day. He’d go to school with his bags and bat and ball, throw his bags away and run to the nets. ‘The teacher wasn’t pleased,’ Kemraj says, ‘but he pleased now.’ At thirteen, the boy left school. ‘He play cricket all de time anyhow,’ says his father. The entire village was behind him, volunteers bowling morning, noon or night, the boy practising in rain or shine. On match days, they’d crowd around him so that he hardly had room to breathe. Long ago, he learnt to live with pressure. Kemraj used to talk to his son late into the night. ‘I tell he to watch the footwork of Kallicharran. I tell he Gavaskar never go out in de nineties. I tell he, if you afraid get hit, stop playing de game. Little children go out and play all kinds of things. I tell he marbles never carry you nowhere. He concentrate on cricket since he small.’ Taking his father’s advice, Chanderpaul began to run 40 times around ‘de ball field’, and decided to aim for the top. His father said he must try to play for Guyana while still a youth and then to ‘knock down de door of de West Indies so he can go in’. Chanderpaul rose quickly, joined the prestigious Georgetown Cricket Club, scored 117 on debut and left saying ‘something wrong wit my batting’. He did not like club practices because he could bat for only ten minutes, compared with three hours at home. But he persisted, and word of him soon spread. By now we’d drunk lots of coconut water and talked for hours and it was time for a lunch of rice, chicken and roti. Then Chanderpaul 6
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wandered in, for it was the rest day. He had come home on one of the minibuses upon which all except the rich travel, but he had not had to pay his fare. Chanderpaul is shy but ready to smile. He was a little embarrassed that his relatives were displaying an exercise book with cuttings glued in. He confirmed he didn’t like getting out, saying, ‘if ball hit me, nothing wrong. Can’t out.’ He added, ‘When I get mad, I hook off de front foot.’ He sleeps in a small room with a mosquito net, a chest expander and lots of cricket bats. He had not expected to play in the Test and thinks ‘reaching de side is one thing, staying in it is de main thing’. He had been pleased to score 62, but was extremely vexed at failing to reach three figures. The sigh of disappointment when Chanderpaul lost his wicket to a long hop could be heard across Georgetown. The boy was furious, his father understanding. Already, he has achieved much. Chanderpaul knew his selection was controversial. He also knew an entire village and half a country were watching, expecting him to do well, for as his father says, ‘since he small de whole island know he’. The thin boy with a gentle smile had taken it all in his stride, and scored 62 in his first Test. He is a determined, level-headed youngster and more will be heard of him.
Young man in a hurry Ricky Ponting may be the best thing since thick-cut marmalade. He is seventeen, wears a tiny, defiant goatee beard, a shadow of a moustache, has a pale face and feet that skim across the turf. Already he is a batsman of intuition, power and confidence, one with a sense of stillness and space and a glint in his eye that belies his origins in Launceston, the country cousin of a country cousin. Last year, aged sixteen, he was the second highest scorer in the Australian under-19 carnival, two runs adrift of Anthony McGuire of Wollongong, both players averaging 60. As a 12-year-old he scored 100 and 70 in an under-16 carnival, at eleven he hit four hundreds in five innings during an under-13 Cricket Week. He admits all this 7
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in the quiet, matter-of-fact voice of a bloke who can’t stand fuss but is not afraid of his record, or of the treacherous step between promise and fulfilment. He can certainly bat. Colleagues call him ‘Sachin’, after Tendulkar, and one says he is ‘easily the best cricketer of his age group in the country’. A week ago he scored 150 as the Cricket Academy trounced Queensland’s Second XI. Runs did not flow so freely afterwards against NSW, but he did play some searing back-foot shots and straight drives, did once move out to a spinner and, finding himself short, used arm and wrist not to scotch but to guide gently past midoff to the fence. He batted with maturity in the four-day game until being given out caught behind for 37, while in the 50-over contest he forgot the old adage that ‘it is with our passions as it is with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters’. Since April, Ponting has attended the Academy in Adelaide. Leaving school early did not worry him because he was not a dedicated scholar. ‘It wasn’t much of a contest between homework and cricket training. I copped it a few times, but mostly got away with it. I left school as soon as I could,’ he says. By sixteen he was working as a groundsman and as a cricketer, representing Tasmania at under-17 and under-19 carnivals. He is mindful that good and bad springs from his birthplace. ‘You get noticed more quickly in the sticks,’ he says. ‘But we don’t play positively enough in Tasmania because we don’t think we’re as good as they are. Take our under-19 game with Victoria last year. At tea we needed 100 with six wickets left and lost by three.’ From his neck hangs a miniature cricket bat and in his eye is a look that says ‘and that won’t happen again’. After his outstanding under-19 carnival, Ponting was invited to attend the Academy in Adelaide, which now runs from April to December, thereby allowing students to return to their clubs and states. Ponting was picked to tour South Africa last autumn and found it ‘sensational, seeing other ways of life, seeing how the blacks are treated, which isn’t good is it? We did some coaching clinics and they’re certainly talented. If they get the opportunity.’ Then it was back to Adelaide and early mornings, swimming and training, and practising cricket in the afternoon. Ponting believes his fitness has ‘picked up a lot’ and he’s also found the psychological 8
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instruction valuable. ‘I didn’t use to think about it a lot, about having little goals through the day but feeling happy with yourself as you walked off if it had gone well. It sounds nothing but it means something to me.’ It has not all been muscle and sweat. Ian Chappell taught him to attack spin by using his feet to dominate, and Rod Marsh has also given a tip or two. Not too much coaching, though, because there is no blueprint. Not all coaches agree with that. My old Somerset coach once told a boy he was holding the bat wrong. ‘But sir,’ said the boy, ‘this is how Don Bradman held it and he scored lots of runs.’ ‘Yes, lad,’ replied the coach, ‘but imagine how many he’d have scored if he’d held it right.’ In many respects, Ponting is a typical young Australian. He may be just the cricketer Tasmania and Australia needs, aggressive and exciting. But it is a long and rocky road.
A young man seeking a better life Waddington Mwayenga has taken five wickets for 21 runs for Zimbabwe’s under-19 team in the tournament taking place in New Zealand, a youth World Cup no less. According to reports, he is ‘a young pace bowler of admirable accuracy. Always on the spot, he ripped through the top order, bowling his 10 overs straight through.’ Even against stronger opponents than Kenya he has held his own. He is a promising bowler, Waddington, a tall 17-year-old with a rhythmic action capable of landing the ball on his country’s shrinking dollar. But his achievements go beyond the matter of bowling figures and even the manifest qualities of the young man in question. Waddington sleeps on the floor in a small, hot room, between elder brother Allan, no mean bowler himself, and young Nicky, an engaging individual currently negotiating the hurly-burly of adolescence. The Mwayengas live in a stone shack amid a cluster of similar abodes tucked away behind the plusher buildings of a private school in Harare, St John’s College, an establishment attended by Murray Goodwin and Scott Brant. Mr Mwayenga works as head of grounds at the school that provides his home and can be seen rolling the 9
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wickets at dawn or playing soccer with his workers in the lunch hour. He is a grave, occasionally laughing man who has found a job, fed his family and educated his sons. Previously, Waddington and his brothers attended a state school several miles away and at first light began the journey on foot, carrying books and sometimes kit. It was a common experience. They are goodnatured fellows, full of laughter yet with a slight hurt lingering beneath the surface, the hurt of those who seek an explanation. Their faith is strong and in the African way they show respect for elders and education. Their family is warm and possessed of a quiet yearning. Soon the middle son passed a few exams and was offered a place at the school where his father worked. Doubtless the school wanted to help a valued employee while strengthening its cricket team. Money was found for these purposes. Although Mr Mwayenga insisted that his boys attend to their studies, he realised the possibilities to be found in sport. From their earliest days, Waddington and his brothers practised in the school nets, using the roughest balls and rudimentary bats, or those discarded or bestowed by wealthier children. Not long ago, a black school’s First XI was stunned to see an opponent changing bats mid-innings. This fellow had two bats? Allan lacked the special talent needed to secure a place in the training squads. Waddington improved as he grew, and did both by leaps and bounds. He took wickets for the school, turned up in his blazer and kept his counsel, for he does not say much. At night he’d return to sleep alongside his brothers. He has a dignity about him that runs in the family. Next, Waddington was chosen for the under-19 trials, where his efforts were almost rewarded. A year later, he was back and this time his stamina, bounce and pace were recognised. When his inclusion in the squad was announced, a beam fell upon his father’s face. That night, Mr Mwayenga and I went back to his shack and drank Castle beer and an altogether livelier concoction contributed by the proud parent.
Sachin’s early days Sachin Tendulkar has always had his feet upon the ground. He comes from a professional family and might have become a lawyer had not 10
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cricket claimed him. Not that he was a dedicated student, for he could not wait to return to the fields. He was fortunate to be raised in a close family in which learning was respected and sporting prowess kept in its place. Happily, Tendulkar’s father also had the wisdom to encourage his son to play cricket and even advised him to pursue the game, pointing out that ‘there are thousands of lawyers and only a few truly gifted batsmen’. From the start, Tendulkar was devoted to the game. In his early days, he’d join hundreds of boys for coaching at the famous nursery in Shivaji Park, where the fundamentals of the game were drilled into generations of boys, including Sanjay Manjrekar, Ajit Wadekar, Sunil Gavaskar and Vinod Kambli. Shivaji Park was, and remains, typically Indian. Those arriving early for practice might find a light mist hanging over a park about twice the size of a proper cricket field. They would see old-timers walking around the park on their morning exercise and were advised to take off their shoes and join them because walking barefoot in the dew was deemed good for the soul. Sometimes the RSS, the militant wing of the Hindu fundamentalist party, would be completing its drills. In summer the earth was hot, baked red and full of pebbles, but after the monsoon it was lush and fresh. Ramakant Achrekar and Das Shivalkar were the presiding coaches. Achrekar instilled the finer points in a select group of older boys and is remembered as Tendulkar’s first coach. Shivalkar has been forgotten but did most of the early work, coaching the boys till they reached ten, whereupon the cream of the crop were passed on to his superior. Shivalkar was a character. He would turn up in slippers and a long shirt and sometimes his students swore there was a whiff of alcohol in his breath. As David Innis, a contemporary, recalls, though, he could ‘bowl a wicked off-cutter and ran a hard school’. As the only Christian in the group, Innis was often made captain. He was also more willing than his shy Indian friends to change and shower in the rudimentary ‘pavilion’ that was Shivaji’s only building, a rough construction in the corner of the field where, for a small fee, the boys could deposit their kit and school clothes till practice was over, whereupon, by way of replenishment, they could go to a little stall to buy sweet tea, puffed rice, buttered buns and, for those with money, an omelette spiced with peppers hidden in its folds. 11
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Practice started at 6 a.m. as Shivalkar split the boys into pairs. Soon matches began and everyone was given a chance to bat. According to Innis, the rules were simple. ‘Whether you hit the ball or not, you had to run. If you didn’t, you were out.’ Tendulkar was in his group, and swiftly learnt to find the gaps. About twenty games would be played at the same time and a lad fielding at third man had to keep his eyes open because he was also leg-slip in another contest. Fieldsmen kept their ears open for calls of ‘Look!’, an abbreviation of ‘Lookout!!’ whereupon everyone in the area covered their heads. Even then Tendulkar’s dedication was legendary. Innis recalls arriving early one morning and chatting to his coach when a small, curly-haired child appeared complaining that the ‘maalis’ would not put up the nets until six and could Sir Shivalkar please tell them to put them up or alternatively authorise him to erect them himself? A few years later, Tendulkar travelled through the night with a youth team, arrived at their destination at 3 a.m., practised in the corridors till dawn and then woke up his coach at 5.30 and said he was ready to go to the ground as he was not happy with his batting. In those days his captains and coaches used to send him to third man because he was full of suggestions and it was the only way to keep him quiet. Shivalkar coached Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli and wondered which might rise furthest. Kambli used to hop onto a lorry bringing fruit and vegetables to the markets. Shivalkar worried about Kambli, the precocious left-hander, because he came from a lower caste, might not be given the chances he deserved and might not be able to take success in his stride. Shivaji Park was Tendulkar’s academy. As informal matches produced so many West Indian cricketers, so these early mornings in Bombay were a testing ground for numerous aspiring cricketers in India. Innis recalls Shivalkar fondly, says he ‘loved the game, instilled an aggressive attitude in his charges, brooked no nonsense and gave of himself willingly’. Tendulkar was fortunate to meet such a man in his formative years. Shivalkar and Achrekar were lucky to have such a committed student. Doubtless it was a reward for all those early mornings as the sun rose over Shivaji Park and hundreds of hopefuls arrived eager for instruction. 12
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More young men in a hurry Dewald Pretorius This is the story of a young man named Dewald, a battered white child who opened the bowling for his country on 8 March 2002. Dewald Pretorius’s troubles began before he was born, because his father had a child by another woman and ran off with her. Even now, Dewald only knows scraps about him. His mother remarried and the stepfather was a brute who belted his stepsons every night, grabbing them and thumping them with a plank. ‘We lived in fear,’ Dewald recalls. ‘We hated it when 5 p.m. came, because he was on his way home.’ They could not bring any friends back, and no one visited. ‘We tried to run away, but they always brought us back.’ The boys ran wild and were hungry, bruised and in rags. For ten years this wretchedness continued, the mother cowering, the boys angry and despairing. And then the stepfather did not come home one night. Dewald and his brother, three years older, waited with trepidation and then relief as they went to bed unpunished. Next morning, he still wasn’t back so they went to school. ‘After two or three lessons, the headmaster called us in,’ Pretorius remembers, ‘and told us he’d been murdered. It was hard not to be happy.’ He pauses and adds, almost reluctantly, ‘We hated him. There is no other word.’ Care became an issue and counsellors appeared. Fearing separation from their mother, the boys refused to see the doctors so the police were called and they were taken away, passing their mother and screaming as she slumped on the pavement. The boys were taken to a ‘place of safety’ and stayed there for seven months till their case was heard. It was a violent place. Every Sunday, the lads were made to fight till one bled and then the victor fought till he bled and so on, seniors urging them on, supervisors turning a blind eye and no complaints allowed, for they brought retribution. Next the Afrikaner youngsters were put in a hostel in Kroonstaad, their home town in the Free State, where Dewald stayed till he was thirteen. Officials decided they could not live with their mother because they ‘looked hungry’, though Dewald says this was the hostel’s fault. Their mother decided her boys would be happier at an orphanage in Bloemfontein. 13
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Dewald had known no warmth or met anyone who believed in him. Both at the orphanage and at Dr Viljeon’s School, he found concerned adults who provided love and encouragement. They told Dewald, ‘You can make something of your life’, and he committed himself to passing his exams and leaving the orphanage as its outstanding product, and achieved both. His brother was not so lucky. He was sent to a reformatory and came back ‘worse’ and nowadays tramps the country in rags. Dewald found him a job, but it did not last. He says, ‘You can only help those who help themselves.’ At thirteen, Dewald discovered cricket and ‘my whole life started then’. Friends were playing and he joined in, not wanting to return early to the orphanage. He found he could bowl faster than anyone else and was immediately put in a team, an enormous boost to his confidence. Bloemfontein is a small town and word spread about his pace and enthusiasm. Corrie van Zyl, then the provincial coach, took an interest, as did Hansie Cronje and Allan Donald, who provided guidance and help, saying, ‘You just keep going.’ Pretorius regards Cronje as the best man he has met. Pretorius took a job at Free State’s ground and practised every night, determined to play for his country. Last week he made it. Things did not go so well, but he says, ‘I promise you I’ll be back.’ Afterwards, he saw his girlfriend and then visited the orphans. Pretorius has come a long way. He worked for three years as a hostel father at the orphanage and tells the children, ‘You just keep going. You can make something of your life.’ And then he goes back to the nets, utterly determined to fight his way back into the Test team.
Tatenda Taibu and Stuart Matsikenyeri In 1995, two primary school boys went to watch their country play Pakistan at Harare’s main cricket ground. Accompanied by their friends from the poorer parts of town, the boys cheered as Zimbabwe recorded their first victory in Test cricket. Tatenda Taibu, the youngest of the pair by eleven days, turned to his friend Stuart Matsikenyeri and said, ‘One day we must play together for Zimbabwe.’ Taibu has kept his part of the bargain and nowadays serves as his country’s vice-captain and wicket-keeper, a task he performs so 14
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skilfully that an umpiring mistake alone prevented him breaking a world record of his own in Perth. The only byes conceded in Australia’s massive innings came from an inside edge. Matsikenyeri has batted gamely for Zimbabwe in one-day cricket and is pressing for a place in the Test side. Taibu has thrown so many balls to him, he says, that ‘his arm must be falling off’. Taibu and his comrade grew up together in Highfields, a heavily populated suburb in the nation’s capital that contains both stone houses and tin shacks. Taibu says that it is a ‘good place’, and that he did not suffer any particular hardship. His father owned a barber’s shop, but passed away when the boy was thirteen. His mother died in 2001, leaving the teenager to take care of himself and his younger brothers. Cricket came into Taibu’s life in his junior school days. Steve Mangongo and other coaches appointed by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union were trying to spread the game in the high-density areas and Taibu liked the look of it. Mangongo, he says, ‘taught us to view life in a tough way. We had to be brave.’ His father was pleased with his newfound enthusiasm because it would help him avoid ‘drugs, alcohol and other mischief’. Meanwhile, Matsikenyeri was growing up with his parents in a police camp, where he lived until his father passed away. Soccer was his strong point, and they called him ‘Maradona’, but he was small and did not want to get roughed up by the big boys. He saw a bunch of fellows playing cricket and decided to join them. He has been playing cricket ever since, even surviving the calamity of breaking a window in his house. ‘He did not want to go home that day!’ Taibu recalls. His mother wanted him to concentrate on his books, but his father knew the game was keeping him out of trouble. Soon the lads joined forces. Helped by their friends, the boys developed their own ground. The council decided to plant trees on their version of Lord’s, a turn of events that displeased them. ‘It was not good news,’ Matsikenyeri chuckles. ‘We didn’t approve at all.’ The solution was simple. Every day, the boys surreptitiously removed a tree until the area was flat again, a strategy that resulted in numerous hidings and a satisfactory cricket arena. Thereafter, the boys would rush home from school to practise. ‘It was cricket, cricket, cricket,’ Taibu says in his well-modulated voice. Next came a 15
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scholarship to Churchill School, which has become a cricketing stronghold. Cricket, not money, was on their minds, Taibu confirms. ‘We had not even thought about the education that came our way.’ He rose to be Zimbabwean captain and man of the tournament during the under-19 World Cup. Taibu believes that better days lie ahead for him. ‘Just watch,’ he says, with a smile. He is likewise confident that Hamilton Masakadza will succeed once he returns from university. Matsikenyeri remembers their first ever practice on grass. Masakadza was hit on the eye and forced to retire. ‘Some of the boys were hurt and did not come back,’ says Matsikenyeri. ‘Hamilton was hit hardest, and he returned next week.’ No sooner had the Perth Test finished than these young men were back in the nets. Matsikenyeri is searching for a balance between technique and aggression. He knows that sometimes he gets carried away, but believes that ‘everyone has his own style. Fighting against it can bring you down.’ His foundations are strong and now it is a matter of fighting for his place. These days, Taibu and Matsikenyeri share a house in Harare and laugh when cooking is mentioned. Taibu reminds his pal of the promise made all those years ago and points out that it is ‘still to be done’. Matsikenyeri says Zimbabwe must win. He wants ‘more successes for our country because then people go around with smiles on their faces’.
Bas Zuiderent Bas Zuiderent is the youngest cricketer at the 1996 World Cup. The 18-year-old Dutchman played against New Zealand on Saturday and kept his wicket intact, as well as taking two boundary catches and generally looking like a cricketer. Next month he returns to school in the Netherlands to launch his second assault on his leaving papers. Examiners found fault with his previous attempt and said he thought too much about cricket and too little about Latin. In June it will be cricket again. He can play, too. Single-minded, passionate, raw and skilful, it had taken him only a month of practising on grass to start scoring runs in good company. Zuiderent, a tall, strong lad, had not wanted to play cricket in earlier days. ‘At twelve, I didn’t like the game,’ he says. ‘None of my friends played. Soccer and hockey were our games. Then one day 16
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my mother took me to a practice. I was so angry I almost cried. She said, “Just try it.”’ He can remember every minute of that first practice. ‘I took some catches, tried to bat and bowl. It was so enjoyable. I have some ball sense, but it wasn’t that, it was the game. Soccer is so straightforward. It’s always the same: there is the field, there is the ball. In cricket you can rise so high and fall so low.’ An intelligent boy had found a game that suited him. He sees ‘cricket as a box. Every time you play, you put something into it, but the box is never full.’ Once Zuiderent started playing, he ‘could think of nothing else’. He practised with older players, and friends thought him odd. Disregarding their opinions, he followed his calling with the utmost dedication. ‘Until I was sixteen, I was so focused, didn’t drink, wasn’t interested in girls, didn’t go out. At fourteen, everyone is drinking beer in Holland. I just wanted to do well at cricket. I was a dull boy, I suppose.’ Nor was it easy for him. His standards were higher than his contemporaries were capable of conceiving, let alone delivering. ‘I was captain of a team. It was not nice. Mothers kept asking why wasn’t their son batting, why was I bowling? They were really angry.’ Zuiderent was bewildered by this fury. He just wanted to win matches. And then came some comfort from Stephen Lubbers, the Lowlanders’ experienced captain. Lubbers heard his story and said, ‘We have a saying in Holland, “Big trees catch wind”.’ Zuiderent kept playing and improving. He grew in confidence, on the field and off it. ‘At sixteen, I started growing and started seeing girls. Now I love going out. My friends don’t recognise me.’ It did not affect his cricket. At sixteen, he represented his country in the under-19s, and last year scored 100 against Canada, pulling a muscle along the way. ‘We were playing England next day and it was our big match. I so much wanted to play, so I showed no pain in the warm-up, even did some sprints. Then the manager asked, “Are you fit?” I said, “What do you think!” He said, “You’re not playing.” We talked for thirty minutes and I was crying. I didn’t want to give in.’ He is made of the right stuff. Last week he played against Kenya in a friendly. Scored 47 and lost his wicket trying to chase the seven runs an over needed for victory. Colleagues said he should have practised his batting. It didn’t sound right to Zuiderent. He wants to win. 17
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Team-mates tell him he thinks too much, but it isn’t possible to think too much, only too badly. Zuiderent played a poor shot in the nets and thought about it all day and all night, finally awakening with an understanding of his mistake. More will be heard of this young man. After his exams, he’s off to play cricket in England (he thinks his girlfriend will understand). He wants to give his cricket and himself the chance both crave.
Hansie Cronje’s dad Ewie Cronje, the father, sits in his office at the university where he has worked for 34 years, one meeting completed, another awaiting and in between a chance for cigarettes, chips and conversation. Ewie has not talked to journalists for 22 months because everything seems to get turned around. He has been burning, though, and sooner or later the longest fuse runs out. First he talks about the start of it all, Piers and Estion Cronje, setting sail from Normandy and arriving in Cape Town on 3 September 1698, French Huguenots searching for freedom. And then he thinks about another pair of brothers, Frans and Hansie, the elder organising a walk for Jesus and ringing his mother to ask how everyone can sleep after a hundred miles when they cannot carry sleeping bags, the younger down in George and trying to rebuild his life. Ewie puffs on a cigarette, wrestling with himself, wanting to talk and not to talk. Again he thinks back to those brothers arriving in South Africa 305 years ago. Estion died before marrying and Piers is the forefather of all the South African Cronjes, eleven generations now that Frans has produced children. Piers was granted land near Paarl on the south coast and the Cronjes were farmers for 250 years until Ewie took up a position as sports administrator at the university. ‘I couldn’t farm because I played too much sport. Even now, I am an outdoor teacher.’ Gradually the Cronjes moved north, to Swellendon and then to Coleburg and, in 1819, Ewie’s great-great grandfather started hunting in the Southern Free State. Ewie’s father studied sheep and wool at the technical college in Sydney in 1925–26 and was the first 18
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South African to be asked to judge sheep and wool at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Ewie discovered cricket as a 6-year-old. When the hotel manager in nearby Bethulie raised a team to play against Brenfontein, 25 miles away, he went along for the trip. ‘I saw the game and loved it,’ he says. ‘We started playing with a tennis ball with the black labourers on the farm and later we came to Bloem to buy a cricket bat.’ He saw the Australians in 1949, went to high school in 1951 and ended up playing for the province. Naturally, his sons took up the game, and Hansie started as Free State captain when he was twenty years and 30 days old (Ewie has a head for figures).
Muleleki Nkala’s ambitions Luke Nkala has an uproarious laugh, fourteen children, a couple of wives and a son regarded as the most promising black cricketer in Zimbabwe. Muleleki, the aforementioned offspring, will not play against Australia this time because he is busy studying Shakespeare and the mysteries of higher mathematics by way of satisfying his examiners. Afterwards, though, he will return to the game he loves, a game whose books and magazines and ways he has devoured, a game his father came to know only by the sound of breaking windows. Already, the boy has played once for his country, taking the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar. Muleleki is a Matabele raised in a cosmopolitan style by a father who ‘brought me up to cope with white society. He didn’t want to shut me off.’ His life is a mixture of traditional customs and modern ways. His father makes his own beer and the sons wear ornaments and clothes signifying their tribe. But they also listen to rave music and took immediately to the white games, playing them endlessly in the garden, especially cricket, which they liked because ‘it’s different and, anyhow, the ground was too hard for rugby’. Nkala senior owns shops in the rural areas where his grinding machines were popular. Now he is pursuing ‘one of his schemes’. Obviously, he could not afford to educate his entire collection privately, but their talent was spotted and sponsors stepped forward to send the boys to Falcon College, alongside half the Zimbabwean 19
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team. Muleleki says attending a private school was important because his cricket could not have developed otherwise. He says cricket isn’t a game you can learn overnight because it involves the spirit and the mind. ‘It’s a way of thinking,’ he says. ‘It isn’t just a matter of finding talented boys and lobbing them onto the field. You need to see things the right way.’ Muleleki studied the game and practised endlessly. He watched videos, especially the film of Ian Botham demolishing the Australians in 1981. Taking his chances, he rose through the ranks and captained Zimbabwe’s under-19 side a year ahead of time. He is an all-rounder with a purposeful off-side game and a bowling action reflecting his prowess at athletics and football. His main weakness is that he is prone to injuries. Recently a luggage trolley rolled over his foot, thereby incapacitating him. Team-mates tease him about this habit of breaking down. Naturally, Muleleki realises the importance of black cricketers emerging in his country. But he doesn’t ever want to be a token. ‘It is vital that indigenous players do well, but it’s more important that the team does well. Heath Streak is a hero amongst my people. Still, it’d be good to have a few of our boys doing well because it shows people what is possible.’ Muleleki believes that the quota system has a part to play because it encourages the boys who are struggling upwards. ‘It can help in youth teams, but it’s different with first-class cricket. Then the players must be good enough. If they aren’t, they will know it. These fellows aren’t fools—choosing them ahead of better players puts them under pressure. It hurts everyone.’ He argues that the main handicap for young cricketers in Zimbabwe is a lack of exposure, and he is pleased to hear that domestic cricket is being widened to include five teams. Last year he attended the Australian academy and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Nor can rumours that he left his heart in Adelaide be entirely discounted. In January he will captain the Zimbabwean under-19 team at its World Cup in Sri Lanka. After that, he wants to attend the cricket academy in Harare and challenge for a place in the Test team. He thinks South Africa can learn from the Zimbabwean experience. ‘We’ve been independent a lot longer,’ he says, ‘and it took a long time for black cricketers to get into the team. You need to be 20
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patient.’ His uncle was in Mugabe’s first cabinet, but he keeps quiet about that. Muleleki is a determined cricketer capable of realising his own ambitions and the hopes of his people. He wants to play for his country again next year. After that, he will get married. One wife will be enough, he thinks, and just a handful of children.
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2 Champions and their deeds At the highest level, sport is not a matter of moments but a hardening of mind and body in a concerted effort to reach a peak. Only the fancy talkers think otherwise.
S
port conveys greatness in action. Whereas in the fields of academe, science and statesmanship, greatness indicates a superior intellect, with sport the matter is altogether more complicated. Not that even the greatest statesman lacks vanity, calculation and the other foibles detected in the rest of mankind. Often he seems a mightier figure in history books than in contemporary newspapers, let alone around the breakfast table. Nevertheless, sport is almost disconcertingly non-judgemental in its bestowing of gifts. As Neil Marks often remarks as he watches a cricket match unfold from the lofty perch of the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) press box, ‘God likes to play tricks on us—he gives talent to blokes without brains and nothing to those who can think.’ Whether or not the film Amadeus is accurate cannot be said, but the supposed relationship between Mozart and Salieri has many echoes in sport as the intelligent mediocrity contemplates the wanton genius. It is the aim of this chapter to show that it is not as simple as that. The characters portrayed are exceptional in many ways and not just in the execution of a particular skill. There is a lot more to sport than mere performance. It is one thing to be born with a gift, another to take it to its fulfilment. Courage is needed, for along the way failure 22
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is encountered and then comes the temptation to cut losses and to settle for something less. Only the most remarkable competitors keep chasing the end of the rainbow. Most of the rest reach a point and then settle for something less. A man’s self-esteem can only absorb so many blows. Moreover, cricket champions come in all shapes and sizes. There is no formula, except a certain hand and eye coordination and birth in a country where the game is popular. In the assessment of the successful individual, a lot depends upon interpretation. Nor is it fair to expect full maturity from a brilliant young man when it is sport itself that has removed him from everyday life and thrown him into the honey pot. Steve Waugh can be viewed in various lights, as single-minded or selfish, as generous or mean, open-minded or cantankerous, as an attacking captain or as a ruthless destroyer. Even his most fierce critics, though, concede that he had extraordinary determination. Nor was this a mere gift from the gods. Rather, it was a creation of his mind, a choice he took never to take a backward step, never to think a cause lost. Now and then, many of us rise to these heights, only to fall back next day as something goes wrong or doubt enters the mind. Waugh was different because he was always like that. His heroes told the story. Early in his career, he wanted to be Doug Walters. Later, he preferred the explorer Lord Shackleton. If he was great, it was because he chose to be, dared to be. Of course, he had also been blessed with lots of ability, much more than was generally admitted. After all, the Waugh caricature did not tolerate unusual ability. His innings at Old Trafford in 1989 contained all the elements that made him such a force in the game. Brian Lara is another case, yet his greatness as a batsman has been confirmed time and again. At his best he can achieve wondrous feats with the bat, at his worst he can seem surly and self-indulgent. Whereas Waugh’s greatest performances came in adversity, Lara was inclined to lead from the front. His match-winning innings in Barbados is recorded in this chapter alongside a colder reflection upon his character. Sachin Tendulkar and Glenn McGrath are the other players mentioned in this section. McGrath has bowled so many beautiful 23
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spells, yet his famous catch could not be allowed to pass forgotten into time. Tendulkar has long been a particular favourite and his long and careful innings in Sydney seemed to signify more than the ending of a bad patch and the silencing of his most demanding critics. He seemed to be moving from the playfulness of youth and entering a cautious world in which less reliance is placed on instinct and more upon method.
Brian Lara Brian Lara is the batting genius of the age, the third to appear since the Second World War. He has followed in the footsteps of Garry Sobers and Graeme Pollock and has much in common with them, not least a spirit that defies containment. Lara and his predecessors emerged in precocious youth and unleashed upon a game that seemed to course through their veins. Scintillating and sporting, they compiled huge scores at pace and made it appear effortless. They played strokes and innings beyond the conception of the common man. Off the field, they could not quite sustain their reputations. Admired for their cricketing feats, they have been unable to find the words and deeds to command the same attention elsewhere. It is the fate of genius to be patronised, for it discovers not the wisdom of the ages but the glories of youth. Lara has been the most frustrating of these extraordinary lefthanders because something more than genius was needed from him. West Indian cricket yearned for a man of stature and found instead a batsman of brilliance. Unwilling to trust the passing of time, clinging to youth as if it contained his precious talent, the Trinidadian resisted his maturity. No day, though, can be judged till night has fallen. Lara remains a wonderful batsman and talks more often these days and with apparent sincerity about his desire to bring West Indian cricket back from the brink. His batting remains formidable. At the ripe old age of 34, Lara continues to dazzle and occasionally to crash. Awaken his spirit and he will bat as few men have ever batted. He continues to play innings that demand the concentration and eyes of a younger man. In 1994, Lara broke the batting record at 24, and a decade later broke it again. 24
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Between times, he infuriated and delighted. Perhaps his mammoth effort in Antigua heralded the end of his personal journey and the start of his emergence as a man. After all, he has nothing more to prove, as a batsman anyhow. Lara’s career has been characterised by the contrasting forces of commitment and capriciousness. His inconsistency has mystified those incapable of batting as he can, like a bird soaring through the skies. For an unconscionable time he was held back by a fitfulness that delayed the development of the man even as it periodically tolerated the performance of the genius. Since his return from a retreat more emotional than cricketing, the Trinidadian has belatedly started to accept his responsibilities. On the way up, a man thinks only of himself and his place in the rankings. Eventually, he looks around and realises that there is more to life than runs on the board. Finally, Lara is starting to think about his legacy. Of course, he was not solely to blame for the unsatisfactory nature of his early years. His first misfortune is that he has played his cricket in the age of scrutiny, so that his lifestyle has been subjected to unsympathetic examination. Bradman’s idiosyncrasies were not mentioned. His country needed to establish itself and soften the blows of depression. Lara has played in a time of prurience and Puritanism. Lara’s second stroke of bad luck lies in the mediocrity that has surrounded him, indulging him because it depended upon his exceptional abilities. West Indian cricket lacked the strength of purpose required to absorb its prodigal son. Exquisite at the crease, Lara’s timing has let him down off the field. Self-absorption is often detected in those blessed with exceptional talent. Lara craved the freedom of youth, wanted to follow his whims as so many of the legends of Caribbean cricket had done before him. He had heard the stories. None of them were saints. In Lara the frivolous existed alongside the brilliant, as a counterpoint to it. He was a star, the only one in the West Indian firmament. Could he not act as he pleased? During his wonderful innings in Antigua in 2004, Lara seemed to be reaching beyond himself in an attempt to restore not merely his reputation but the pride of West Indian cricket. Afterwards, he pointed out that the series had been lost 3/0. Naturally, he was 25
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determined to recapture the record, yet he seemed to set about the task as much to lift his team as re-establish his supremacy. Lara has always been capable of extraordinary feats. Not even Bradman could have batted better in a series than Lara did in Sri Lanka and against Australia in the Caribbean. Yet there has been a fragility about him, a wilfulness that can produce magnificence upon the field and foolishness off it. Whatever happens hereafter, Lara will go into the books as one of the greatest batsmen the game has known. As far as epitaphs go, it is fine but insufficient. The rest depends upon the resolution of the internal conflict between the eternal child and the reluctant adult.
The greatest chase Brian Lara’s unbeaten 153 against the Australians in Bridgetown in 1999 is widely and justifiably regarded as the greatest chasing innings that Test cricket has known. Throughout this epic performance, the Trinidadian knew that he could not afford to make a single mistake. Throughout, the Australians fought for his wicket like mongrels over a bone, but Lara refused to oblige. Instead, he constructed a masterpiece of batting that turned impending defeat into sudden and unexpected victory. As ever, the innings is illuminated by its context. Before the series began, Lara had been as close to disgrace as any cricketer who has not offended a steward at Lord’s. West Indies had lost heavily in South Africa in 1999, hardly putting up a fight. There was worse to come, as his team was trounced by the Australians in the first match of this series. Lara appeared incapable of stopping the slide. At last he responded by scoring 213 in Jamaica, an innings that caught the Australians off guard and allowed the hosts to square the series. It was the start of an astonishing sequence of innings from Lara. His range was extraordinary, like an actor who plays drama, tragedy and comedy in successive performances and triumphs in them all. Australia dominated the opening three days of the Third Test. Steve Waugh set the tone with a rugged 199 as Australia scored 490. West Indies subsided to 98/6 before the fightback began with a partnership of 153 between Sherwin Campbell and Ridley Jacobs. The next day, West Indies continued its resurgence by bowling the Australians out for 146, leaving the hosts needing 308 runs to secure 26
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an incredible victory. When three early wickets fell on the fourth night, it seemed the cause was lost. Overnight Lara was 2 not out. West Indies’ position continued to deteriorate on the final morning till the scoreboard read 5/105. Now Lara made his move, slipping through the gears, pressing hard upon the accelerator, taking the corners as fast as he dared and hoping that colleagues could survive in his slipstream. Jimmy Adams obliged, defending obdurately for 170 minutes as the score mounted. Meanwhile, the ground was filling as news spread that West Indies was putting up a fight and that Lara was still batting. Gradually the tension mounted and the noise rose as spectators lived and died with every ball. West Indies suffered further setbacks and Curtly Ambrose arrived at the crease with 60 runs needed and only two wickets remaining. Ambrose rose to the occasion, defending doggedly for 82 minutes. Meanwhile, Lara drove and swept and pulled and calculated, a vibrant figure, a flashing blade and a ticking brain. Australia surged again, fighting to save the day. Lara edged and his head recoiled in relief as the ball eluded Ian Healy’s gloves. Ambrose fell and Courtney Walsh appeared, a lanky, improbable figure and not at all a reassuring sight for thousands of supporters, let alone an exhausted captain needing a further seven runs for victory—so near and so very far! Somehow, Walsh kept out a searing inswinging yorker, the ball of the series, and then the Australians must have suspected the game was up. A wide followed, and a no-ball as the bowlers strained mind and muscle. Walsh endured, Lara took strike and smashed the winning runs through cover. Only in this moment of victory did he show any emotion, not that he had much choice as team-mates hugged him. As Wisden put it, he had ‘guided his team to victory as though leading the infirm through a maze’.
Steve Waugh Stephen Rodger Waugh starts his last match for his country as the game’s most respected player. Wherever cricket is played, his name evokes the image of a man refusing to give in, a man who will not be intimidated by any opponent or daunted by any situation. His deeds 27
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have been recorded in the books and Waugh has taken care that the figures confirm his standing, because they alone walk unmolested into history. More important, though, have been the defiant innings summoned at the critical hour and the bold interventions when a match has hung in the balance. Only in these hard times can the Australian captain be properly appreciated and he has needed them as his side has needed him. Waugh is released in a crisis, drawn from himself and his insecurities so that he becomes an extrovert, a matchplayer, an actor upon a stage. In a tight spot he becomes a better person and usually prevails. Captaincy has had the same effect upon him, letting loose parts of his character that might otherwise have remained dormant. Waugh has seemed like a cricketing machine, coldly calculating every move, but it has been an illusion. Failure has only ever been a mistake away. Cricket is not a game of bat and ball. It is an internal struggle, a war waged between a man and himself. The opposition is merely a convenience. Spectators have sensed Waugh’s vulnerability and have accompanied him on his journey. Former cricketers have been harder markers because they know the darkness to be found near the heart of every player and see it nakedly exposed in Waugh. Throughout his career, Waugh has been condemned and praised to a degree beyond reason and bewildering to outsiders. Throughout his career, he has been fighting the white-anters who have been nibbling at him since he first appeared as another golden boy from Sydney. But, then, Waugh has been a cricketer of paradox. Far more than his manner suggests, he has been guided by his spirit. Although he gives the impression that ice flows through his veins, his career tells a different tale. Repeatedly, he has started badly and prospered only once the nerves have settled. He has not been a Botham jovially storming the barricades, but a shy, gifted young man overcoming obstacles. Waugh has never stopped fighting, for runs, wickets and credibility. He has never trusted the game enough to lower his guard. At once he has been the warrior walking into the furnace and the waif taking guard amid a mass of hostile mankind. At once he appears impregnable and fragile. Of course, Waugh’s background and early experiences have influenced the shaping of his character. Like so many young Australian cricketers, Waugh began in a backyard, hitting a ball dangling from 28
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string or else engaged in cutthroat contests with his brothers. At heart he has remained a backyard cricketer obliged by the times and an emerging worldliness to make concessions to correct conduct. When people think of Waugh, they forget about the family: the hard-talking, fiercely competitive parents, the twin brother whose vagueness has been a quiet protest, another brother known for his batting, smoking and impersonations and a fourth whose canny spinners helped secure a first-grade title last year. Steve Waugh is the product of a remarkable family whose strengths he expressed and whose boundaries he expanded. Of course, the same could be said of his contribution to Australian cricket. Waugh has been an astonishing cricketer whose teams win most of their matches. From schooldays onwards, he was committed to the game, and dedicated his entire character to succeeding within its confines. In many respects, his life has been typical in that youthful drive has been slowly supplanted by maturity’s widening as the various attractions of the world came into view. Waugh has been different only in the intensity of his focus. In adulthood he has managed to be both single-minded and broad-minded. Not until the captaincy of Australian cricket was entrusted to him did Waugh finally let himself loose, whereupon he emerged as an independent and radical thinker able to penetrate to the core of the game in search of its essential truths. Waugh’s captaincy has not been given its just desserts, not least by the cricketing crowd. Indeed, there has been a curious reluctance to praise his performance as a leader. But the facts speak for themselves. He has been the most successful Test captain in the history of the game. Moreover, his team has scored its runs faster than any predecessor. Waugh challenged orthodox thinking by regularly forcing opponents to bat first and by allowing players to relax both before and during matches. Attacking fields were set in one-day cricket, the green cap was worn on the first morning of matches and bowlers held aloft the ball upon taking five wickets in an innings. Nor has it merely been a matter of cricket. Waugh has welcomed families, so that team hotels resemble creches. His teams have toured with an open mind, and trips to India have been regarded not as burdens to be endured but as opportunities to play in front of wildly appreciative crowds. All this from a backyard in Bankstown. 29
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Most particularly, Waugh has been able to identify and unleash the cricket in previously unsung competitors like Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer and Andrew Bichel. It is easily forgotten that Hayden, especially, owes his career to the faith shown by a captain capable of detecting strong points in a player otherwise regarded as ordinary. Waugh has made another contribution that has been neglected, though he mentioned it at his press conference announcing his retirement and is clearly proud of it. He played a strong role in the dispute that arose between the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) and the players at the turn of the century. Of course, he was condemned as selfish and stirring. Documents were leaked showing how much he stood to gain, an old trick played by most dismal employers. In fact, Waugh risked losing sponsorship, popularity and the captaincy, and pursued the claim because he could and the cause was right. Always his outlook has been the same. If not me, whom? If not now, when? Waugh goes into retirement as a happily married and wealthy man with an outstanding record as player and captain and with a character stubborn with flaws and blessed with strong points. His career in cricket is almost over, but he has a lot more to contribute. Waugh has done his bit by the boy in the backyard and is now the master of his own destiny.
Waugh at Old Trafford Steve Waugh’s century upon a demanding Old Trafford pitch in 1997 must count among the finest of his career. Certainly, it was his best effort in English conditions. He had to fight for it, every inch of the way, because this was not the old profligate, distracted, disheartened England but a host nation focused upon its task and confident of its accomplishment. At times it seemed the pie-chuckers were throwing grenades. This was an innings embracing all of Waugh’s familiar traits: stubbornness, defiance, chiselled defence, drives punched down the ground without fuss or apparent effort, a scurrying between wickets and an occasional flamboyance outside off-stump with ears pinned back in the way of his more dramatic youth. It was a pinched, capable innings, a Victorian innings entirely without the colour of the Georgian age or the showmanship of current 30
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times. In other words, it was Waugh at his absolute peak, a discriminating appearance against which opponents hurl themselves with all the lowly expectation of a spaniel barking at a Rottweiler. Waugh’s innings could not have been more timely. Had he failed, Australia might have fallen with him, putting the Ashes upon English plates. Wickets had tumbled again as the home bowlers put to enthusiastic use a pitch livelier than had seemed likely. Throughout, England bowled with movement and hostility and only a remarkable batsman could have stood firm against this onslaught. Only a batsman of the utmost accomplishment and formidable mental powers could have protected his wicket so long with his team in such dire straits. Somehow it seemed inevitable that Waugh would score runs. He had been having a quiet time, a circumstance for which he does not greatly care, besides which Australia needed him, a call that rings loud in his ears. It’s hard to recall an appeal or a moment of serious inconvenience during those long hours of occupation. His technique was admirable. From first to last, he moved into line and drove the ball with the full face of the blade. Colleagues are more inclined to stretch forward or to angle their bats, an approach that might succeed upon a hard pitch but is powerless on such a testing surface as Old Trafford provided. Long before Waugh’s innings was completed, England must have been thoroughly fed up with the sight of that wide and unyielding bat and an opponent that gave away nothing, not even a hint of concern or fallibility. Why wouldn’t the blessed fellow lose his head just for a moment? Why couldn’t England shake his concentration? The Ashes depended upon it. And there’s the answer. Seldom have Waugh’s powers been so starkly in evidence. He appears to anticipate every ball as he walks to the crease, so that he can seem a robotic cricketer whose movements are tuned and trained. Nothing is left to chance, nothing is taken for granted. It seems a straightforward matter, but no one else can do it because no one else has such absolute control over his emotions or such a meticulously matured game. Waugh is a master craftsman with the mind of a ruthless killer. He scorns indulgence, scorns excess, refuses to stray from his own game. He sings his lines, does the job and leaves the stage the better for his withering presence. 31
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England hurled itself at this steadfast figure and repeatedly was pushed back. The bowlers searched for a crack and could find not the merest hint. Waugh was a sphinx-like batsman, a wraith with a bat, moving relentlessly behind the ball, stifling the good ones and pouncing upon anything erratic. Unerringly, he moved to 50 and, in the twilight of another chilly afternoon, he scored another hundred, pocketing the runs in the manner of a materialist putting dollars into his wallet against a rainy day that will not come. And so the performance continued, Waugh against himself, Waugh against the bowlers, Waugh upon England. The scoreboard recorded the gradual victory of the great resister. As he has done so often, Waugh gave heart to his colleagues, renewed hope in a cause that had hung in the balance.
Glenn McGrath Glenn McGrath looks like a monk, periodically behaves like an enraged chook and bowls like a Swiss clock. His idea of entertainment is to reduce the wild pig population pottering around outside Narromine, NSW. His bumper is lame, he sends down a yorker about once a week and cannot swing the ball in either direction. He has not scared anyone since his last Christmas pantomime. He is so slow that he reckons the measuring machines are crook. He cannot bat and fields as far from the action as possible. Keith Miller he is not. Oh, yes, and he is about to play his 100th Test match. On paper he is a basket case. On the field he is the best pace bowler of his generation, among the finest to appear since the Second World War. Ask any modern batsman to name the bowlers he least likes facing and chances are that McGrath will be mentioned early in proceedings. Some bowlers can strike terror in the heart. Others can dazzle. This blighter just gets you out cheaply. Of course, he has had a few things going for him, not least long limbs that allow him to make his deliveries jump like surprised cats. His wristwork, too, was outstanding even in those distant days when he was more concerned about opening cans of Spam and knocking the heads off batsmen than removing the off-bail, the 32
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days before he realised that he had been blessed with skill and not brute force. In many respects, he is the most improbable of fast bowlers, the most unlikely of champions. Everyone could appreciate Dennis Lillee with his moustache, scowl and thunderbolts. Jeff Thomson, Malcolm Marshall, Wasim Akram and the rest had something special evident to the naked eye. Beside them McGrath is a medium-pacer. But the eyes deceive and the figures tell the tale. He belongs in their company and is among the best of them. Lillee did not trouble the Pakistani batsmen in 1979. Craig McDermott perished in the graveyard that was India in 1986. McGrath averages 16 on the subcontinent and 22 overall in this age of batting. In truth he is a creation not of the body, or even the spirit, but the mind. His greatest asset has been that, from the start, he understood that his strength lay not in the extent of his abilities but in their precise application. Nature prevented him bowling fast. Try as he might, he could not get the ball down to the other end at the speed required to make batsmen hop around. And he did try. Pace bowlers resemble gunslingers. They like to create fear in the neighbourhood. But the facts had to be faced. McGrath went further, turning them to his advantage. As a result, he has not needed to change his game as he has aged. If anything, he has been a yard faster since coming back from the ankle injury that had prevented him flowing through at the crease. In the old days, he would look at the results of the speed gun and shake his head in that puzzled way that also appears when a ball somehow manages to elude his defensive bat. Now he smiles as 135 km/h is flashed on the screen. Not that it is exactly electrifying. Nor is it the speed of a man on his way out. McGrath has not lost a yard of pace as time takes its toll. He did not have it in the first place. Denied the ability to bowl fast, McGrath concentrated on mastering his craft. He became the most subtle and sophisticated of bowlers. Considering his origins and temperament, it is a remarkable achievement. It is the quality he has in common with Shane Warne, a bright spark who also grasped the need to study his calling. McGrath is an acquired taste. Every ball needs to be seen in its context. Whereas the excitement of seeing Shoaib Akhtar in full flight comes from the raw energy released, the New South Welshman offers the pleasure to be gained from following a plan from conception to 33
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execution. He depends upon the careful, considered destruction of the cornered opponent. He is ruthless and unrelenting. He might not intimidate batsmen, but he takes their most precious possession: their wicket. Often they do not quite know how. Not so long ago, Michael Atherton, his most regular victim, interviewed McGrath and asked almost pleadingly whether his nemesis had developed some cunning plan especially for him. McGrath replied that he had simply put the ball on the spot and kept it there. But it is not as easy as he made it sound, or the entire world could do it. After all, the spot is the size of a saucer and the ball must move around unpredictably, bounce steeply and defy those trying to adjust their stroke at the last instant, the technique upon which the Englishman depended. Michael Vaughan had a better idea. Stop trying to keep him out. Start counter-attacking, particularly with the pull stroke, a strategy designed to force McGrath to change his game. No one has played him better. Clearly, McGrath is much more than a medium-pacer capable of keeping a line and length. His deliveries do not move around at random. Nothing is left to chance. It is not a question of hit the seam and hope. He makes the ball respond to his desires by ripping his fingers across the stitches. It is a devilishly hard skill to execute once, let alone every ball, in both directions and at a lively pace. That is why no one else has been able to do it. McGrath’s whole has always been greater than his parts. He has been the most consistent of pace bowlers. Whenever Australia has been in trouble, the captain could throw him the ball, confident that it was in good hands. He has matched himself against the best batsmen around and usually has prevailed. If the method has not been spectacular, it has been effective. He has been, and remains, a professional attending to his duties. He takes wickets economically, leads the attack responsibly, regularly separates the openers and often dismisses the opposition’s most dangerous player. It is not a bad combination. If a statement of excellence is needed, then it came in the space of three balls during the Perth Test against West Indies in 2000. First, McGrath exploited Sherwin Campbell’s habit of shuffling across his crease with an outswinger pitched to a fuller length than usual. Brian Lara appeared. McGrath adjusted his line, slightly reduced his length 34
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and cut the ball across the left-hander. Lara disappeared. Jimmy Adams came next. It must have been tempting to try the same ball. After all, he was on a hat trick and it had been good enough for Lara. But Adams was a different case. McGrath knew that he squared up against lifting deliveries directed at his body. Pinpoint precision was needed. The deed was done. McGrath’s hat trick was a statement of greatness. Every ball was superbly conceived and executed. It was a definitive moment, a satisfying and conclusive demonstration of the abilities that have set him apart and brought him to this happy station in life. In Nagpur on 26 October 2004, McGrath had the honour of becoming the first pace bowler to represent Australia in 100 Test matches. It is no more than he deserves.
Glenn McGrath’s catch Glenn McGrath’s catch on 24 November 2002 pinpointed the continuing strength of this Australian outfit. England’s fifth-wicket pair had been mounting the sort of defiance expected from determined men with their backs to the wall. After taking an early wicket, Steve Waugh’s team had been frustrated for 100 minutes as the clouds grew more threatening. Shane Warne had been bowling around the wicket to Michael Vaughan, a mark of respect for an accomplished opponent. Clearly, the leg-spinner remembered the punishment he had taken from this batsman in the first innings and wanted to hold him in check. After an hour or so of stalemate, Warne went over the wicket and the Yorkshireman seized his chance with a sweep placed into the region forward of square. Hitherto, McGrath had been patrolling the region behind the umpire, a tranquil location where a man might graze without fear of interruption. Had the lofty paceman fallen asleep, he might have been forgiven. Had he missed this call to arms, even harsher critics would have understood. Instead, McGrath immediately sensed a chance and set off at a gallop. Hereabouts he went into a reverie from which he was not to emerge for several seconds. Meanwhile, time stood still in the stands as the parabola of the ball was followed as if it were a shell. Warne stood in position, his early hopes fading as the distance between ball and pursuer and the identity of the fieldsman became apparent. 35
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McGrath was not so easily discouraged. Upon reflection it is hard to recall him grassing a catch, but he still gets lumbered with the image of the butter-fingered paceman with big boots. Certainly the pessimists were predominant as the fateful moment approached. Long odds were being offered against the ball being reached, let alone held. Then came a blur, a dive, a long man reaching out to grab a ball an inch from the turf, a landing, a slide and then astonishment in the stands and delight on the ground. McGrath rose, grinned and dusted himself off with the air of a man offended that his prospects had been doubted.
Sachin Tendulkar For fifteen of his 30 years, Sachin Tendulkar has lived with the worship of a cricket-mad public that wants him to be infallible, ruthless and destructive, supporters inclined to forget that he emerged from a womb and not from the pages of a comic book. Fame fell upon Tendulkar at an age when most boys are eyeing up the girls, or smoking behind a shed. As a teenager, he carted the Australians all around in Sydney and Perth in displays that told of maturity and fighting spirit. Responsibility put its hand upon him before he had time to breathe and there has been no escape from its examination. Tendulkar did not have adolescence; he had a cricket match. Incredibly, he has survived the pitfalls of this perilous existence to emerge as a family man with a stable life and a couple of children. He is a more remarkable man than has been acknowledged. In many respects, Tendulkar has taught the next generation how to manage the scrutiny and opportunities experienced by those whose gifts take them at a tender age into the world of luxury. Many students of the game analyse his footwork, range of shots and the way his bat appears as broad as an elephant’s tongue. His attitude to life also merits consideration. During the course of those fifteen years, Sachin Tendulkar has become and remained the outstanding sportsman of the age. His contribution to his country’s cricket has been immense. Moreover, he represents the new India—comfortable, free from the anger that 36
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burned inside the post-colonial generations. His quiet manner tells of an affluent age and his confident blend of East and West speaks of a nation taking its place in the world and insisting that its voice be heard. No one any longer thinks of India as a land of squalor and curious customs. Rather, it is accepted as a distinctive member of an ever-changing scene. Whether he is aware of it or not, Tendulkar has played his part in this change of perception. He is cosmopolitan, has no hint of rage, does not speak of politics or regard the British as saviours or devils. He has made a lot of money and does not hide or flaunt it, preferring to concentrate on his cricket and to lead a settled life. Of course, his brilliance on the field has also been important. Curiously, there has been a reluctance to acknowledge his contribution in his home country, possibly because even more has been expected. Sometimes it seems everyone wants Tendulkar to be like them, a reversal of the usual role of the hero who has generally been the expression of our aspirations. Since no one quite knows what Tendulkar is— probably because he is simpler than we are prepared to allow —everyone seeks to put their own imprint upon him. When he fails to respond as expected, he is chastised. It is a game he cannot win. Accordingly, frustration sits beside admiration in India’s assessment of its greatest batsman. Although his mastery is conceded, his stature is questioned. Not that his batting could easily be condemned. After all, he has proven his worth often enough, with boyhood centuries in Australia in 1992 and, more than a decade later, an assault on the Pakistani bowling in Pretoria during the 2003 World Cup that counts among the most thrilling seen on a cricket field. He has scored almost 70 international hundreds for his country and played his part in building the strongest side India has ever fielded, a side capable of reaching a World Cup Final, holding the Australians on their own patch and beating them at home. From anyone else it might be considered enough. From Tendulkar even more is demanded. It is hardly fair. He is only human. At last his body is breaking. It is astonishing that his spirit did not yield long ago. If it is needed, the case for the defence of Tendulkar can easily be framed. Apart from anything else, he has contributed more to the team than mere facts and figures. The Indians used to be poor travellers. Not so long ago, they won on dustbowls in Delhi and were 37
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trounced everywhere else. Now the side is cosmopolitan and respected wherever it plays, and it has all happened in Tendulkar’s time. Does anyone suppose it is the merest coincidence? Nevertheless, a tendency has arisen in India to find fault with their leading batsman. Unfavourable comparisons have been made with the giants of the past, whose careers were seen through rose-coloured glasses. Sometimes it frustrates the observers that there is no fury in him, none of the suppressed rage that drove Sunil Gavaskar along, none of the fire that blazed inside Sir Vivian Richards. Sometimes the past is seen in an undeserved glow. People are inclined to forget that Richards and Gavaskar also had their failings and their bad days. Tendulkar can compete with most things, but no man or woman born can match an illusion. Tendulkar has been blamed for failing to win matches for his team and it is true, he does not build himself for the special occasion. Viv Richards might stroll out at Lord’s like an African potentate; Tendulkar walks out determined to do his best to help his team. And he does not distinguish between minor matches and great occasions. Might it not be a point in his favour? Perhaps he does lack the arrogance of great performers, but his restraint has allowed others to grow not so much in his shadow as by his side. Is it not possible that Rahul Dravid, Venkati Laxman, Virender Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly are in his debt? Have they not said as much? Rather than decry the champion, it is worth remembering that he has been the first batsman since Don Bradman to reduce an opposing team to the tactic of directing their deliveries a yard outside legstump. India has been lucky to find such a sportsman. His stamina has been extraordinary, and his love of the game has allowed him to avoid many complications. Had Tendulkar fallen foul of the crooks, India could hardly have recovered. Had Tendulkar become greedy or angry or political or selfish, the game could not have flourished half as well. His career tells a tale of balance and determination, strengths that have helped a simple man to survive outrageous expectations.
Sachin Tendulkar’s double-century in Sydney Sachin Tendulkar’s performance in Sydney in 2004 counts among the finest in his career. Arriving at the crease after the Indian openers had given the innings another solid start, the man from Mumbai 38
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built a wall around his wicket with a conviction that must have impressed the home captain. Batting with the utmost discipline and to a clear plan, Tendulkar collected runs carefully, denying the bowlers hope and putting his team in a powerful position. Over the years, he has played by instinct, attacking with a gusto that filled stands and scared bowlers. Now he had decided to play within himself, the better to sustain his innings and serve his team. Several breakthroughs were made during the course of this compelling effort. Never again can Indian supporters claim that Tendulkar does not score runs when his country needs them. Of course, it was all nonsense anyhow. Great players are remembered for their failures, ordinary men for their triumphs. An open-minded scrutiny of the facts reveals that Tendulkar has contributed hundreds in most of India’s victories in Test cricket. Never again can it be said that Sachin does not play long innings. Previously, he had been inclined to lose his wicket after three figures had been reached, an indication that the younger Tendulkar allowed himself to become distracted once the main part of the job had been completed. Ricky Ponting was the same till he married a lawyer. Here Tendulkar took a fresh guard upon reaching his hundred and simply continued gathering runs. Not until India was powerfully placed was the old Sachin let loose, whereupon he commenced thrashing a mediocre and exhausted Australian attack. Tendulkar will score more double-centuries in the next five years than in the previous decade. Big totals demand an acquisitive state of mind. Hitherto he has been an adventurer, a yacht responding to the wind. Now there is a certain majesty about him, so that he resembles an ocean liner making its way through the seas. He has accepted that brilliance must sooner or later give ground to middle-aged considerations. As the years go by, the eyes lose their sparkle, the feet no longer dance and the mind loses its sense of immortality. Then a man must fall back upon technique and the lessons learnt in the middle. Sachin’s innings was founded upon a rejection of risk. Realising that he had been playing shots away from his body, he eliminated the cover drive and invited the Australians to attack his stumps, whereupon he was able to collect off his pads. His opponents were taken aback by this self-denial because they had been depending upon Tendulkar’s determination to dominate. Indeed, the Aussies had 39
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preyed upon this admirable quality by pinning him down and then offering something tempting outside off-stump. Convinced that his patience must eventually let him down, the Australians plugged away, but Tendulkar was not for turning. During the course of this effort, Tendulkar did not score a single boundary between bowler and point. Only towards the end were shots in that direction even attempted. Nor did he pull or hook the faster bowlers till quick runs were needed. In short, he played the game on his terms, whereupon the beauty and mastery of his defence was revealed. Tendulkar batted with a clear mind throughout. His innings indicated maturity and longevity. A different Tendulkar was seen at the SCG, the very field upon which the younger version first drew attention to himself with an audacious attack upon a flummoxed Australian attack that included a novice by the name of Warne. In recent times, Tendulkar has seemed to be torn between recovering the spirit of that innings and allowing himself to develop a game that recognises the passing of time and the changes in his life and responsibilities. His contribution in Sydney suggested that the decision had been taken and that hereafter Sachin would be robust rather than dazzling. No regrets need be held about this change of style. Tendulkar must be allowed to grow. Nothing is harder for a sportsman than to develop as a person, because they are taken away from reality at an early age and put inside a bubble in which time and the price of bread mean nothing. Tendulkar has survived. Watching him bat may not be as exciting, but it will be satisfying.
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3 Soaring subcontinentals Few could step down the pitch to Warne. Few could late-cut McGrath. Few could bat so long in such a commanding style . . . The Australians shook Laxman’s hand. It had taken an incredible innings to bring their run to an end.
A
fter decades of neglect, Australia has in recent years undertaken numerous trips to the subcontinent and experienced many outstanding series. After a faltering start partly caused by unfamiliarity with the terrain, the Australians finally managed to win a series in India in 2004. Previously, the side had been beaten fair and square in 1998 and had narrowly lost a three-match epic in 2001, widely regarded as the most compelling in the history of the game. In the past, Australian cricketers had been reluctant to visit the region because of the hardships encountered therein. Vast crowds, adulation and the opportunity to play in challenging conditions were regarded as insufficient consolation for the dust, rats and queasy stomachs that were also part of the bargain. Sometimes dodgy umpires were added to the pot, though Australia was hardly in a position to complain about that. As a result, most Australian players and officials regarded the subcontinent as a place to be avoided. Not that everyone took the party line. Greg Chappell counts among his regrets that he did not get the chance to play Test cricket in India. Not that conditions were the only barrier to entry. Australians were inclined to judge everything by their own lights. Foreigners 41
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were dismissed by caricature, and different approaches to life and cricket were rejected. Nor were the Australians alone in their reluctance to visit the area. England dropped into its former colony about once a decade. But, then, the English were not as well liked as the Australians, owing to their notorious snootiness. Makeshift Australian sides had toured India in the 1930s and their easy mixing and generally egalitarian approach had proved popular. Still, the subcontinent was, until the last few years, regarded as the worst trip in the program, an outlook sustained by numerous colourful tales that remained entrenched till Allan Border and Mark Taylor looked afresh and found not wretchedness but a lively and ancient culture and a nation agog for the game. Ever since, the Australians and their supporters have looked forward to their meetings with India, not least because these opponents have put up a better fight than anyone else, a turn of events that further altered the antipodean view. Contact has become so strong that hundreds of Australian supporters accompanied their side on the successful foray to the region in the southern spring of 2004. Superb hotels and improved transport have helped to convince ageing sceptics about the merits of undertaking the trip. Of course, the young did not need as much persuasion. They watched the matches on television, listened to descriptions on the radio, saw the brilliance of the play, heard the noise, sensed the atmosphere and made up their own minds. No upset stomachs were encountered in 2004. India has changed. Australia has changed. Nations once far apart have reached an understanding. Of course, it helped that the cricket was inspired in these series. Contests between these countries took on an epic quality and brought to the Australian game a sense of emotion and drama absent from recent Ashes series. Along the way, cricket followers became familiar with the leading players from the area and started to appreciate their characters and styles of play. Virender Sehwag introduced himself as a buccaneer defying the scientific age to cut a swathe through opposing bowlers. Rahul Dravid emerged as a serious, tough and superb batsman upon whose game opponents bashed away with all the impact of a wave upon a rock. Nor was respect reserved for the Indians. Pakistani InzamamUl-Haq’s sleepy exterior hid a batsman of resilience and skill. Kumar 42
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Sangakkara’s smile camouflaged a fighter and a patriot determined to compete with the mightiest of opposing forces. Yet it was the welcome given to Sachin Tendulkar, the greatest of all subcontinental batsmen, in Sydney in 2004 that gave the strongest indication of the newfound respect between cricket’s most powerful countries. Tendulkar had been out of form and his performances had disappointed an audience that remembered his feats as a teenager and was eager to see something special from him. Despite his recent failures, he was clapped all the way to the crease. Several days later, he was applauded again as he returned to the pavilion with 200 runs to his name.
Twelve hours in India So it begins. New Zealand and England set the ball rolling upon the 1996 World Cup tomorrow in Ahmedabad, up a bit from Bombay and a little to the right. Computers are predicting a win for England (264) by 88 runs, with Graeme Hick scoring 87 and Chris Cairns going for plenty. But the Kiwis appear more relaxed. Already, it has been an adventure. As far as Mumbai—as Bombay is nowadays called—the journey was simple and not without distinction. Sir Richard Hadlee was on the plane, travelling in economy, and described Nathan Astle and Craig Spearman, the Kiwis’ new opening pair, as dashers. ‘We’ll be 0/90 in fourteen overs or 2/10,’ he said. It’ll be a cracking cup if even the Kiwis are going for their shots. Getting to Ahmedabad wasn’t quite so easy. Mumbai Airport at 1.30 a.m. is not the place to discover that your agent has omitted to make any further bookings. Moreover, the flights due to leave at dawn and dusk were full. Nothing could be begged, stolen or borrowed. Stranded. Someone suggests a tourist car, as opposed to the battered vehicles used by locals, but the cost was enough to bring the Fairfax empire to its knees. Nor could anyone be raised at the train station. Only one shot remained: going to Mumbai Central and taking pot luck. The driver charged 950 rupees for the journey. Only 725 too many, according to informed sources. It was 4 a.m. and the station 43
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was hushed as hundreds of poor people slept under blankets on the hard floor. Others huddled, some thinking of food, some of a sting. A dubious-looking tout said a train was leaving at 6.25 and offered to buy the ticket—800 rupees for the voucher and 300 for his services. Perhaps he had to bribe someone. At 5 a.m. he returned, presented the ticket and scarpered. He had spent 390 rupees buying a second-class seat, and had pocketed the rest. By now the station was awake, a policeman prodding sleepers with his stick and saying, ‘Catch a train or go.’ An entourage had formed around me, an adviser to impart his wisdom on matters of finance (he was a bit late), a shivering man to take care of the bags and a dumb boy from somewhere. They all lived at the station, made their living there, they were helpful and overwhelmed by their $3 tip. And so, at 6.25, the Ahmedabad Express departed ‘almost nonstop’, my assistants had reported. Most Indian trains regard heart attacks as the inevitable result of exceeding 60 kilometres per hour. Express trains are prepared to rise to 120 kilometres per hour. Our journey north took seven hours. And it was quite a journey. Our carriage was packed, but the seats reclined and the company was more convivial than that encountered by Malcolm Gray in Calcutta—no screaming, no tantrums, no posturing—simply the world’s first and third, getting along fine. People asked about Australia and about David Boon, a hero hereabouts. They said their country had strong families, a rich culture and lots of corruption. Meanwhile, waiters brought water, newspapers, patties, tea, sweets and little packets of savouries, all free. Only the ‘rest room’ raised an eyebrow. The facilities were not of a type likely to appeal to the genial inhabitants of Killara or Carlton. Not much was seen of the scenery as the train tootled along, since the windows were somewhat encrusted. Passengers slept, talked or read newspapers. Finally, the train trundled into Ahmedabad, another teeming city with lots of bustle and occasionally an oasis of calm. The New Zealand and England teams had already been welcomed, greeted by thousands of supporters. According to the Times of India, ‘the players were amused at the way girls lined up for welcoming them’. It was 1.30 p.m. Curious eyes were everywhere. Who is he? A player? Ahmedabad’s cricket ground is the most volatile in India. 44
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Spectators regularly throw chairs at umpires, officials, policemen and even journalists. But all was friendly so far. At our hotel, someone asks: ‘Do you know Tony Greig?’ As if this were not enough, someone else asks: ‘Do you play for New Zealand?’, but everyone is smiling. Everyone has been smiling from the start, even the hustlers (especially the hustlers). Twelve hours in India. The World Cup has begun.
Anil Kumble down under As far as Australians are concerned, Anil Kumble gave his most convincing performance on his country’s 2003–04 tour down under. Of course, cricket followers everywhere were familiar with his impressive haul of wickets. Everyone had also heard about the boy from Bangalore’s achievement in taking all ten wickets in a single Test innings. Batsmen all over the world had spoken about the difficulty of facing him on a breaking surface. As much had been documented by a thousand reporters, recorded by a hundred historians. But Australians wanted more and on that famous tour, Kumble gave it to them. Most particularly, the Australians were looking for evidence of the qualities required before the word ‘great’ can legitimately be attached to any performer. It is not enough to rout a team on a dustbowl in Delhi. Nor is it quite enough to take hundreds of wickets in the best company. Australians had long since accepted that Kumble was a magnificent bowler in his own country. After all, his record speaks for itself. He is peculiarly suited to subcontinental surfaces upon which bounce is more important than side-spin. In India a man must beat his opponent either through the air or surprise him off the pitch. Kumble can make the ball leap or skid and turn a few degrees in either direction. Slow pitches do not restrict him, because somehow he persuades the ball to spring to life after landing on the doziest of decks. In truth, he is a conjurer in the guise of a clerk. Proof is required that the sportsman is a man apart, a player who regularly displays the traits that provoke admiration among beggars and professors alike. Bowlers of the highest class must be dangerous on pitches lush and bare. Kumble had not been effective on hard 45
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antipodean surfaces and it was held against him by critics more willing to forgive Shane Warne his failures hereabouts. Accordingly, reservations were held about Kumble’s standing in the game among ever-sceptical Australians. Indeed, some were surprised that the supposedly ageing spinner had been included in the touring party. John Wright, India’s coach, explained that his bowling was only part of it. India needed Kumble the man. It was then that Australians started listening. Kumble performed magnificently in Australia and played a big part in holding the touring party together. At first he seemed to be wheeling away in familiar style. Closer inspection revealed a greater willingness to change his pace. In Sydney, Damien Martyn was memorably fooled into tapping back a gentle return catch, the sort of dismissal that had seemed to be beyond Kumble’s range. Others failed to read the googly and left in a state of confusion. Altogether, Kumble took 24 wickets in the series, but it took more than that to convince the Australians. More relevant was his absolute refusal to give up or to complain about his bad luck. Often Kumble was roughly handled at the start of an innings and found himself nursing figures that might have wounded a lesser man. If he was even disheartened, he did not show it. On the contrary, he’d stride to the bowling crease for another over, flicking the ball, licking his lips, plotting his revenge. Nor did he ever go on the defensive. Defeat was not in his vocabulary. Kumble’s reward came with a telling contribution as India won the Adelaide Test. Had more chances been accepted off his bowling, Kumble might have also bowled his team to victory in the decider in Sydney. Alas, stumpings were missed and catches dropped and India had to settle for the most honourable of draws. If a single moment is required to illustrate Kumble’s stature, it came as another Australian batsman left his crease at the SCG. He was beaten all ends up. Kumble’s hopes rose as the ball reached his young keeper, only to be shattered as the novice dropped the ball. Already the spinner had been working away for hours in tough conditions. Had he raged, he could hardly have been blamed. Instead, he cut short his celebration as the horrible truth was revealed, allowed himself a silent curse and walked back to his mark to try again. Between overs, he patted the crestfallen youngster on the back and 46
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told him to forget about it. Nowadays the Australians can be included among his greatest admirers.
Mohammad Azharuddin before the fall Poor Azharuddin! Imagine it: captain of all India at 27, successor to maharajahs and nawabs. Pretty good for a Muslim boy of humble origins. It was a significant promotion for a fellow upon whose brow scarcely a furrow had appeared in his days of dhal and lassi, a period which ended on the morning of 26 July 1990. Lord’s was a picture and Mr Hunt had prepared a pitch as flat as any in Calcutta. A Bengali sun was beating down, as it had done for weeks, so that gardens were being watered from washing-up bowls. And from the blazing rays seemed to come the message, ‘Bat! For goodness sake win the toss and bat!’ But what was this? Wily old pros circled around their new skipper like hags around the cauldron, detecting doom in every blade of grass, danger in every passing cloud. ‘Put ’em in, put ’em in,’ they wailed. Azharuddin sighed and smiled and hoped to lose the toss as the grizzled Graham Gooch shambled out by his side. Alas, he called correctly and asked England to bat. Gooch peered at him, as if temporarily deaf, and then pottered off, puzzled. Now Azharuddin stood midway between heroism and villainy. He hoped that Kapil Dev’s first ball would swing a foot to clip the offbail. It did not. So effective in the Caribbean, this hurricane from Haryana was but a squall. His partner, Manoj Prabhakar, also under the microscope, was scarcely a threat either. Perhaps it would spin. Ravi Shastri who, despite his film-star looks, bachelor ways and big hitting, is regularly booed at home, could find no purchase. Even Narendra Hirwani, so splendidly inept in two departments, could not cast a spell. It did not bode well. Gooch moved relentlessly onwards, batting with terrible ease. Now Azharuddin was alone. Support melted away. Gavaskar said he was flummoxed, and the ever-contentious Bishen Bedi shook his turban sorrowfully. Dozens of Indian reporters lamented this error of judgement. Azharuddin was carrying the can, as captains must. After two days in the field, it was a heavy load. England declared at 4/653. 47
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Could India fight back? Against the West Indies in 1988–89, their batting—Sanjay Manjrekar and sometimes Ravi Shastri apart—had lacked resolution, so much so that the captain, Dilip Vengsarkar, accused his men of cowardice. A private tour to America had been arranged and supporters said the players were thinking about that. Nothing is ever straightforward in Indian cricket. After two days of wear and tear, Mr Hunt’s pitch was starting to look its age, so that Devon Malcolm, Chris Lewis and the excellent Angus Fraser were a handful. Navjot Sidhu and Manjrekar departed, and upon reaching a vigorous century, Shastri lifted a catch to mid-on. At 3/191, Azharuddin joined his senior batsman, Vengsarkar. What followed was one of cricket’s most captivating innings. Pride and grace, they say, ne’er dwelt in one place, yet Azharuddin, playing an opulent range of shots, managed both. Asked if he could see the seam when the ball was on its way, Wilfred Rhodes once replied, ‘Ah, but you should have seen Ranji. He could see t’stitches.’ So it was with Azharuddin, as he cut and flicked, wrist and rubbery arm sending the ball scurrying towards its destination. Every stroke flowed through his body as if he were a sinuous dancer responding to a beat. Bent upon counter-attack, he combined delicacy with panache as he scored his hundred in 87 balls, one of the fastest in Test cricket, though Vivian Richards once needed just 56 in Antigua, and Jack Gregory, years ago, only needed 67. But was this the stuff of Test cricket? Was this innings great of conception? Azharuddin flirted with the crease without ever appearing likely to marry it, for good or evil. History remembers famous innings played in adversity: Dennis Amiss’s unbeaten 262 to save a Test in Jamaica, Hanif Mohammad’s 337 in Barbados, Allan Border’s defiant hundred in Port-of-Spain in 1983 and Peter May’s 285 at Edgbaston in 1957. Azharuddin summoned no such powers, and nor did Kapil Dev, whose heave to midwicket with three hours left to play and wickets still to fall, appeared culpable. England, surely, were happy that risks were being taken. They say it was a good Test match and a captain’s innings and in a way they are right. No doubt everyone was fed up with attritional cricket. At least we had spin and footwork, and entertainment 48
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aplenty. Nevertheless, India lost twenty wickets in 178 overs, which will not satisfy the game’s more demanding critics. Azharuddin’s innings was a glorious failure. Having put England in, having lost his own wicket to a cross-bat swipe, and having read newspapers from home, Azharuddin may well feel that he cannot afford many such triumphs.
Inzamam-Ul-Haq at the crease Inzamam-Ul-Haq’s bulky frame stands between Australia and victory before lunch in a 1995 Test match whose arrangements owed much to the interest of television and little to the convenience of locals. He is not, on the surface, much of an obstacle. Inzamam hails from the ancient city of Multan, a metropolis where things happen about once every 100 years, which is roughly the pace at which this regal batsman conducts himself on the field. Easy work, one might suppose, for this rugged Australian outfit. Not so. Inzamam may seem as sleepy as a remote town, but appearances can be deceptive. He scores an awful lot of runs for someone who supposedly lets the world wander by. He may seem to lumber around like a hippo in a wetlands, but he can dance. He may seem not to care, yet he charged into a crowd in search of a spectator who had described him as a potato. Most particularly, he can bat. Indeed, he plays Shane Warne as well as any contemporary and better than any colleague save Aamir Sohail, whose left-handedness is an advantage. Inzamam’s technique is interesting. He assesses the leg-spinner’s length quickly and, so far, unerringly, and either moves his front foot far down the pitch to drive or retreats to cut and pull. Significantly, he steps straight back rather than moving across to protect his wicket. It is the approach advocated by Salim Malik, an approach that leaves the stumps unprotected but gives the batsman room to play his strokes. Inzamam is never cramped as he counters Warne, and his chief weakness has been a willingness to pull in the air perilously close to the man at mid-wicket. Admittedly, Warne did take his wicket in the first innings as he fooled the batsman with his dip and prompted a drive lifted to mid-wicket. But it was a mistake rather than an admission of 49
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defeat. Everyone else lay down at the spinner’s feet. Warne kept a line and length and let the batsmen destroy themselves, in which respect they were most obliging. It is odd that the Pakistanis play Warne so badly, and the Indians so very well. Even Sohail, in his first innings anyhow, let rashness be his master. Furious at Pakistan being denied a boundary, when Greg Blewett fielded from behind the ropes, he lashed at the next delivery and lost his wicket. His splendid second effort was by way of atonement. Inzamam alone was steadfast. He has been impressive, choosing his shots carefully, driving hard and otherwise defending with a determination undimmed by his team’s circumstance. He showed that little peril lay in the pitch, and that Warne could be countered, if not conquered. In his way, Inzamam was as entertaining and personable as young Saqlain Mushtaq had been. Cricket needs such fresh and lively talents. Among Inzamam’s characteristics is a reluctance to bother about such trifles as running between wickets. Whether he has heard talk of short singles can only be guessed. It may be that he presumes they are a reference to unmarried gnomes. Certainly, he is disinclined to hurry. His very walk to the wicket tells a tale. It is such a long way and so much effort is needed and, anyhow, what’s the hurry? Nor does he often hasten around the field. Inzamam did once abandon his position at slip to trot after a ball (it could scarcely be called a pursuit), but only after a long study of the field to see if there was anyone in the vicinity. Only when the appalling truth was clear did he begin to move. There is something rather magnificent about this languor. It’s not mere indulgence. It’s just that austerity is not his caper. He does try, says he wants to get fit and has, apparently, lost weight since his last public appearance. But he still resembles Elvis Presley in the latter part of his distinguished career. It is a comforting sight. It’s hard to imagine such a man involving himself in the politics of Pakistani cricket. Accordingly, he might make a fine captain, after all the other fellows have had their chance. It is easy to underestimate such players. And, indeed, Inzamam is yet to fulfil the promise of his thundering entry onto the international stage during the 1992 World Cup, a competition his team could not 50
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have won without him. Since then he has struggled, or so it seems. Yet he’s still averaging 47 in Test cricket. This is a good sign. Some batsmen are always doing better than you think. Mark Taylor is another such. At stumps on Saturday night, the entire Pakistan team ran around the field and practised their fielding (as well they might). All except one. But Inzamam is still batting, and it is his wicket that Australia needs to take this morning and in the matches hereafter.
Laxman’s triumph in Sydney A bumper found the batsman frozen in his boots and thumped into his head, leaving the Indian staggering around. Conceivably, his very manhood was challenged. Unwilling to go down without a fight, he drove with style and power and hooked fearlessly. Suddenly, he was not a victim awaiting his execution but a warrior among his foes.
Very, very, special Laxman Venkati Laxman has played an unforgettable innings. Where it stands in the list of the game’s foremost hands is a matter for the historians. At present the innings is too recent to bear cricketing comparison. Laxman’s innings on 13–14 March 2001 was noble of conception and faultless of execution and can be enjoyed in its immediate context. His batting belonged to the highest class and was notable for its authority, composure and power. He did not appear to be walking through a field of nettles, the impression generally given by batsmen facing this Australian attack. Rather, he seemed to be striding confidently towards a destination within his reach. Throughout, he showed not the slightest anxiety as he watched the ball, selected his stroke and played it handsomely and correctly. He batted with such ease that it seemed he must have wandered in, picked up a willow and set about following the simplest instructions. More likely, his style was the product of years of work in the nets with bowlers sending them down hour upon hour as he rehearsed his strokes. Batting is hard. I promise you, it is hard. Boys want to swing the bat like a baseball bat and must lose the habit. Yet the game seemed 51
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to flow through the doctor’s son from Hyderabad, as if it were an ineffable expression of his inner being. He made it look easy. It was not quite fair, yet it is impossible not to appreciate his work because it contains no hint of lower emotions such as jealousy, selfishness or calculation. It was a generous innings and, in some peculiar way, a big innings. But then Laxman is not the petty sort. He risked his entire career by asking to be considered only for middle order, where the competition was hotter than a tandoor. From another man this might have seemed headstrong. In Laxman’s case he was being true to himself. Laxman stood still at the crease, stiller than had Sachin Tendulkar in his agitated effort the previous day. He judged the line and length of the ball with an alert and untroubled eye and moved into position without fuss. He does not thrash the ball, or play flashily, but rather drives it away with a swing slower and fuller than most. And he has time to play his stroke. Even Jason Gillespie could not hurry him, hard though the South Australian tried. Throughout, this batsman was imperturbable in a way that must have disconcerted his opponents. Of course, he appreciated the plight of his team and yet he took no particular notice of it, concentrating instead upon the broader picture. One sensed that he was not merely hoping to make Australia bat again, nor to reach a satisfactory total, but rather had the grander vision of the true competitor. In his mind he had the idea of winning the match. Accordingly, he showed faith in himself and his partner, and drew Rahul Dravid from his shell in a way that helped a self-contained colleague. Laxman played some thrilling strokes, yet was never merely entertaining. He drove the first ball after lunch on the rise through cover, an announcement that the break in play had affected neither his tempo nor his confidence. It’s hard to remember a single error and his defence was as firm as his attacking game was exhilarating. He has scored two triple-centuries in domestic cricket and plainly enjoys himself at the crease. Hardly a ball was hit in the air, hardly a stroke neglected, hardly an opportunity missed and the highlight was a back-foot shot through mid-wicket played with a straight bat. The footsore Australians could not find a way past him. Certainly, the surface was somnambulant and the sun hot. Mostly, though, credit must go to the batsmen. Glenn McGrath and Gillespie bowled some 52
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fiery spells and might have been rewarded had Australia kept a second slip in position. None of the other bowlers were threatening, Michael Kasprowicz bowling loose deliveries and Shane Warne over-pitching and bowling more slowly than the occasion required. Nor was the Australian fielding at its sharpest as overthrows were given away. This was a scintillating performance by a quiet and impressive Hyderabadi of 26 years. No wonder he raised his arms upon scoring his 200th run off his 304th ball. He had played some thrilling strokes and is clearly a batsman blessed with considerable ability. Few could step down the pitch to Warne to drive a leg-spinner landing outside leg-stump through the covers. Few could late-cut McGrath. Few could bat so long in such a commanding style. No wonder the scoreboard called his innings ‘glorious’. The crowd agreed. The Australians shook his hand. It had taken an incredible innings to bring their run to an end.
Virender Sehwag in Melbourne Here was an extraordinary day’s cricket. Here was a tale of a brilliant batsman riding his luck to play the innings of his life and another about a master upon whose career fortune is frowning. Here was a story about a team previously condemned as poor travellers that ran rings around its host and a story about a home side stretched to its limits that was clinging to a thin strand of hope till its luck started to change. Melbourne’s famous cricket ground has not seen many days as gripping as this contest between a struggling champion and a vibrant contender on 26 December 2003. India rose to the occasion with a brilliant and courageous performance. Bumpers were defied and bangs on the head ignored by a team on the verge of a superb achievement and unwilling to countenance any distraction. Denied the services of its three great bowlers, the home side flung everything at its opponents in an attempt to break through and then fell back, thereafter to live upon a wing and a prayer. Once the attack had been repulsed, the Indians played with a freedom that spoke volumes about their confidence. Virender Sehwag led the way with an innings as memorable as any played on this ground in a quarter of a century. He is a batsman of 53
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rare courage and inspiration who responds to voices unheard elsewhere. At the crease he has a gleam in his eye, suggesting that reason plays but a small part in his approach. Repeatedly, partners march down the wicket to urge restraint upon a man whose entire career has been an adventure. Sehwag listens quietly to their entreaties, smiles sweetly, blocks a couple of balls and generally tries to strike the next one into Richmond Station. Virender Sehwag bats as might a youngster on a beach. It is not intended as an insult. He stands with a glint in his eye, takes a look at the ball and as often as possible dispatches it into the sea. He smiles as he plays, seems to regard the game as fun. Not that he lacks serious intent. After all, he has succeeded in the bearpits of the game, scoring a triple-century in Pakistan and making lots of runs in Melbourne and in a World Cup final. And still he manages to look like the last of the amateurs. Sehwag is a fine batsman in disguise. His failings are immediately obvious. As far as he is concerned, footwork is the preserve of maiden aunts, doddery uncles and English coaches. Now and then he does push his front foot out a little way. Mostly, he stands and delivers. Yesterday, he kept driving good-length deliveries into the covers and never mind that he had hardly left his original station. Strokes of this sort discourage bowlers, most of whom spent large parts of their youth trying to perfect this delivery. Moreover, he hits the ball in the air more often than was once fashionable among opening batsmen, a group assigned the task of taking the shine off the ball and breaking the hearts of the bowlers before making way for the fancy hats down the list. Generations of coaches and captains have implored prospective openers either to keep the ball on the grass or to pursue another calling. If Sehwag was ever given advice along these lines, he did not take much notice. Throughout, he has been prepared to live and die by his own lights. Sehwag’s batting at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) was a mixture of physical courage and extraordinary strokeplay. Early in his innings, he was struck a fearful blow during a ferocious opening spell from Brett Lee. A few minutes later, he was hit on the head a second time and again stood his ground. In between, his admirably steadfast partner was also sconed and he, too, refused to retreat. Patently these Indians are made of the right stuff. 54
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Having survived this ordeal, Sehwag set about the bowling with a range of shots that had their origins not in a coaching manual but in the depths of his own imagination. Standing still at the wicket, he took a look at the ball before choosing between responses limited to ignoring the offering, a block played with the air of a gambler reluctantly no-bidding and a clobber that dispatched the ball to all corners of an astonished arena. Only the mightiest cricketers can provoke the sort of gasps repeatedly heard during the course of this gallivanting creation. Sehwag played shots of eye, nerve and power. From a short backlift he cut through and sometimes over an alarmed slip cordon. Often he played wristy flicks off his hip of a type that sent the ball speeding away, the type of stroke that upsets bowlers under the impression that precisely pitched deliveries must be treated with respect. But Sehwag plays the ball and not the percentages. His innings are not so much a construction as an event. Facing the slower bowlers, he disdained all restraints except those periodically recommended by concerned partners. In his opinion, flighted deliveries must be put out of their misery with the sort of swing perfected by Babe Ruth. By the skin of his back foot Sehwag survived an especially wild heave at a leg-spinner. Of course, strokes of this nature are part of a charm more obvious to spectators than bowlers or the colleague occupying the hot seat. No one knows what the blighter might try next, including himself and his opponents. One swipe was as poor a stroke as any seen in Test cricket since . . . well, since his dismissal in the previous match. Considering all these vulnerabilities, it must seem extraordinary that Sehwag scores any runs at all, let alone a sackful against a supposedly relentless opponent. Clearly, he is twice as good as he seems. His strengths lie in the straightness of his bat in defence, the stillness of his head, the timing of his strokes and the determination in his heart. Moreover, he can play off both feet and on both sides of the wicket. Here he even ran well between wickets. It is not a bad combination. Also, he hits a lot of shots on the ground. It is just that his spectacular shots stick longer in the mind. Sehwag contained himself sufficiently for the rest of his innings to produce some scintillating straight drives among further calculated clubs over the boundary. Sehwag used a bludgeon and Akash Chopra 55
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a shield as the pair tried to wear down the attack. Now and then, they switched implements as they went about their task with the utmost determination. After surviving some early mishaps, India’s game openers also ran selflessly between wickets. When Sehwag perished, it was as he had lived, in the land where boldness and recklessness make their cases. Then came Sachin Tendulkar for a single ball, an ordinary delivery and an unlucky touch that reminded spectators of the cruelty of this game, the glorious uncertainty that brought 62 613 people through the gates in search of its manifest possibilities.
Rahul Dravid in Melbourne India has produced a performance of the utmost defiance to force the Australians to work hard to secure a victory that had seemed within their grasp. Down and apparently out after a horrible disintegration on the second day, the visitors responded with an effort so full of heart that the match was taken into a fifth day. Australia bowled and fielded well enough to exploit any weakness, yet India refused to give ground. Not until the second new ball was thrown to a tireless attack were the hosts able to secure the decisive breakthrough. Barring rain, the teams will reach Sydney on an equal footing. India’s fightback means that they will travel with hope. Rahul Dravid led the resistance with an innings of impressive fortitude. Over the years, Australia has been able to wear down opponents by maintaining a high standard throughout a day. Only the most resourceful players can withstand an intense attack for a long period of time. Dravid is such a man. Something more than attrition is needed to remove him. Gelignite is the most obvious alternative but the match referee might baulk at that. Australia searched for a weakness as a dentist does for holes and could find none. Thereafter, it was a matter of waiting for a mistake. It was a long time coming. Revealing unfailing powers of concentration and an impeccable technique, the diligent right-hander kept his wicket intact for 332 minutes. Moreover, it took the combined efforts of a sweltering afternoon, relentless bowling and the vagaries of the pitch to bring him down. Throughout, Australia pressed with every power at its 56
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disposal, only to find an immovable object blocking its path. Apparently, Dravid sat for hours before removing his pads after his first innings, berating himself for the small mistake that had been his undoing. He sells his wicket dearly. Somewhat to his chagrin, Dravid has been described as ‘the wall’ of Indian batting, a tribute to the sense of permanence to be found in his batting. Certainly, there is something eternal about his work in the middle. Moreover, his innings are constructed brick by brick. But to regard India’s first drop merely as an obstacle is to underestimate his abilities. Dravid is a batsman of the highest class whose form in recent years indicates that he deserves to be included in the ranks of the major batsmen of the period. He has scored runs against all sorts of bowling on all kinds of pitches. Dravid has a simple game founded upon straight lines. Reasoning that runs cannot be scored in the pavilion, he sets out to protect his wicket. Curiously, this thought does not seem to occur to many batsmen, a point many a long-suffering coach could confirm. He defends his stumps with skill and strength of mind. Australia’s fast bowlers tried to upset him and might as well have been attacking a tank with a slingshot. Attempts to test his patience were no more effective. Dravid reads long books and does not expect a man to be shot upon every page. Nor did the spinners trouble him. Aware of his team’s predicament and committed to the cause, Dravid concentrated upon a few carefully executed strokes and otherwise bided his time. He did not leave his crease or give the slower bowlers any reason to suppose their wiles might soon be rewarded. Not once did he play across the line. Not that the Bangalorean thought only about defence. Some lovely drives were played, through cover and past the bowler, several stylish glides through mid-wicket were summoned and occasionally the batsman erupted into a pull shot executed with a roll of the wrist and flash of arm that hinted at the artist to be found beneath the stoical exterior. Every stroke was played with the conviction of a man carrying out his intentions with a clear mind. Patently, Dravid believed he could bat all day and that the match could be saved. Neither pitch, pressure nor bowling was allowed to disturb his thoughts. Every 57
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ball was played upon its merits. It sounds easy, but is damnably difficult. Eventually, Dravid departed for 92 and then came the collapse. Australia had one bad day in Adelaide and was beaten. India had a bad day in Melbourne and faces defeat. Not even Dravid and a captain who remained on the bridge almost to the end could save the visitors. But India will lose with honour, overcome by a side that has played hard cricket from the first ball till the last delivery of a gripping fourth afternoon.
Kumar Sangakkara in Colombo Kumar Sangakkara is emerging as the most influential cricketer in his country. Taking advantage of another pitch bereft of bounce and an attack that might just as well have been called a defence, the stylish left-hander confirmed his flowering as a batsman with a committed and skilful innings that took his side into a powerful position on a typically hot summer’s day in Colombo in 2004. In olden times, cricketers used to talk about batsmen booking in for ‘bed and breakfast’. Sangakkara went a good deal further and, as far as the South Africans were concerned, he outstayed his welcome by several days. Along the way, this fine product of Trinity School in Kandy introduced himself as a player of substance. It is one thing to take runs off a bunch of juveniles representing Zimbabwe, quite another to bat for a month or so against a confident and supposedly aggressive South African outfit. Previously, Sanga has seemed to be one of those creative, intelligent, poetic sort of fellows likely to score an ornate 40 before wafting away outside off-stump and then departing with an air of profound regret. Rumours had spread that he read books, including the works of one Oscar Wilde, an Irish wit whose oeuvre has not generally appealed to those appointed to the important task of taking the shine off the new ball. Wilde once pointed out that he could ‘resist anything except temptation’ and there have been times when the same might have been said of the forthright left-hander. Of course, Sanga never was a lightweight. We are inclined to put men into boxes and to indulge in caricature. Nor was he ever as 58
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insouciant as David Gower, in some respects a fellow traveller. To the contrary, he was as likely to become embroiled in an argument upon the field as Arjuna Ranatunga, and that is saying something. Plainly, his intellect did not leave him hovering on the brink of the action like some Hamlet wondering whether to go forwards or back. He wanted to be involved in every minute of the game, felt he belonged in the heat of battle. He is a warrior in the guise of a philosopher. As much could have been guessed from Sanga’s willingness to keep wickets, a job he carries out with a combination of aplomb and humour. From his perch behind the sticks, the Kandian produces a range of vivid facial expressions that accurately convey the thoughts of the inner man. When by some misfortune a ball eludes him or an appeal is denied, there comes over him the offended look of a golfer whose ball has circled the hole without dropping. It is as if a dark cloud has unexpectedly arrived in the middle of a sunny afternoon. At any moment his state of mind can be deduced from the look upon his face. Upon finding aces in his hand, he will beam. A man may not make a fortune at cards that way, but for some it cannot be otherwise. Not that his keeping has been a laughing matter, but it is his batting that sets him apart. Sanga batted beautifully in Colombo. From the start, he found the rhythm all batsmen seek, and with it came a blend between defence and attack often found in men on top of their games. His approach in the dying embers of the first day told a tale. By then, South Africa had fallen back and harmless spin was being sent down from both ends. After many hours batting under a steamy sun, he might easily have lost his head and perchance his wicket. But danger lurked in the form of the second new ball. Accordingly, the leftie rejected the opportunity presented by the mild tweakers and contented himself with accepting such runs as came along. Although his partner fell in the twilight, Sangakkara lived to fight another day, a strategy that was duly rewarded. Sangakkara’s performance in his capital city was the most impressive of an already distinguished career. In his own way, he brings class and combativeness to the Sri Lankan team, a contribution that complements the stoicism displayed by his new captain. In so many ways he is everything his country needs to be: bright, cosmopolitan, proud, thoughtful, unafraid and progressive. Happily, these elements 59
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have been released in this young man of his times. Perhaps it will prove to be contagious.
Sachin in the World Cup On 1 March 2003, Sachin Tendulkar produced the most astonishing innings seen in 50-over cricket. His breathtaking assault on a flamboyant Pakistani attack intoxicated spectators till they felt they must wave, chant and shout themselves hoarse. Tens of thousands had arrived at Centurion to cheer on their team. Meanwhile, middleaged ladies sat in respectable homes in Delhi and Lahore, their faces painted in the colours of their country. India was playing Pakistan for a place in the next round. Tendulkar was blistering and monumental, ruthlessly attacking off both feet and on both sides of the wicket. Nor was it a reckless innings, for he did not lose his head, maintaining his composure even as the score rattled along. A mild man, he realised the time had come to leave his mark upon cricket’s most prestigious tournament. Unusually, Tendulkar took the first ball of the innings, a licence he generally grants to his partners. Clearly he understood that this was not a day for faint hearts. If he did not produce something special, the game would be up for his side. India had not been playing well and World Cups come along only once in every four years. It was the hottest of times. Tendulkar was needed and he answered the call. Making his intentions plain, Tendulkar attacked the new ball with relish. After opening his account with a six cut over third man that provoked from Shoaib Akhtar an even more furious response, the Indian played a succession of thrilling drives that sent the ball speeding past the bowler and repeatedly rolled his wrists upon straight deliveries, deflecting towards the ropes at deep square-leg. Usually calm at the crease, his mind seemed to be at once ablaze and encased in ice. An off-side field was placed, so he took the ball on the rise and placed it through extra-cover. Now and then he defended and once he let a ball pass, whereupon supporters cheered, not wanting him to get carried away. When spin was introduced, he bent low to guide a yorker through the slips. 60
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This was not a cricket match. It was a madhouse. Desperate to win, every man upon the field tried with every ounce of talent and determination at his disposal to help his side to victory. Some indulged in excess, others carried out their duties and prayed it was enough. Tendulkar rose above them all, rose above the expectations and the blend of anxiety and hope that sharpened the atmosphere throughout an exhausting day. Not until drinks were taken and the maestro was hobbling did his wicket fall, and then to a cruel and ragged bumper sent down by Shoaib. By then it was too late for Pakistan. The game was up. India and Pakistan had met in a crucial match played in a hotbed of apartheid and, in a blaze of brilliance, Tendulkar had decided the issue.
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4 Breaking barriers Cricket is not a game of bat and ball. It is an internal struggle, a war waged between a man and himself. The opposition is merely a convenience.
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any more Test matches are played these days and every record in the books is vulnerable except The Don’s batting average and Jim Laker’s feat in taking nineteen wickets in a single match. Granting Test status to Zimbabwe and Bangladesh and organising a proper and regular fixture list were intended to promote the game and ease relations between sometimes fractious nations, but numerous unforeseen side effects have arisen and, as a result, the game has been compromised. Never in cricketing history have bare figures been a less reliable guide to a player’s standing. High averages and prodigious performances have become commonplace, especially among Australians, most of whom can command places only during their peak periods. Accordingly, various attempts have been made to devise ways of assessing a player’s true worth among his peers by subjecting his performances to closer scrutiny. Notwithstanding the condemnation of old-fashioned critics, these strategies have much to commend them. Of course, the real problem is that cricket lends itself better than any other game to statistical analysis. Footballing codes may number tackles executed, passes made and yards gained, golf may indicate fairways hit and putts holed, but none of them provides a satisfactorily complete 62
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definition of the player’s performance. On the other hand, a batsman exists to score runs. Other factors such as style and speed may be relevant, particularly the latter, but ultimately the purpose of the activity is to put runs on the board. Likewise, a bowler must take as many wickets as possible as quickly as possible. Cricket is a game of facts and figures played by the obsessed and followed by romantics. Inevitably, the mathematicians have taken over the joint. Even television commentary teams full of past players unconvinced about the endless figures churned out at every match still feel obliged to pass them on to avid followers of the game. Match reports work along the same lines, on the assumption that readers will feel their lives the poorer for not being told that Smith averages 45 in Test cricket and needs another 57 runs to become the seventeenth highest scorer in the history of the game. Before long, all the records save those owned by Bradman and Laker will have fallen into the hands of contemporary players. Inevitably, too, batting averages will continue to rise as the new dispensations field weak attacks and as bowlers are broken by their load. Over the last few years, Test cricket’s highest individual score has changed hands on several occasions, though happily it remains in the hands of one of the true giants of the era. On the other hand, lesser batsmen collect hundreds at an unprecedented rate and soon will sweep past great players of yesteryear, such as Allan Border and Sunil Gavaskar. Meanwhile, bowlers survive by reducing their pace, thereby both protecting their bodies and nursing their figures. A handful of outstanding bowlers have survived the changes in the game, most of them currently assisting each other in the Australian line-up. These fellows have broken records, partly because they are superb and partly because they play numerous matches, some of them against weak sides. How the records described in this chapter fit into the picture is for the reader to judge. Suffice it to say, they are all remarkable achievements. The list includes a pace bowler from India who became the highest wicket-taker in the history of the game, a leg-spinner from Australia who took his place, a freakish bowler from Sri Lanka who defied critics and deformities to move mountains, and a thundering batsman from Queensland who ended up passing Bradman and Mark Taylor and, for a short time, everyone else. 63
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Matthew Hayden breaks the record Matthew Hayden has put his name in the record books alongside the most famous men the game has known. Bradman, Sobers, Hutton, Lara—none has scored more runs in a Test match innings than this tall and muscular banana-bender. None has surpassed the command shown by the Australian opener. None of them hits the ball as hard or with a straighter bat. None was as strong or blessed with greater stamina. None had as much to prove in the middle of their careers. Hayden had to wait a long time before he was treated with the respect the rest claimed as young men. Dismissed not so long ago as a lumbering Queenslander, Hayden has emerged as a batsman of beautiful brutality. Sustaining a plunder that began on the Indian subcontinent in 2000, he wore down and eventually destroyed a threadbare attack at the WACA in October 2003. At the crease he was a towering figure, a Gulliver among Lilliputians. Such men can be brought down only by unconquered doubt. Bows and arrows will not be enough. Hayden was awesome. His defensive shots thundered back to the bowlers, leaving them wringing their hands. His blasts cleared a boundary shortened by ropes. Between times, he cut savagely, pulled witheringly and drove over and past the bowler with immense power. Repeatedly, he took the ball on the rise and planted it into the stands. In some hands a bat can resemble a wand. With Hayden, it becomes a club. Through the onslaught, though, came a nagging sense of unease. What did it all mean? Take the manner in which the two most significant landmarks were passed. By the time the Queenslander had reached 334, the Zimbabweans were on their knees and Trevor Gripper was sending down undemanding off-breaks. Far from teasing his opponent with precisely pitched deliveries, he lobbed down a full toss. Hayden stroked it towards the boundary and thereby became Australia’s highest scorer in Test cricket. His 376th run was taken off an amiable delivery from Ray Price. Of course, the notion that Bradman and company scored their runs against tight and fresh attacks operating on helpful pitches is false. Nonetheless, there was always a feeling that the teams belonged on the same field. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the sides 64
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currently appearing in Perth. Test cricket has compromised its most precious asset—its legitimacy. Although it was hardly Hayden’s fault, this was not so much a contest as a demolition. Among the Zimbabweans, only the captain has earned his stripes. Hayden was not wrenching runs from a reluctant opponent. He was taking sweets from a child. Test status has been spread around till the meaning of the word ‘Test’ has been lost. Hayden will have harder outings in Brisbane on a Saturday afternoon. Notwithstanding these reservations, it was a magnificent effort by a man who not so very long ago was told he was not good enough to succeed in this company. Following the strategy adopted by most opening batsmen down the ages, especially those playing their first important innings of the season, Hayden took a long, hard look at the bowling on the first morning. Indeed, he looked so long and so hard that reporters wondered whether some ailment had affected him or, worse, a midlife crisis. Throughout that first day he wore a sweater, afterwards undermining numerous stories by explaining that he had been feeling cold. He is a straightforward man. Until tea was taken on Thursday, so long ago, Hayden pottered as meekly as a Viking walking a dog. He reached his hundred and then launched the sort of attack that has seldom been seen upon a cricket field. He was decisive and destructive as he took to its highest point a plunder that had begun quietly an age before. His concentration did not waver, his judgement was unerring and the ball was hit with ferocious power. It is not a bad combination. Hayden has become a mighty batsman with a game built upon simplicity and strength. After all those years of trial and tribulation, no one will begrudge him a standing in the game secured not so much by this innings as by a succession of superb performances over the last few years.
Shane Warne takes his 500th Test wicket Shane Warne has become the highest wicket-taker in the history of Test cricket. In truth, it scarcely seems possible, even though it has happened before our very eyes. Of course, it is an incredible achievement, yet his contribution goes beyond facts and figures. 65
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Pace dominated the game when he first appeared. Bowlers plodded back to their marks. Hardly anyone fielded in front of the bat. What was the point? Even Australia could not find any wristspinners to maintain the tradition, relying instead on purveyors of wowserish off-breaks. Cricket had become an endurance test. Warne challenged all of that, changed all of that, and the game changed with him. He sensed that he had been born to bowl leg-breaks. He knew that he had greatness within. It was this conviction that allowed him to take so many risks. In a period of pace, he concentrated on spin. In a time of calculation, he pursued the improbable. In an age of reason, he chased the wildest of dreams. Accordingly, he can be forgiven an awful lot, including most of the darknesses that also exist within his uncontained character. A man must be taken as a whole. Sensible fellows cannot turn the ball at right angles. Warne’s journey from the brash youngster with a round belly and a loose action who was flogged around the SCG in 1991 to the brazen but canny professional plying his trade in Chennai in 2004 has been long and eventful. Even by the formidable standards set by the leg-spinning fraternity, it has been a colourful contribution. A lot of sauce has been put upon the table. Nor was there anything inevitable about it. On several occasions he might have faded from view. Always he fought back. In some respects Warne has been lucky. Nature blessed him with ability. Providence provided a coach in Bob Simpson, who understood the importance of attacking the blind spot. Fortune left a space to be filled. But Warne took his chance. By nature a rebel, Warne worked at his game until the ball obeyed his every instruction. A lot of good deliveries are bowled between the wicket-takers. Warne has been an entertainer almost as much as he has been a cricketer. Although a craftsman of the highest order, he has not been content with the quiet efficiency that accompanies the cobbler and the silversmith. Always there has been the performance, the desire for the roars of the crowd, the lure of the spotlight. Alongside his fascination with the possibilities of spin could be found a theatrical streak as wide as Drury Lane, a desire for publicity that could put Mr Barnum to shame, a competitive drive as strong as Lester Piggott’s. In truth, he has been as much a performer as a craftsman. 66
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Warne has not always been the easiest of men to like, but he has been compelling to watch. In his pomp he could stand at the top of his mark, flicking the ball in his fingers, licking his lips, biding his time before starting that slow, teasing approach that builds towards a sudden wrench of shoulder, wrist and finger, an eruption of effort intended to create an explosion 22 yards away. He has dazzled even as he has demolished. And yet his dedication has not wavered. Without his leg-break he is just another St Kilda supporter. Warne worked relentlessly at his game. His mastery did not come, and has not been sustained, by flashes of lightning. Warne has been the most demonic of slow bowlers. Along the way he has charmed, tantalised and tormented. He has sent down the ‘ball of the century’ and did it with his first offering in England. He has baffled batsmen, bowled them round their legs and fooled them with flippers, googlies and other ruses of his own creation. And he has done it with a grin that hints at a ruthlessness beneath the humour. His final, most glorious trick has been his last. Unable any longer to impart upon the ball the energy that made it fade and dip and bite from the pitch, he has learnt to take Test wickets with straight balls. Batsmen and umpires are lured into the plot as a leg-break is followed by a straight delivery and a raucous shout. At once Warne is a supreme technician and a conman. At once he is a born rebel and a calculating professional. Perhaps the contradictions are inherent in the skill he practises, a freakish part of a conservative game. He is, too, a modern man pursuing an ancient craft. Warne began as an upstart who dared to challenge the times. Cricket has reason to thank him, for he has revived an apparently lost art. He has been a great bowler. As he showed once again in Chennai, he remains a remarkable competitor.
Murali takes 500 Muttiah Muralitharan has become the third man to take 500 wickets in Test cricket. It is no mean achievement for a young man born with a slight disability which he has overcome and even turned to his advantage. It is no small achievement for a boy raised in a beleaguered tribe that has known great sufferings in recent times. No 67
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history of Sri Lanka can be written without a chapter devoted to the massacres of the Tamils that occurred in the 1980s, not so long ago, within the spinner’s lifetime. Murali has met these challenges, carried the responsibilities and his country’s attack and always kept a smile upon his face. He is the most durable of characters. Not that it has all been uphill. A mistaken impression has been formed that he emerged from a poor background. In fact his father runs one of the biggest biscuit manufacturers on the island and his three brothers are businessmen in London. Murali attended one of the finest schools in the area, St Anthony’s Roman Catholic school. By chance, the Test match in Kandy in 2004 coincided with his old school’s 150th anniversary and the chance arose to explore the spinner’s background. St Anthony’s was celebrating with a cricket match against its keenest rivals and word was about that the maestro might turn up. Murali was a boarder at a school of 2500 boys whose motto is ‘Light from Heaven’. Apparently, he was a jovial fellow who took the numerous rigours of boarding life in his stride. Four thousand people came to watch the match. Boys from the competing schools sat in segregated stands singing, drumming, dancing, chanting from morning till stumps were drawn. Old boys drank and talked and recent leavers showed off their newfound sophistication and haircuts. Of course, they remembered the pranks, scrapes and hidings that had been part and parcel of their boyhood. Schooldays play an enormous part in the lives of those lucky enough to attend the leading establishments. One headmaster said he had boys aged twenty in his school and could not persuade them to leave. Alas, only one boy in 100 moves on to tertiary education. Among the boisterousness of the recent leavers could be sensed desperation because there was nowhere to go. Sri Lankans have been prevented from developing by government decree. Hardly any speak English. Of course, it was the weekend and even those with jobs could join the fun. Down the road, a six-a-side cricket tournament was being played in a makeshift soccer ground. Further along, a Muslim girls’ school was staging its sports day and pretty children ran around in brightly coloured outfits, some wearing veils, others putting on 68
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wizards’ hats for the races. Nearby, a women’s cricket team practised in the nets. An enormous statue of Buddha looked down upon proceedings from its perch in the hills. Mostly the crowd at St Anthony’s was cheerful as the match went along. Not even the sight of Trinity taking a lead on first innings spoilt the mood. A carnival atmosphere prevailed, with firecrackers repeatedly erupting, claps of thunder amid the bands. Sunil Fernando, Murali’s coach, appeared and recalled that his most famous student bowled medium-pace till he was fourteen and took up spin only because there were stronger boys playing for the team. His action was ‘never a problem’, he said, adding that Murali uses his fingers, wrist and arm to spin the ball. He mentioned that Murali had given him 50 000 rupees recently and had flown him to Sharjah to coach a promising spinner. He calls whenever he is not bowling well and asks, ‘Have you seen anything?’ Everyone is proud of Murali. As far as Sri Lankans are concerned, he is a light from heaven. Now and then he visits his old school and then the boys are excited. In December he came to see an exhibition of Tamil culture. St Anthony’s recognises all religions and four Muslims play in its cricket team. This time Murali does not make it. He has been practising for the Test match. Three days later, he takes his 500th wicket. Minutes before, a large contingent of St Anthony’s boys arrived to support their man and their team. When Murali reached the landmark, they roared and cheered till they were hoarse.
Kapil Dev becomes cricket’s greatest wicket-taker India is a land whose dusty streets throb with the game. No country holds cricket so dear or better appreciates its blend of beauty and banality, politics and patience, brilliance and boredom. India has produced many mighty cricketers: Sunil Gavaskar and Vinoo Mankad, CK Nayudu and Vijay Merchant. Now the northern state of Haryana has produced one of its own. If the location surprises those convinced that all the secrets of the Indian game have been stored in clubhouses in central Bombay, the style of the player must be an even bigger surprise, for in this land of 69
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brown pitches and shimmering heat, he is a fast bowler who swings the ball around with a mixture of dash and cunning. At first glance, Kapil Dev seems to be the sort of bowler best suited to misty mornings in Brighton. But the Haryana Hurricane has not needed wind, fog or dampness to weave his spell, does not wait for the ball to swing or put himself at the mercy of an unreliable game. Instead, he forces the ball to curl with a side-on action and a cocked wrist and an understanding of his art that is instinctive rather than intellectual. Moreover, he can bowl all day and all night, and has hardly suffered an injury. To watch him bowl, nowadays, is to wonder how he managed to surpass such clinical and skilful bowlers as Richard Hadlee and Malcolm Marshall. These days, Kapil is a trundler, if one who knows a thing or two. It is usually so with fast bowlers, for time is unkind to them. As they lose their sting, as their body thickens after years of use, so taking wickets becomes a chore. In fact, Kapil has lasted better than most, and in the second part of his career has been more impressive than Ian Botham, so long his rival. Sometimes the ball still swings, and then Kapil can worry the best, as he did Allan Border two years ago. Otherwise, he just works away at medium-pace and with undimmed hope. Kapil knew an awful lot about bowling in conditions that did not help him and became a man for all seasons. But, of course, this is not the Kapil of the 1980s, the bowler as fresh as a colt in spring, sleek, fit and optimistic. Always he attacked, bowled for wickets, relishing the challenge of the game. He appeared at a time when India’s pacemen rubbed dust into the leather so that Bishen Bedi and friends could get to work. Kapil challenged all that, changed all that. In his own way, he was as radical a thinker as Shane Warne. Far from submitting to the times, Kapil forced his team to play his game. Hitherto, India had been relying on trickery, the preparation of dustbowls upon which visiting teams could be destroyed with flicks of the fingers and late cuts. He encouraged India to play a different game, demanded bouncy pitches in his homeland, argued that India could not otherwise expect to win overseas. Of course, he was right, but the point also suited his game. Kapil has a lot of charm and every bit as much calculation. 70
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India responded by winning a Test match in Melbourne in 1981, with Kapil taking the wickets on the final day of a match also remembered for Gavaskar’s protest about a leg-before decision. Gavaskar and Kapil were an odd couple, stubborn, canny, populist, proud, and brave in contrasting ways. Gavaskar was the man from Bombay, an establishment man yet also an individualist and controversialist, at once above the fray and yet involved. He wanted the minds and money of his supporters. Kapil wanted their hearts. He has been the outsider, a cavalier from an unfashionable place who craved attention. In some respects they were reluctant partners, yet when they combined, as they did in the 1983 World Cup campaign and again in Australia, they were formidable. Perhaps, like so many champions, Kapil has lingered too long. India has compromised itself in search of his record. But it is a country full of mathematicians, a country seeking performances that confirm its arrival as a cricketing force. Not that Kapil needed to be persuaded to hang around. Cricket has been his life. When next can he hope to hear the cheers or feel the buzz as he walks to the crease? Grand entrances in retirement are a poor substitute, and anyhow another champion soon comes along. Kapil has been a man of action driven by ego. He has not taken any notice of the words of sweet reason that make ordinary the rest of us. Fifty years ago, it could hardly be imagined that the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket would be an Indian. Twenty years ago, it could hardly be imagined that a youngster from Haryana could be a champion. Ten years ago, the suggestion that an Indian pace bowler might one day take 400 wickets in Test cricket would have been dismissed as absurd. Kapil has done it all, and has left us many wonderful performances to remember along the way.
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5 To be an Englishman Marcus Trescothick nibbled like a confused hamster and a tickle was heard in important places. Trescothick’s mum and dad still provide the teas at their local club, so the lad walked without waiting for Mr Bucknor’s decision, a verdict that generally arrives by pigeon post.
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part of cricket’s attraction has been the wide range of characters who feel impelled to try their luck in the game of bat and ball. Cricket-playing countries have little in common except a colonial power eager to bestow upon subdued nations the noblest gifts it could offer even as it removed the silks and diamonds needed to satisfy home demand. That the game prospered in so many of these places says something about its essential temper. Contrasting nations can find within its exchanges the opportunity to give voice to their particular requirements. And so the Australians play an aggressive game, the South Africans summon resolve, the Pakistanis rely on mercurial ability, the Kiwis use their brains and the Englishmen are torn between Victorian suffering and Georgian flamboyance. Of course, the same applies to individuals lured to the game by the promise, so often broken, of riches to be found at the end of the struggle. At first sight, it seems that only the most resilient souls ought to contemplate taking up an activity in which a single mistake can dash the dreams of the previous night, destroy the hopes of an entire childhood. Cricket is a notoriously fickle recreation that relies upon an uneasy and untrustworthy blend of luck and skill. Yet, through its portals march the most vulnerable of fellows, men 72
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desperate to unfurl the perfect off-drive or to produce the deadliest of spells, citizens touched by the game in their youth and ever since unable to escape its call. A businessman can be shrewd in the boardroom and a child in whites. Sometimes it seems that cricket in its broadest aspect tolerates a remarkable diversity of characters. Perhaps, though, every game hovers under this illusion, every team, every family, every nation, for always there does seem to be the joker, the black sheep, the controversialist, the dreamer and the leader. Wrestling may imagine itself blessed with personalities hot and cold, meek and mighty, yet to an outsider those same men may appear indistinguishable. Cricket, too, has its narrownesses. In Australia it has been something of an AngloSaxon closed shop. Its inability to attract women and immigrants can be told from the fuss made whenever someone from these areas manages to make an impression. More than any other cricketing nation, England does seem to have produced diversity of outlook, which may owe something to the nation’s curious individuality. Whereas Australian strangers will sit next to each other on a bus, the English will occupy positions as far apart as possible. An Australian will join the driver of a taxi in the front seat, while the Englishman must keep his distance. In part it is the class distinction also reflected in the different gates and rooms used by amateur and professional players 50 years ago. In part it is the yearning for space in a crammed country. But it goes further. Whereas several generations of European, South American and subcontinental families can live together under a single roof, many Englishmen could not imagine anything worse. Cricket interests them precisely because it tests the individual as opposed to the collective. Nowadays, it is customary for teams to join in huddles and to form tightly knit groups, and these occasions have their purposes but cannot disguise the rawness of the exposure. Among the Englishmen included in this chapter, one grew up in Africa and spent his happiest days in the veldt before ambition and ability took him away. David Gower says he has never been as content as he was during his African boyhood. Another was raised in a coalmining family and watched as his brothers went down the pits and raised families, leading the normal life that is denied to the driven. Geoff Boycott has never put happiness at the top of his list. 73
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He wanted to be recognised, applauded, acknowledged; he needed to make the grade. Andrew Caddick came to England in search of opportunity and to escape from the frustrations and disappointments he encountered in New Zealand. As ever, the background makes it easier to understand and often to sympathise with the man. Matthew Fleming attended Eton, joined an elite fighting unit and then tried his luck in county cricket, the better to express his character and delay his entry into the family merchant bank. Mark Lathwell was a wonderful batsman and a likeable young man who yearned for privacy and felt his talent pulling him towards the lights. In the end, his career faded because he could not convince himself that the sacrifices were worthwhile. Perhaps he was right, because nowadays he is raising his children and playing cricket in the same home town. Not long ago, he scored a superb hundred against my side in a club match, along the way taking a heavy toll of my widely respected offerings. His family watched from the sidelines and when his time was up he pottered along to play with them. When these pieces were written, Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan were works in progress. Nothing much has changed. In retirement, Hussain remains a hot-headed warrior. As captain of his country, Vaughan continues to impress.
David Gower As David Gower packed his bags in preparation for the Oval in 1990, a patrician voice in the Hampshire dressing-room called out, ‘For God’s sake, David, get a big one.’ It was meant well. Gower engages hearts rather than heads, and hearts were crying out. Gower’s response was surprisingly snappy for so wistful a man. He had detected a strain of patronage in the remark and said so. Only so often can a man tolerate being told to pull up his socks. We have all done it. Worrying about Gower is a national pastime. If only, we sigh, if only he’d knuckle down, he’d score heaps of runs. If only he’d play straight, move his feet, concentrate, stop fiddling and flicking, we could watch him without fearing seizure. Gower is a seductive cricketer. Because of his appearance—handsome, diffident 74
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and apparently doomed—and his style, with its hint of charabanc, cane and top hat, he is cast as a romantic hero. Half England wants to mother him or marry him, and everyone else wants to bat as he does, as if in some enchanted dream. Wry in calamity, nonchalant in triumph, never straining too hard, Gower carries his followers with him wherever he goes, on a journey without malice which might bring joy. Accordingly, when David rose to slay his Goliath, thousands stood to cheer him, and even hardened men, they say, felt lumps in their throats. We like to see a pleasant fellow, stoical in adversity, survive. We like our cavaliers, too, yet there is more to it than that. An illusion has been created: Gower as a fragile genius in a rough world; Gower as a man who could be great were he tough enough. Years ago, I said he was content to be a minor genius. That was wrong. He just is a minor genius. One thing above all was obvious from his effort last week. He is a gritty, resilient cricketer who can summon a masterpiece every so often, but usually can play only minor pieces which are a delight in their expression and a frustration in their want of intellectual rigour. Gower, like everyone else, scores as many runs as he deserves to score, as many as he is capable of scoring, for to do otherwise is to be otherwise, and this is beyond him. Was Strauss chastised for failing to write symphonies? Gower is not some delicate creature in need of bucking up. Nor is he the only batsman who endures bad patches now and then. His contemporaries—Graham Gooch, Allan Lamb, Ian Botham and Mike Gatting—have suffered sharper swings and their leadership has been even more severely condemned than this man who found himself in Leicestershire but, more appropriately, was raised in Africa where, in a rare moment of revelation, he admitted he had been happiest. Gower’s chief failing has been that, as a captain and as a batsman, he cannot communicate fight. Gooch, in particular, has endured lean spells, and not so long ago, for he seeks to be master of his own fate and is shocked, sometimes to the point of panic, when it cannot be so. Lacking analytical powers, and more relaxed, Gower is willing to allow cricket to follow its course and to absorb its blows. Gooch dictates; Gower accepts. Gooch wants to destroy bowlers; Gower plays cricket with them. Moreover, Gower is a conscientious cricketer, seldom missing a 75
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game, never leaving the field for a smoke and rarely carrying a pound of excess baggage. Throughout his career, he has batted in the top four, where it hurts. His ambition, his drive, shone through at the Oval, even to those of us hitherto reluctant to see it, those who mistook diffidence for complacency. When he fails it is, as with most players, due to an error of judgement, a fault of technique or a good delivery. It is not a matter of knuckling down. In his terms he already is knuckling down, already is everything he can be. For years they wanted Boycott to be more like Gower. Now they want Gower to be more like Boycott. But wait. Does not Gower thrive in Test cricket and fail for his county, and is this not evidence of a lazy mind? Not so. Ken Barrington averaged 58 for England and 54 for Surrey and no one ever accused him of being idle. Gower bats as if in a blur, relies upon arm and wrist to avoid trouble. Sometimes this fails, and he is out to an apparently ill-considered shot, while others lose their wickets in honourable ways. Test cricket suits Gower. Test pitches are often hard and flat, so that his hands can save him from his feet’s neglect. Fast bowlers hold no terrors for him, especially if they do not move the ball. Fields tend to be aggressive, and this helps Gower, too, for his backlift is sketchy and forces him to chip his shots, especially to leg, where men are rarely stationed in five-day matches. David will go to Australia as a battle-hardened Test cricketer, a player at his best, a man who cannot change and a man entirely capable of taking care of himself.
Geoff Boycott Geoff Boycott fitted into Yorkshire cricket better than he fitted into Yorkshire’s cricket team. His colleagues were beer-and-skittles men, a few pints in the evening, a vindaloo to round it off. Boycott sipped Perrier water and dined upon washed vegetables. His meals, clothes, hair and briefcase spoke of a man determined to overcome the prevailing chaos, a vain, stubborn, brave man who dared to be different. An unhappy man, too, driven to the edges of himself in pursuit 76
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of excellence, an uncomfortable place to visit, and this in a team game and at a county that has known many famous men, some of them even better batsmen than him. He was as distinctive as he was distinguished. Towards the end of his career, he would appear on the field at a quarter to ten to begin his preparations. ‘Oh Christ,’ you’d think, ‘there’s that bugger Boycott.’ Sometimes you suspected the Yorkshire lads took a similar view. He’d follow his routine of exercises while the rest of the players had a knockup. No one had heard about huddles or games of football. At the crease Boycott was immaculate, his body poised as if its shapes had been sculptured, his left elbow pointing religiously to the sky. His movements were sharp and defined. If he was playing, as he once did, for Bradford Boilermakers, he’d still graft for his runs, never, never letting his game slip, for he understood well enough that men like him cannot afford to drop their guard, for that is to invite failure in through the front door. Moreover, Boycott’s ego, his very being, demanded excellence, precision and runs. And how they’d celebrate if he fell cheaply: bowler, opposition, critics, rivals, the whole lot of them. He was not the best batsman in the world, but his was the most prized wicket. His concept of batting had a purity about it. Everything in his life was dedicated to tightening his technique. Batting. Batting. To him the word had its own solemnity. Behind his forward defence, Boycott built his statistics, collected his centuries, hardly ever losing his way, and this in a game in which a solitary lapse can bring a man down. Hostile elements were kept out. Later he built a wall around his house and put barbed wire upon it. At Cambridge, once, he scored 207 not out. For six hours he did not hit a ball in the air, or even into the ground, so that every stroke moved smoothly across the turf, like a complete thought. He did not appear to be concentrating. His mind was so utterly absorbed that he did not need to eliminate distractions. No temptations entered his head. There were only runs, runs and more runs. Of course, it was a Faustian exchange. Boycott understood that well enough. For such men there can be no happiness. He was a perfectionist and an obsessive and the rest did not touch him. Boycott could buckle occasionally, when flaws were exposed. Then he felt as if his existence was under threat. How, in failure, was he to 77
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walk into the world? Left-arm seamers troubled him because he stayed side-on and could not easily react to their swing or angle. Upon a frailty being revealed, he would lose control of himself, become headstrong in his vulnerability. More often, he appeared impregnable. Spinners rarely defeated him because he could read their line and length from the hand, and understood their variations. Once Vic Marks did fool him, causing Boycott to be stumped. Next morning, he stared accusingly at the pitch for ten minutes trying to work out where the ball had bounced. Eventually he found the spot, by which time Vic had joined him. ‘Ah, lad,’ he said, ‘that’s where it pitched and then it turned too much.’ It was as if a great mystery had been solved. From Herbert Sutcliffe to Len Hutton to Geoff Boycott, the tradition of Yorkshire batting endures. Each man was a master of technique. Boycott may be the last of the English masters, for these are impatient times full of bonus points and Sunday slashes. But, though the game has changed, cricketers have not. Professionals who did not particularly like Boycott respected his batting for its clarity and judgement. Maybe he was not so much in conflict with committees and comrades. Maybe he was in conflict with his times.
Matthew Fleming It was a question begging to be asked. What was he doing there? Bristol on 20 June 1992 was windy and empty, players were changing in cabins and Courtney Walsh was bowling bumpers with what locals are pleased to call ‘a breeze’ at his back. His family is the 47th richest in England, merchant bankers the lot of ’em—a cricketing chum had bowed when being introduced to his mother—and he is an Old Etonian and a dashing Green Jacket. The world is his oyster and here he was playing cricket for Kent in Bristol. Matthew Valentine Fleming is a singular fellow. His life has been an adventure, a rejection of the progress apparently incumbent upon him when he was born into a rich and distinguished family. Noblesse oblige and all that. From posh school to City, from tuck shop to long lunches, it was all mapped out but his spirit rebelled and he found a friend in a father who could see what a prison London could seem to an energetic 78
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youngster. Far better for the lad to sample life, which is precisely what Fleming has been doing ever since, on the field and off it. As a cricketer he is becoming a latter-day Gilbert Jessop, a celebrated hitter whose bat swings from ear to ear, a winner of matches, a batsman so destructive that bowlers talk of being ‘Fleminged’ much as batsmen talk of being ‘Waqared’. He has won three B&H gold medals this season alone and his is the wicket Hampshire would dearly like to take cheaply at Lord’s next week. He can be the very devil to bowl to, not least because he plays shots nobody else thinks about, such as the forehand cross-court. Add fast hands, extraordinary power in a surprisingly slight and bandaged frame, a squash player’s eye and a gambler’s nerve and it is easy to see why he can swing a game in a few overs. Certainly, Somerset could not contain him in their B&H contest as Fleming struck four colossal sixes. Two Sundays ago, he took guard with his team in trouble and promptly dispatched his first two deliveries back over the bowler’s head. Here is a player free of emaciated thought, free of professional inhibition with its five runs an over. But, then, he has experienced parts of life far beyond matters of runs and wickets. Upon leaving Eton, judging himself to be ‘too thick for university’ and too much of an outdoor type to embark upon a business career— ‘never seeing the sun, 7.30 to 6.30, never expressing your ability, it’s not for me’—Fleming joined the Royal Green Jackets, attended Sandhurst and soon found himself serving in Ireland and Hong Kong. He grew up quickly. In Ireland he saw a gypsy with a six-foot scythe in his chest, and the bodies of two soldiers who had died in a car crash. He learnt to muck in with the soldiers and enjoyed the boy’s life that had always been beckoning. ‘They are a grand lot, soldiers: they work hard, play hard, don’t take any crap from anyone and let you know if you are wrong. Mistakes cost lives. And they see through people very quickly.’ He also served in the Far East, saw Chinese refugees trying to claw their way into Hong Kong. ‘The desperation of those people. They saw a pot of gold and they wanted to get there. They’d cut their way through razor wire, get chopped to pieces, caught and sent home. Then they’d try again. Have you ever seen razor wire?’ He loved Hong Kong because it never slept, contained such 79
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extremes, such an unstinting sense of life. But he did not stay in the army beyond the years of his commission. He realised he must leave because cuts were being made, petty scrimping, football rattles rather than ammunition, that sort of thing. Fleming is not a petty person, hates backstabbers, gives it ‘an absolute crash’ off the tee. It was time to move on. Yet he was not ready for the City, and though he had not been an outstanding schoolboy player—only two years in the Eton XI—cricket was whispering in his head. Moreover, it was in his blood. An ancestor, CFH Leslie, had once run a seven at Lord’s and played for England against Australia and for the Gentlemen as well, winning praise for his ‘great resolution’ in scoring 59 against the Players in 1881. Mind you, he recorded a ‘pair’ in 1882. Family historians insist that Leslie stopped playing because he ran out of money. Fleming’s mother was, her son asserts, ‘a very fast bowler’, while his father also appreciated the game and could see why his offspring wanted to try his luck in the years left before cufflinks. Eton had not of late produced many county cricketers—‘it’s all Cirencester and City’—and not every Etonian is a swashbuckler. They are, though, usually idiosyncratic and durable. Encouraged by the ‘late, great Colin Page, who told me I’d win matches and lose matches and never to change’, Fleming joined Kent. His first two scoring shots in county cricket were sixes and he has continued to bash away. He did so at Bristol, cutting Walsh three times, playing handsome flicks off his pads and banging bowlers back over their heads. He scored 65, his highest tally of the season— ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? My concentration is disastrous’—before spooning a hook. It was an innings of astonishing power, the innings of a man of action. Typically, his highest first-class score (116) was made against last season’s formidable West Indians. It is easy to cast Fleming as an indulgent fly-by-night playing jolly cricket before settling down to a serious career. But that is not him at all. Apart from anything else, professional cricket is no easy option. ‘It frustrates me, but the game seems so slow on television, people think it is soft. They should face Ambrose.’ Fleming is an original, but he is also a fighter who is dangerous because he does not recognise the limitations accepted by others. He is no slogger, but a hitter who does not believe in the half-cock. 80
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Andrew Caddick Andrew Caddick cuts an isolated figure. He has the character of a displaced person, almost a refugee, wary, awkward, needing warmth. He pretends not to care, keeps his distance, pushes the world away with blurted words and an aloof manner. In his mind he disdains the backslappers and concentrates only upon deeds. In his heart he regrets the abruptness of his approach, the chill of his mien, for he is more affable than he seems, and yearns for an acceptance he finds with his beloved. He does not, cannot, push himself into the cheery and cheering throng and instead builds his own life, putting it together as he might a spell on a damp afternoon at Old Trafford. Caddick has always been cautious and misunderstood. His background tells the tale, pointing towards a pragmatic man from a humble family that came together in distant Christchurch and slowly found its place in this world. Christchurch is an amiable town in the South Island of New Zealand where the clocks tick and time does not pass. Caddick’s parents, Chris and Audrey, settled there decades ago. Audrey’s father was a boilermaker on the ships in Tyneside, a working man and a keen supporter of Newcastle United. Every Sunday afternoon, the family would gather to play whist and eat homemade stutty-cake, a bread favoured in the region. Audrey went to New Zealand as a slip of a lass in search of adventure. Caddick’s great-grandfather lived in a little village outside Liverpool, where he ran music halls and sent barges down the canal. His granddad also ran barges, pulled by Clydesdale horses as they moved towards the ships waiting in the docks. If his dad was in trouble, he could run to the shore women and they would protect him because no one took them on. Their village was a community with fairs, gypsies, pubs, a school and its own policeman. Boys collected frog spawn and put pennies on rails to see how big they would grow after the train had passed. Andrew’s paternal grandfather lost his barges in the Second World War and soon lorries took over. Accordingly, the parents booked seats on a boat bound for New Zealand. Upon arriving, Chris lived as a roustabout, milking, stalking deer and selling their skins for a pound and their tails for one shilling and sixpence. To earn a living, 81
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the family turned to plastering and tiling and were much in demand as other immigrants arrived. Caddick’s parents met in a bakery and promptly married, enlarging their home as four children arrived, with Andrew third in the batting order. Then came the tragedy of their lives. Michael, the eldest son, had left school at sixteen to work as a plasterer. His father was absent and it was wet. Someone moved the boom and Michael was electrocuted by a cable. They rushed him to hospital, but his heart was too damaged. A service was held in their local Catholic church and the boy was buried. Twenty years later, the Caddicks still live in the same small weatherboard house, except it is not small or weatherboard anymore because Dad is a builder. The door to his room is still closed. Andrew grew and his cricket grew with him. In his last year at school, he was coached by Dennis Lillee, who changed him from an inswing bowler with an open chest to a conveyor of outswing. Although he took wickets, he did not feel wanted and wasn’t given much recognition. His mother says, ‘Doors did not open for him. It was background.’ A contemporary says, ‘He did not go to the right school.’ Perhaps it was also his personality. And so he came to England, searching for life and opportunity. He stayed with an aunt in London, played cricket for Hampstead in Middlesex, was spotted by Somerset and made his debut against West Indies in 1991. It took him a long time to prove himself, to gain the acceptance he craved. People see what they want to see. Caddick can appear gaunt. His height is part of it, the lofty perch from which he sends down those thunderbolts that Steve Waugh found difficult to subdue. He has always believed in method and not emotion and has been mechanical, practical and imitative. Artistry is not for him, nor the romance others find in a game of bat and ball. He focuses on figures. Long limbs, though, cannot alone explain the distance between this man and his world. Somehow Caddick invites rebuke, especially from those half-acquainted. He lacks the human touch, the jolliness of manner and fervent nationalism needed to convince the sceptics. He is without charm or grace. Blessed with a thick skin, he makes little effort to correct unfavourable impressions. Accordingly, his mistakes are exaggerated till they seem to take over his entire character. 82
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Often he has been accused of lacking heart. Closer examination reveals a man willing to bowl all day, and to defy painful injury to perform his task. Spectators at Somerset see him take the new ball at 11 a.m. and find him still mopping his brow after tea, still pounding the turf in his long-legged way, flinging the ball down and between overs accepting a consoling sweet from the groundsman. He has bowled despite soreness in his shins so severe that surgery was needed, has not missed any tours and precious few matches. Throughout, he has been an old-fashioned professional, an unstinting and unsentimental character, a skilled worker, a pragmatist and not a performer. Even his bad spells can be explained. Some years ago, an Australian bowling coach detected a technical flaw whereby Caddick threw out his right arm before letting the ball go, thereby denying his action the smoothness it needed. Whenever he tried his hardest, this malfunction became important. Once the error had been corrected, Caddick became reliable. Like all bowlers, he has good and bad days, but he does not go to pieces. Probably he will never entirely be accepted. Perhaps he will not completely feel at home. But the condemnation has been too harsh. The world mistrusts those who neglect to display the required emotions. Caddick has been straightforward and indiscreet. He says some foolish things, makes idle pronouncements, not least about himself, and gives offence to the passer-by. But his record bears scrutiny. Indeed, it bears comparison with that of Angus Fraser. He has built a career and a house, and has started a family. He is a private, insecure, uncommunicative man who can give love and commitment and he has served England to the best of his ability.
Mark Lathwell On dark winter mornings a few years ago, there began to appear at Somerset’s decrepit indoor school a curious young man. He would arrive from the remotest parts of North Devon, an hour’s winding drive away, bowl as busily as a bumblebee for two hours, have his knock, smack it around, and then rush away with his dad, back to 83
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his home in Braunton. ‘He never said much,’ recalls Peter Robinson, the coach, ‘and we wondered if he was enjoying it. But a week later, there he was again.’ People noticed him because he was so silent, so self-contained and so evidently touched by a magic. Few, then, knew anything of Mark Lathwell but, if his manner was intriguingly matter of fact, even gloomy, his strokeplay was brilliant, an explosion of wrist and forearm. ‘I kept expecting the ball to go in the air,’ Robinson said, ‘but it never did.’ His style stood out among the trained orthodoxies of his contemporaries, and although he never seemed to smile, he kept bustling in to bowl, and flicking the ball away as if anybody could do it. Here was a young man whose chief characteristic appeared to be a determination to keep the world at bay. Nothing much has changed since then, save that his gifts are now widely recognised. Slowly he has let himself loose, gradually there has emerged a personality at once thoughtful, watchful, likeable and funny, in a wry, dry sort of way. And still he wants to keep the world at bay, feels a little threatened by his sudden fame, by the request for interviews, says he does not ‘want to be more important than I am. I like being a nobody. I always wanted to be a nobody.’ He says it, not in alarm, but rather as a youngster who cannot fathom why cricketers are more famous than, say, engineers, the trade pursued by his father. If he suffers at all, it is from sanity. If he appears reticent at first, it is because he is slow to trust, hates conflict, is happiest when he can relax in the company of his mates around a dart board or pool table, or in the atmosphere of a contented cricket team, like Somerset or England A. Lathwell was born, not in Devon, but in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire. ‘What were you doing there?’ I asked, to which, after a stunned pause, he replied, ‘That’s where we lived.’ He moved to Braunton as a child and stays there, in his room in the family house on an estate, as often as he can. If his career does not take off, he will be happy to spend six months playing for Somerset and the other six at home in Braunton, where it is quiet. ‘One of the reasons people go away is that they can’t stand it at home. I like it in Braunton.’ As a boy he took to cricket at once. ‘I was never ambitious, though,’ he said. Then he adds, ‘I wanted to be a banker, a great all-rounder and a millionaire.’ To some ears that will sound a triumvirate not entirely lacking in ambition, but, again, he means it. He’d 84
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wanted to be a banker, and was one for eighteen months after leaving school, because he’d enjoyed handing round the money in games of Monopoly. He wanted to be a great all-rounder because he admired Ian Botham, and he can’t remember why he wanted to be a millionaire. He no longer does so, because, ‘funnily enough, I’ve lost interest in money’. Sensing that his son was unusually gifted, and hoping to release a boy more intense than he let on, Lathwell Senior started a youth team and put up a ball in a sock on a string in the back garden. ‘I’d hit the ball into the net, it’d swing back and then I’d hit it again.’ It’s as close as he gets to analysing his game. A coach did once try to change his grip, but it did not work and afterwards Lathwell vowed to avoid coaches if he could. He also tries to avoid anybody who is sensible, a quality that has a low priority on his scale of things. School was not for him either, because ‘it was full of strangers’. In his last two years he did, though, begin to write verse and stories. ‘One was about a wallaby who could play cricket.’ From school he joined a bank, and then the Lord’s groundstaff, where he learnt more about living than batting. He played a few games for Somerset seconds, spending most of his time locked in a fascinated duel with a one-armed bandit, and eventually began to play for the county. Now he is rising steadily, his energetic, brilliant batting style winning attention. So swiftly has his reputation spread that when Somerset met Hampshire in the B&H semi-final last year, Malcolm Marshall reserved his deadliest deliveries for the young upstart. ‘If I’d survived his spell,’ (Marshall had him caught behind for one) ‘I might have got a few, because I was feeling all right. It was a pity.’ His scintillating, if inconsistent, play won Lathwell a place in the A team to tour Australia, where his batting was ‘good and bad all mixed up. When I was bad, it was because I was negative. It was just the way I was looking at things. In Adelaide we were in trouble and I tried to defend against two leg-spinners. It was silly.’ He prefers to open because he cannot stand watching others missing opportunities to score. To Lathwell, although he’d never say it, nearly every ball presents opportunities to score. Now he is on the verge of great things. Fame worries him far more than the cricket, because he cannot abide all the fuss. If the cricket does not work out, it will not hurt him, or not badly, because ‘I don’t 85
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need to play for England. Lots of players say they’ve got to play. I’ve never felt like that.’ But he deserves to play. He is delightful, when you get to know him, and an entertaining, sometimes dazzling, batsman.
Nasser Hussain It is 1 December 2002, and Nasser Hussain stands on the brink of enduring the worst defeat suffered by an England captain in Australia for 25 years. He had hoped to arrive as a latter-day Douglas Jardine, bringing fast bowlers and plans along with him and instead he has been pounded from Hobart to Perth. England has not been able to beat state sides, let alone the outfit chosen to represent the entire nation. A period in office that began promisingly is likely to end in failure. It is the way of the world. Swap the leaders and the position might not change all that much. Captains need bowlers as generals need guns. Nonetheless, this mauling has been a grievous disappointment to a proud man. Hussain must feel that he did not have a chance to prove himself. Perhaps he has tried too hard to create an impression. Certainly, he has not been as acute as previously. Great teams have a way of changing the thinking of their opponents, drawing them from familiar patterns and throwing them into a state of confusion. Hussain is a belligerent character and will not take kindly to these defeats. Although he presents a cool exterior, there is a lot of rage inside, and no little ambition. He is not an easy man, does not find the populist phrase or the amusing remark that attracts a loyal following even in adversity. Nor is he a natural leader but a product of his own observations. Sometimes he seems to strain for effect, but he is tough and ruthless and capable of making unpopular decisions. Players can sense his commitment to the team, can feel that he desperately wants, almost needs, to win, and respect him for it. Hussain has always been single-minded about his cricket. In some respects, this is unusual because his background includes a close immigrant family and a sister currently pirouetting around with dance companies. It was a civilised upbringing in a warm and supportive family. Nonetheless, Hussain was regarded as brash and spoilt in his 86
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early years at Essex. His younger days were decorated with outbursts that revealed not so much a nasty streak as the strength of the inner drive. His strong and weak points were writ large and in constant conflict. His temperament held him back. Essex was a warm-hearted and selfless side and Hussain stood out like a cactus among tulips. No one doubted his ability, but he lacked the graces needed to fit into the team. Perhaps, though, this was merely an early indication of an unwillingness to accept the mundane. Hussain was intense and erratic. He could bat, though, and was intelligent enough to complete a degree at Durham University. Essex persevered, England watched and waited, Hussain charged and fell back. Inevitably, his fortunes waxed and waned. Broken fingers did not assist his cause, but England kept losing and gradually Hussain learnt not so much to douse his fire as to direct it. As so often in these cases, wedlock and fatherhood helped. There is nothing like feeding a baby some curious squidgy stuff in the morning to put a bad leg-before decision into perspective. Hussain realised that patience and ambition were not mortal enemies and that a man must serve before he can lead. He learnt that only a fool fails to correct his own manifest failings, accepted that the world did not owe him a living and was bound to judge him on appearances. No one had any time to think about his needs. Pretty soon, he forced his way into the England team and became a regular. Michael Atherton and Alec Stewart could see his qualities and were not put off by his juvenile reputation. Eventually, the thorny crown was placed upon the head of the turbulent immigrant from Madras. Helped by Duncan Fletcher, Hussain set out to raise a team full of character and hard to beat. He did not tolerate any shillyshallying. Despite recent defeats, he has, by and large, been a successful captain. Although England remains weak in important places, it has played some sturdy cricket and seems to be improving. Although lacking great players, Hussain’s team bats a long way down and fights hard. Australia has been his undoing, largely because, in his anxiety to prevail, he forgot the lessons that the game has taught. Injuries have taken a toll, but Hussain has not batted well and has not found the balance between mental aggression and tactical caution. Heavy defeat 87
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awaits, and the inevitable recriminations. Men like him live and die without compromise. Hussain knows he is finished. Now it is a matter of leaving with head held high, and passing the mantle to a man with a lighter touch. Hussain has hardened his team, the role played by Allan Border in Australia’s rise from the cricketing ditch. Soon it will be up to his successor to take the team on the next part of its journey.
Michael Vaughan Michael Vaughan has played superbly this English summer and has become his country’s best batsman. Already, he has passed 1000 Test runs for the year and he played every bit as well as Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar in the recently completed series between England and India. Along the way, his average rose from 31 to 48. Nor did it look like one of those hot runs enjoyed by punters and sportsmen, often as a prelude to some calamity. Admittedly, the bowling was undemanding and the pitches hospitable, but these performances tell of concentration and durability. He did not falter and, after a short break for running repairs on his knee, will arrive in Australia at the peak of his powers. Vaughan may be the best right-handed opener England has found since Graham Gooch. He is more willing to attack than Michael Atherton, yet seems every bit as much master of his own fate. Australian spectators can look forward to watching an accomplished batsman attempt the crucial task of subduing Glenn McGrath and chums. If Vaughan fails, England might as well go home. Fortunately, he has the intelligence, skill and application needed to succeed. Calm and unusually nimble for a tall man, he could be a thorn in Australia’s side. Throughout the northern summer, Vaughan batted with authority and composure and revealed a wide range of strokes. He played long innings, too, twice reaching the 190s only to lose his wicket to probing deliveries. In the tradition of Yorkshire openers, he does not throw his wicket away. Nor is he content merely to occupy the crease like a clerk behind a desk, watching the clock tick by. Once accustomed to the 88
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light and pitch, he tries to take charge, scoring swiftly without ever appearing belligerent. Vaughan uses his height to drive and often eases the ball through the leg-side with the full blade of the bat. Balanced at the crease and steady in his approach to life, Vaughan is not easily upset. Brought up in the northern leagues, he is tougher than he looks and the Australians will not rile him. There is no anger or agitation in him, nothing to stop him concentrating upon the important matter of scoring runs. Although his rise may seem sudden, cricket has been waiting a long time for the tall northerner to find his feet. Vaughan was first encountered as captain of England’s under-19 team, playing against a West Indian outfit that included Shivnarine Chanderpaul. In those days, his opening partner was a burly lad from Keynsham, near Bristol, by the name of Marcus Trescothick. Vaughan was a dry, self-contained young man and somewhat defensive in his outlook. A solid career was predicted for him, but he seemed to lack the bite required to prosper in the highest company. Although he presented a straight bat and played neatly, he did not entirely take his opportunities and appeared limited. He had time to play his strokes, and a sound game, but was caged by orthodoxy and respect for the game. Still, he did force his way into an England team searching for batsmen capable of building an innings, and his defensive skills and fortitude helped him to secure a regular place in the Test line-up. Alongside Atherton, he survived for several hours at Lord’s as Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh pursued wickets on a lively pitch. This seemed to be his destiny, a resolute batsman in the stoical tradition, a fine softener of the ball, an old-fashioned opener. In the past few months, Vaughan has moved beyond these restrictions to emerge as a stroke player of the highest class. Something has clicked in his head. Rather than trying to avoid failure, he pursues success, putting all the pressure on the bowlers. It took courage to reject his breeding and background and to explore the edges of his game. Against the Indians, Vaughan drove on the rise and pulled fearlessly. He also played the spinners cleverly and boldly, stepping down the pitch to drive Anil Kumble through mid-wicket or else past the bowler and bending to sweep Harbhajan Singh with a combination of eye and power that drove the bowler to distraction. 89
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Vaughan has also formed a happy cooperation with his old friend Trescothick at the top of the order, and the pair run aggressively and unselfishly, besides batting in such different styles that opponents find them difficult to control. These fellows will not let the Australians push them around. Challenges will be met and loose deliveries will be put away. No glaring weaknesses have been detected in Vaughan’s technique or temperament and he is capable of scoring heavily against any attack. Vaughan has become a fine cricketer and an important member of an England team hoping to spring a surprise. His may be the key wicket this winter, a possibility that may not have escaped McGrath. After years of hard work, Vaughan has become an overnight success.
Michael Vaughan defies the Australians Michael Vaughan has brought the 2002–03 Test series back to life. Assisted by a timid decision from the third umpire, this lofty, cerebral opening batsman from the northern regions of a damp country produced the innings his team needed to revive its cause. Nor did he merely graft his way to three figures in the manner expected from top-order batsmen in an embattled line-up. Instead, Vaughan batted stylishly and purposefully as he took his team towards a total big enough to trouble Australia. Vaughan was superb. An hour before the match began, he injured a knee in one of those warm-ups that play such a part in the life of the modern sportsman. By all accounts, his place was in doubt till the captains marched out to complete the formalities, Nasser Hussain having spent the previous hour repeating ‘We’ll bat’. At last, Vaughan declared himself fit to join his comrades. Apart, of course, from the selection of his better half, it was the best decision he has taken. Notwithstanding these distracting preparations, Vaughan appeared calm as he started batting on a pitch that favoured this activity. At first, he needed a bit of luck as Australia’s opening bowlers produced numerous demanding deliveries, several of which eluded a proffered bat. Vaughan did not appear flustered and put these mishaps out of his mind, precisely the outlook required. After taking a look at the bowling, and finding nothing in it to provoke sleepless nights, the adopted Yorkshireman went for his 90
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strokes. In his early years, Vaughan was a drudge who collected runs slowly and carefully. Nowadays, he bats with gusto, striking the ball with a full swing of the bat and always looking for opportunities to score. Rather earlier than Mr Scrooge, he met his ghosts and took note of their recommendations. Along the way, Vaughan needed one stroke of luck. On 19, he drove to cover and was cleanly and clearly caught by Justin Langer. Of course, the fieldsmen celebrated, only to find the batsman standing his ground and waiting for the replays. Alas, the appointed and well-rewarded umpires refused to take responsibility, whereupon their assistant detected doubt where none existed and the appeal was turned down. It was a demeaning and dispiriting episode and it is high time these matters were sorted out on the field. Vaughan was out. Between them, the umpires and the game produced the wrong verdict. If this is progress, then we are better off without it. Spared, the England opener cut loose without ever losing his head. Few tall men have scored heavily in Test cricket because of weaknesses on the back foot. Vaughan has no such deficiency and proved it by carting sixes over mid-wicket and hooking the fastest bowlers around. Pulls and stylish strokes through cover were the strong points of his game. Twice, the northerner pounced upon shortish deliveries from Andrew Bichel and dispatched them into a nearby crowd. Repeatedly, he rocked back to pull pace and spin through the leg-side, a shot he plays better than any contemporary. Often, he stepped back to ease presentable balls to the boundary behind point. His judgement of length was unerring and the execution of each shot decisive. Australia could not work out a way of dismissing him and the home captain was reduced to bowling bumpers to a defensive field. Vaughan played umpteen brilliant strokes, including a back-foot shot past the bowler and some calculated assaults on Shane Warne that alarmed the members watching from behind the fence. After reaching three figures with another delightful off-drive, he danced a jig and promptly set about adding to his tally. Adelaide has known greater innings, but few as important to the wellbeing of a touring team. England fought back, and Vaughan led the way. It was a happy day for him and his countrymen, a day on which an embattled team stood up to be counted. 91
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6 Shafts of lightning Despite all the refinements, cricket is still about one bloke with a bit of leather trying to knock the block off another fellow armed with a lump of wood.
F
ast bowlers are an essential part of the game. Nothing is more calculated to excite a crowd than the picture of an explosive bowler pawing the ground at the top of his mark, unless it is the sight of an athletic paceman streaming across the turf to deliver another shaft of lightning. This is cricket at its most primeval, the sort of cricket played in comic strips and in the dreams of adventurous boys. Many of the most celebrated moments in the game feature fast bowlers as the heroes or the villains. In 1954–55, Frank Tyson destroyed the Australians with arguably the fastest bowling cricket has known. In 1960–61, Wes Hall roared in time and again with pendulum swinging and the crowd hushed for every delivery. Before that it was Harold Larwood and much later it was the great West Indians, who hunted not in pairs but quartets and from whose attentions not even the sturdiest batting orders could escape. Nor has fast bowling merely stirred the imagination. Without their uncompromising assault upon the bones of opposing batsmen, mediocrity could more easily prosper. Not that the attack is quite as fierce as was the case in the time of spiky gloves and thigh guards as thin as sliced bread. Modern batsmen wear almost as much armour as 92
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Ned Kelly, so courage does not play quite such a large role in batting. In the past, too, pitches could be wet or rough and bravery was demanded from those hoping to make runs. Nowadays, the pitches are mostly placid, the bowler must send the ball down from the full distance and restrictions have been placed on the number of deliveries that can with impunity be aimed at the batsman’s head. Unsurprisingly, pacemen have detected in these changes a conspiracy to thwart their enterprise. Of course, they have long been convinced that cricket is a game run by batsmen on behalf of batsmen, and they may be right about that. Even so, it is no small thing to stand 22 yards from a man of dark intent capable of flinging a hard missile in the general direction of his opponents. Batsmen are not in as much danger, but extreme pace still tests their mettle. Courage is not the only consideration. Not everyone has the reflexes needed to fashion an appropriate response as a ball hurries towards them at the speed favoured by teenage drivers. Skill is also important in countering extreme pace. A ball changing direction at high speed is incomparably more difficult to play than a ball ambling along. Indeed, many pace bowlers are willing to reduce their velocity by a yard in an attempt to move the ball around. In fact, it has become quite the fashion as more matches are played and more slow pitches are prepared by countries anxious that Test matches last the full five days, thereby satisfying the requirements of television moguls. Clearly, fast men remain an important part of any attack committed to removing a resolute batting line-up. Undoubtedly, the 1970s was the greatest period of fast bowling. Of course, events do not divide themselves into convenient decades. Probably the period ran from the emergence of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in the early 1970s to the fading of the last West Indians and the impressive Pakistanis about fifteen years later. Opening batsmen of that era had a tough time. Not every fast bowler mentioned in this book has been included in this chapter. Malcolm Marshall, Glenn McGrath and Dennis Lillee found a place elsewhere. As far as this section is concerned, Wasim Akram and Courtney Walsh take the new ball, a pair blessed with contrasting skills and temperaments, the Pakistani relying on 93
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wizardry and the Jamaican upon height and perseverance. Chaminda Vaas and Shoaib Akhtar follow, a couple whose different ways remind us that cricketers come in all shapes and sizes, from the patient Catholic left-armer who enjoys singing to the fiery warrior with nightclubs in his eyes.
Wasim Akram Wasim Akram is both a rascal and a cricketing genius. In his hands, a ball performed the sort of contortions more often associated with demented pixies. His deliveries embarked upon journeys more complicated than any previously undertaken between popping creases. They seemed to have second thoughts halfway down the pitch, whereupon they would change direction, thereby confounding carefully constructed defences. Against Wasim at his most fiendish there could be no security, for a piece of wood gives poor protection against charges of electricity. His mischievous side was captured by a piratical face and gleaming eyes that hinted at a darkness within. Certainly, it was easy to imagine Wasim with a knife in his mouth as he swung through the masts before tossing his enemies overboard with a grin and a cheer. He could just as easily have been cast as a matinee idol or as the villain in a pantomime. No one could ever tell whether angelic or devilish forces had the stronger hold upon his heart. Suffice it to say that the struggle had an epic quality, and that it was amply reflected in his sporting career. During the course of a single afternoon, Wasim could upset his supporters and charm the ill-disposed. Upon the field and off it, he cast a spell. Undoubtedly, he has been among the greatest fast bowlers of his time. Certainly, he was the most interesting to watch because he was daring, dangerous and never dull. Often he resembled a magician taking delight in performing feats supposedly beyond the power of man. Sometimes they were illusions and sometimes trickery was involved, but none of it could have worked unless Wasim did indeed have wonderful powers at his disposal. He was an inspired bowler, a chivalrous and yet unscrupulous propeller of the cricket ball whose moods were expressed in the pace of his deliveries. 94
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Of course, he was also infuriating, and that was part of the mystery, the sense that he was not a simple soul sending down scintillating productions but a wilful, playful, moody, calculating and cunning customer as likely to be ignoring his captain and following his own whims as playing his part in the collective effort. He was an idealistic bowler, always searching for the perfect delivery, the incomparable spell, yet he was touched and sometimes overtaken by cynicism, for he knew the darkness of his own soul and reckoned, correctly, that the world was not all it appeared to be. In short, he was an artist who was obliged to paint his pictures within the confines of a cricket team and within the parameters of a cricket match. Wasim will be remembered for his brilliant moments, not least the stunning bursts produced on the great day in Melbourne when Pakistan won the 1992 World Cup. Wasim’s elimination of Allan Lamb and other members of the top order will not be forgotten by those privileged to have watched it. None of the batsmen made a mistake, none was complacent or showed the slightest disrespect, everyone was fully prepared to counter the threat of the bowler with the flashing arm, a man who released the ball in his run and could make it swing in different directions with some hidden adjustment of the wrist. England gave Wasim his due, built a wall around the stumps and still could not prevent the havoc wrought by this cricketing tornado. At such times, Wasim was irresistible. He did not lower himself to buying wickets or maintaining line and length till eventually his opponents lost patience. Rather, he seized the ball and took wickets with a combination of force and supreme skill. Moreover, he was often armed with a new ball, pristine and white, free from interference. There have been more reliable bowlers, but there cannot have been any with as wide a range of deliveries. Wasim’s mischief cannot be ignored, either, for all men must be called to account for the entirety of their activities. Along the way, Wasim fought bitterly with various captains, was suspected, though not convicted, of tampering with cricket balls and allegedly became involved with bookmakers. Although he protested his innocence, there will be black marks against his name when the reckoning is taken. He has been a magnificent cricketer, but perhaps not a true champion. 95
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Fortunately, Wasim leaves behind many happy cricketing memories. After all, it was a long and brilliant career, and he could be delightful and amusing. Once it was customary to create beautiful illusions about sportsmen, and to imagine they inhabited a world removed from our daily discourse. Of course, it was all poppycock. Nowadays, cricketers are regarded merely as members of society, products of their time. Recent biographies of past players reveal the flaws of man. Wasim is living proof that top sportsmen are only special on the field. Cricketers like Wasim are not to be judged only in terms of figures. He has a remarkable record, but that is not the entire point. No one doubts that he was a great player. Rather, he is to be judged by his contribution to the game, as a match-winner and as a man who proved that bowling could be as entertaining as batting. Between them, Wasim and Shane Warne revived the art of bowling, thereby helping to restore interest in Test cricket. Neither belonged in a vicarage; both dared to challenge the orthodoxies. Wasim and Warne were radicals in a conservative game. They reminded us that bowlers are not mere machines. Their wizardry was as strong a protest against servility as bodyline. They were artists and refused to kowtow. Admittedly, they were betimes caught with their fingers in the pie, but they could argue that they had done most of the baking.
Courtney Walsh Courtney Walsh has toiled throughout the 2000–01 series without taking many wickets. Doubtless, he’d been hoping to claim the seventeen needed to reach 500 in a blaze of antipodean glory. Unfortunately, cricket is a game without sentiment. Walsh has worked hard, but has seldom looked like running through the Australian batsmen. Often, he’s been reduced to a containing role. Partly it is a comment upon his age. Partly it is a statement about the incompetence of colleagues curiously keen to test Mark Waugh’s leg-side play and Justin Langer’s ability to cut. Walsh has taken only nine wickets in the series and time is running out. He has suffered the fate of the top bowler in a struggling side. 96
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Batsmen have kept an eye upon him and punished the rest. He never has enough runs on the board and always seems to be bowling to the best batsmen. By the time the lower orders appear, he is exhausted. Accordingly, he has been unable to add significantly to his long list of victims. He has taken 66 in this calendar year, and the last few have been the toughest. Watching Walsh in this series, it’s hard to believe that he was the outstanding bowler last summer in England, better than Curtly Ambrose, better than Darren Gough or Andrew Caddick. Walsh was magnificent in that series, menacing, skilful and persistent. A leg-cutter had found its way into his repertoire, complementing his natural inswing. Walsh also took delight in his newfound slower ball that twice confounded Graham Thorpe, whereupon the bowler celebrated as might a father upon the appearance of his firstborn. His performance confirmed the adage that it is foolish to underestimate an ageing bowler. Invariably, they lick their lips and have a crafty look in their eye. The young bloods are the fellows to hit around. England was the peak of his career, a superb display that brought 34 wickets at an average of thirteen. Alas, Walsh has not been nearly as dangerous this series. At times, he has looked distinctly flat. Several reasons lie behind this apparent decline. Naturally, he enjoyed bowling on damp and unreliable English pitches. Also, Ambrose was around to lend a hand. This pair often bowled together, pinning the batsman down, grafting for wickets. Now there is no one else to maintain the pressure. Walsh also had more luck than he’s enjoyed down under with umpires and edges. Perhaps this strong man, who seems to bowl on Coca-Cola as cars run on petrol, was under-prepared for this series. Before it began, he was not sure he was going to play. Conceivably, his mind and body slowed down like a generator whose power had been reduced. It can take a long time to restore the surge. Happily, Walsh has not let himself down. Certainly, there has been no reason to pity him. No one has taken liberties against him. He can bowl a length in his sleep and that isn’t a bad start. And yet his resilience has been tested to the utmost and sometimes he has seemed downcast. Walsh’s time is almost up. This is his last appearance in Melbourne and Australia will say its farewells in the final Test next week. He has 97
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started to lumber in the field and won’t want to stay around much longer. Something has been lost. Australians will have fond memories of this willing worker, this craftsman blessed with stamina and determination. They’ll remember with a mixture of pain and pleasure his unstinting effort in Adelaide eight summers ago, where he kept flogging himself to the crease and took the last wicket with Australia two runs shy of victory. His eyes then bulged and he ran around like the 5-year-old that lives inside every sportsman until his day is done.
Shoaib Akhtar If at all possible, Pakistan must accommodate Shoaib Akhtar. Never mind that he is frustrating and has disdained camps designed to turn a bunch of players into a fighting unit. Every team is allowed one maverick, or what is management about? Moreover, true fast bowlers appear about once a decade, whereupon they give an attack its cutting edge and the game much of its excitement. Shoaib can be irritating, but he can also produce the sort of devastating spells that change a match and thrill a crowd. Shoaib is not a normal cricketer, an off-spinner or yet another medium-pacer. Nor is he even quite a typical fast bowler, for some of them have been sensible. Rather, he belongs to the wild and woolly school of pace bowling. Those expecting him to spend time drinking milkshakes and visiting libraries are doomed to a life of disappointment. Part headhunter and part headline grabber, he deals in yorkers and bumpers and pursues wickets with the zeal Casanova reserved for conquests. In short, he is a brigand, a Fred Trueman or a Dennis Lillee, a member of an honourable tradition that has proved effective over the years, but whose members have not always been popular with authority. No one in their right mind expects those who charge to the crease like enraged bulls and hurl the ball down with every last ounce of strength to display the impeccable manners of the Edwardian drawing room. It takes an unusual man to try his luck in this risky enterprise. What are its attractions? A batsman can play lovely strokes and seek the satisfaction of scoring a hundred. A stumper is involved with every ball and can bat as he chooses. A spinner need trot in off 98
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a few steps, whereupon something strange comes over spectators. A fast bowler must sweat upon tame pitches against protected batsmen, before unhelpful umpires and with endless restrictions placed upon him. He sees batsmen let the ball pass, umpires shake their heads and must walk uncomplaining back to his mark. What makes them do it? The fear in the eyes of batsmen, the roar of the crowd and the glorious sight of a stump on its way to the wicket-keeper, that’s what. And it is fun to be a villain. Shoaib and chums are not to be put alongside the crafty and the acquisitive. They belong in a distinct group, men of extremes intent upon the spectacular. They can win a match in a spell, terrify tailenders and outrage critics before going into the night with more mayhem in mind. The idea that such men are going to be tame is fanciful. It is their wildness that makes them do it. Shoaib needs to be understood. It is important to him that he cuts a dash and commands attention. Every fast bowler knows that his gift lasts as long as youth and could end this morning should a bone crack. As far as he is concerned, it is now or never. Shoaib is not a fool and knows he will not be wanted once the threat has been reduced. Accordingly, he does things on his own terms. No point telling men like him it is a team game and that he must report at such a place at such a time. Who is going to take the wickets? Who is going to fill the ground? Who is going to take care of him when he slows down? At once he is flamboyant and insecure. Shoaib is not an unsympathetic character. No hint of malice or meanness can be found within him. He is too big for all that. Nor does he shirk. Of course, he does swagger about, but he has not often let his side down. It’s just that everything with him is writ large. Even by the standards of fast bowlers, it must be admitted that he is wilful and erratic. He has a stubborn streak, too, and sometimes seems prepared to spite his face by cutting off his nose (though not, one suspects, his hair). Doubtless, captains and coaches find him difficult to handle, but a way must be found because Shoaib has a precious gift. Naturally, Bob Woolmer and his fitness assistants want to mould a team. Indeed, they were appointed with this task in mind because Pakistan has often been weakened by wrangling and ill-discipline. Nevertheless, some licence must be given to the local tearaway. It is not as if Shoaib has been lolling about on a desert island. 99
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Moreover, the bowler could point out that the Pakistan Cricket Board does not take care of its players by providing secure contracts or appropriate rewards. To the contrary, the PCB stands accused of encouraging the ‘every man for himself’ mentality. Whatever arguments are presented, the fact remains that Pakistan and Shoaib need each other and the sooner common ground is found the better it will be for all concerned.
Chaminda Vaas Chaminda Vaas is the unsung hero of Sri Lankan cricket. Over the years, credit has been given to more charismatic men whose leadership and prodigious talents secured a vast following across the land. Aravinda De Silva, Arjuna Ranatunga and Muttiah Muralitharan have been colourful and controversial characters whose deeds have turned cricket fields into stages. An emerging cricketing force searching for identity took them to its heart, defended them against all comers. Every country needs its champions and its warriors. Vaas has been the quiet achiever, bowling his overs, scoring his runs, hiding his exasperation at dropped catches and bad luck and always turning out for the next match determined to serve to the very best of his abilities. It is a contribution whose importance will eventually be realised. Meanwhile, it is a matter of looking in the books and counting wickets, matches and victories, and throughout Vaas has been the leader of the attack. A tendency has arisen to underestimate consistent and humble performers. Often, such men are not properly appreciated till the time comes to hang up the boots. Within the game, though, Vaas commands respect. Certainly, the Australians hold him in high regard. During the last series played in Sri Lanka, many of the Aussie batsmen remarked upon his skill, control and perseverance. Nor could they read his swing and none felt they had his measure. Considering the aggression of the Australians, the nature of the pitches and Vaas’s lack of height and pace, this was high praise. Perhaps, too, it is an indication of a revival in fast-medium bowling. Not so long ago, batsmen were convinced that medium-pace was as dead as last month’s newsreel. But, then, much the same was said of 100
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wrist-spin a decade ago. A study of the rankings confirms that it was all hogwash. Glenn McGrath, Shaun Pollock and Vaas might not strike fear into a collection of librarians, but they take wickets economically and help their captains to retain control of the game. And they last a long time. Vaas and company have reinforced the view that cricket is a game of skill. Their work cannot be appreciated with a casual glance, for there is nothing scintillating about it. Closer scrutiny reveals clever variations and an ability to pin a batsman down till his will has been broken or a weak point has been exploited. Aggression has many forms and is not to be mistaken for mindless violence. The West Indians of the 1980s did not rely on speed alone; they were supreme technicians. Consistency is Vaas’s other strong point. He does not have many bad days. He is the most resourceful of the left-handers to emerge in the last few years and has about him the air of the canny professional capable of adjusting his game to meet the prevailing circumstances. When the ball is swinging, he is dangerous and when the blessed thing refuses to leave the straight and narrow, he is able to concentrate upon cutters and other subtleties devised over the years. Every country needs a fast bowler capable of taking wickets with the new ball. In his unobtrusive way, Vaas has fulfilled this role for Sri Lanka. Of course, he has not quite been a Kapil Dev or an Imran Khan, inspirational figures coaxing life from moribund surfaces. Such men come along once in a generation. But Chaminda has led in his own way and his figures speak for themselves. Not so long ago, the idea of a Sri Lankan fast bowler taking hundreds of wickets in Test cricket seemed far-fetched. The pitches were unhelpful, the locals were not strong enough and it was too damn hot. Vaas refused to give in and has become one of the most popular and admired cricketers around. It is a considerable achievement. Many bowlers in India, Pakistan and elsewhere could learn a lot from him.
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7 From the Caribbean Tactics took a back seat during the years of West Indian supremacy. They played proud and ruthless cricket and no one could stop them. Now, though . . . no longer can the general rely upon his artillery to break the enemy.
C
ricket is different in the West Indies. Every ground has its own characters, its own identity. Of course, the West Indies does not exist as a political entity and instead consists of independent islands and a South American country. Conflicts occur between neighbouring provinces elsewhere, so it is hardly surprising that countries with different traditions and backgrounds find themselves at odds. Now and then, the idea of a West Indian Federation reappears, only to falter in the face of national interests. CLR James, the most challenging of cricket writers, and Sir Frank Worrell, the greatest of cricketing leaders, were among those arguing in favour of West Indian unity. Unable to sway the isolationists, they were obliged to concentrate their energies upon their chosen field, the game of bat and ball that had taken hold in the region. In many respects, the lives of James and Worrell tell the story of West Indian cricket, or anyhow its promise, because the performance has not always lived up to expectation. James was the philosopher sitting in his Brixton flat, writing about nationalism and Marxism and expounding upon the players he had seen in his homeland. He had a penetrating mind, a sharp tongue and a love of the game. 102
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Viv Richards and other Somerset players visited him once during a match with Surrey and remembered his darting mind and the modesty of his surroundings. Here was a proud man uninterested in the beads and bangles of success. Worrell’s wisdom emerged on the field, where he coaxed cricket and conduct of the highest order from his charges. He understood the importance of his appointment as the region’s first official black captain—George Headley led West Indies in one Test match, but Worrell otherwise was obliged to play under mostly incompetent whites. He told his players that they must behave responsibly whatever the provocation, because the eyes of the cricketing world were upon them and many were waiting for a slip-up. After all, apartheid was entrenched when Worrell took charge, and Indigenous Australians were not included in the census, let alone allowed to vote. Not that Worrell was a saint or anything of the sort. As Basil Butcher relates in this chapter, he was a hard drinker and betimes an alcoholic. That he was a wonderful man and a profound influence on his players is not in doubt. Maurice Foster remembers playing with him in a club match when the great man was nearing the end of his career. Content to bat down the order, Worrell sat in the dressingroom reading a book of philosophy. Presently he noticed that younger team-mates were coming and going at a disconcerting rate, some of them looking decidedly the worse for wear. Worrell put down his book and asked what the commotion was all about. Foster replied, ‘Mr Gilchrist creatin’ havoc.’ Roy Gilchrist was a lethal and much feared fast bowler. Worrell put on some yellowing pads and a floppy hat, marched to the crease at the fall of the next wicket, smote 83 in 77 minutes and upon returning to the rooms said, ‘You see, Gilchrist can be hit.’ West Indies has fallen back in recent times, owing to its failure to realise the need to support talent with structures. Times have changed, but West Indies cricket has not changed with them. Youngsters have many more choices and higher expectations and cricket could not take its place in their world for granted. Nor could West Indies assume that the supply of cricketers would continue unchecked. Alas, the flood slowed to a trickle and before long Brian Lara was the only great cricketer in the region, and he was poorly placed to carry the weight put on his shoulders. Happily, a resurgence 103
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seems to be underway as, rid of the black racism that emerged in the late 1980s, the Indian population starts to assert itself. A few competent Afro-Caribbean players have also emerged, raising hopes that it is not over yet for West Indian cricket. Included in this chapter are various interviews conducted during Australia’s 2003 tour of the Caribbean. Oscar and company were encountered by accident in the seas of Barbados and my only regret was that an unavoidable want of paper and tape recorder meant that the ensuing conversation relied upon recollection and not documentation. Various phrases were committed to memory, but much must have gone through to the keeper. Still, the debate was as informed as it was entertaining and its length and content confirmed the region’s singular passion for the game. Andy Ganteaume and Basil Butcher were happy to describe their experiences and both had tales to tell. Andy Roberts interrupted his pitch preparations to talk about his childhood and playing days. He has had a soft spot for me ever since a couple of his bumpers landed on my head a quarter of a century ago, events that in some opinions explain a lot. Nolan Clarke has also been included, though he has spent most of his playing days in Holland. He, too, has a story to tell.
West Indian supporters Every morning, Clifford and Oscar bathe in the warm waters of the Caribbean. Early every morning, these old-timers enter the salty seas off the coast of Barbados and revitalise their bodies and minds with a long wallow. Meanwhile, they talk and, like most West Indians, they talk about cricket and make a good deal of sense. Over the years, they’ve seen ‘plenty, plenty’. Oscar watched Frank Worrell play in 1943, remembers him being bowled without offering a shot and saying ‘that will not happen again’. He says the three Ws grew up a little further apart than is supposed and adds that only Worrell’s house has been respectfully preserved. Clifford does not go back quite so far but recalls Neil Harvey, ‘the best of the lot as far as I am concerned’. He remembers making a lot of money on ‘Keith Ross Miller’. Collie Smith had been collaring the Australians in the warm-up matches, whereupon the great 104
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all-rounder announced that he would not score anything in the Tests. Clifford promptly laid against Smith reaching 100 runs in the entire series and had plenty of takers. ‘He score a double-duck in the first Test and then they drop he and dey want the money back, but I tell them it part of the bet.’ He remembers the Australian slips catching everything. The old-timers discuss the game furiously as they wash, and laugh a good deal. Other regulars join them. Oscar saw Ken Barrington play in England and remembered the West Indian supporters calling out ‘He can’t bat!’ as he walked out, ‘so I ask them “what number he? He go in four and you think he can’t bat?” They get him cheaply and a carnival begin. I say “Why you celebrate if he can’t bat?”’ Oscar recalls the invasions of the pitches at Lord’s and points out that ‘a West Indian doing well means a lot, we haven’t got much else’. He remembers Viv Richards attacking spectators with his bat and holds it against him. They like the way these Australians play their cricket. ‘It is a thinking game,’ Oscar says, ‘you play it from the neck up.’ They say the Australians practise harder than their fellows and are better prepared for when ‘de fella get serious’, apparently a reference to the sun warming up. Brett Lee had caught their eye during the Trinidad Test. Of course, they had watched every ball. He had kept pounding in, not giving ‘de batsmen any respite’. Then Andy Bichel had come along ‘to drain de runs’. Clifford maintained that he had never seen a batsman able to withstand a sustained draining of the runs, not even Geoff Boycott. ‘They all get out,’ he insists. Concentration is the weak point of the West Indian side, the fellows agreed, finding common ground for the first time in an hour. Look at Ramnaresh Sarwan, playing sweet before lunch and throwing it away straight afterwards. ‘These fellows alright till thirty,’ Oscar announces, ‘then “pop” they out.’ Sarwan was a problem because he cannot hook or run between the wickets. Marlon Samuels is dismissed as ‘dozy’, but ‘must play because he can bat. We don’t have many like him.’ What was the problem? Well, the schools were not playing cricket as much. In the olden days, there was only cricket, now hockey and baseball had to be considered. Clifford added athletics to the list of distractions and pointed out many gifted sportsmen won scholarships 105
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to attend American universities. The selectors were also ‘full of foolishness’. Richards or Gordon Greenidge were not up to the task and the assumption that only past champions understand Test cricket was not shared by the bathers. They were not at all happy with the team chosen for the Trinidad Test. ‘The Australians chose five bowlers and we come up with three—it doesn’t make sense.’ They want to see Tino Best playing alongside a couple more Bajan bowlers, one not even in the national team. Nor are they convinced that Omari Banks is the best spinner in the Caribbean. John arrives and says that a fast pitch has been prepared for the Bridgetown Test. ‘No point having a spinning track,’ he points out, ‘we don’t have any spinners.’ Oscar says the pitch does not matter because the Australians are too strong. John is not so easily discouraged and predicts that Best and Jermaine Lawson will make the Australians ‘hop about’. He reminds his fellow bathers that India turned the tables on these same opponents and tries to convince his friends that West Indies has a chance. After an hour and a half, it is time to leave. Oscar and chums linger a little longer in the water. West Indies has many conversations of this sort, with cricket as the only topic and no sign of the debate flagging after all these years. It does not happen elsewhere. Cricket matters in this region, holds the attention of intelligent men for hours every morning, men hoping to see some good cricket and some sign of revival from their team.
Andy Ganteaume Andy Ganteaume watched from the President’s box as West Indies slumped to defeat against the marauding Australians in Port-of-Spain in 2003. A sprightly 82-year-old, he greeted the dignitaries, chose the man of the match and rejoiced at the achievements of his fellow Trinidadians, Daren Ganga and Brian Lara. Fifty-five years earlier, Ganteaume had become the first son of this island to score a Test hundred at Queen’s Park. It was the only innings he ever played in Test cricket. Ganteaume was born and raised in Belmont, one of the poorer suburbs in Port-of-Spain, a place where doors and windows were 106
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closed only in the rainy season and ‘everyone knew everyone else’s business, good or bad!’ His parents were not married, but the boy was properly educated at an ‘English Catholic’ school where the rudiments of algebra, geography, grammar ‘and Kings and Queens and all that’ were instilled. He was steeped in the church, with ‘Sunday school, choir, bible and hymns’. Ganteaume wanted to go to college and applied for one of twelve scholarships, but was not strong enough academically. ‘Even then I could not make the XI’ he chuckles, hiding the hurt. He believes this failure held back his cricket because it slowed his development between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Instead, the boy joined the civil service and, upon reaching his supposed maturity, started playing cricket for Maple Club, an arrangement that was to last 35 years. Although he had no formal coaching, he was ‘not without advice, from the elders and so on’. A talented sportsman, Ganteaume became a regular in Trinidad’s national soccer team, playing matches on the savannah, a vast patch of browned grass that serves as the lungs of the city and upon which matches are still played and kites flown. Thousands used to watch the internationals and even more turned out for the dust-up between north and south. Gerry Gomez and Jeff Stollmeyer, white men who captained the West Indies cricket team in the 1950s, played, as did Clifford Roach, another Test cricketer. Ganteaume played left-half, but sometimes became ‘so browned off with the forwards not scoring that I thought “What the hell, I cannot miss any more than they!”’ Ganteaume was a wicket-keeper and opening batsman who preferred the latter activity and thought it outrageous that a man should be asked to fulfil both roles. ‘In those days, West Indian cricket was obsessed with the idea of a keeper opening because his eye was in,’ he recalls. ‘Of course, it was utter madness.’ Ganteaume was inclined to speak his mind and says he is not ‘the pandering type’. He feels it counted against him, cost him further opportunities in Test cricket. By the time MCC arrived in 1948, Ganteaume had been scoring consistently for his country for seven years. In those days, it was customary for a touring team to play two practice matches at each venue before the Test. Already the Englishmen had earned a reputation for playing a defensive game, with seven men on the off-side and the boundaries protected as soon as the shine went off the ball. 107
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George Headley—‘Master George’ as the diminutive Trinidadian calls him—had captained the team in the first Test, one of three men appointed before the series began by way of placating local interests. Next, MCC arrived in Port-of-Spain to prepare for the second match of the series. Ganteaume scored a century in the first warmup match. He knew he had to make runs because ‘I was not a privileged boy. I had to make a hundred to get into the argument.’ At the end of the first day, he was unbeaten on 101. An English reporter wrote that he had ‘no praise for a batsman who in these beautiful conditions takes a whole day to make a hundred’. Ganteaume remembers the words and quotes them verbatim. They had a powerful effect upon his life. ‘We were a colony,’ he explains. ‘If an Englishman said something, it was gospel. I had never been criticised for scoring slowly before. I became a slowcoach because an Englishman said so. I will die with that tag. People walk up to me and ask “How many singles did you score in that innings?”’ The laughter returns, and the hurt. When West Indies chose its team for the second Test, Ganteaume was omitted. He was not surprised. Teams had to be chosen early to give players a chance to make the necessary arrangements. Another practice match remained, and Ganteaume failed in the first innings. Then Stollmeyer injured his leg, whereupon the candidate scored 90 in the second dig. Finally, the selectors had no choice. Even in his finest hour, Ganteaume sensed rejection, for the local selector, ‘a cold and imperious man’, could not bring himself to offer congratulations. A medical certificate was required from the family doctor, but Ganteaume was poor and had none, so a friend performed the duty. At last Ganteaume had won his first cap. MCC scored over 300— he is hazy on these details—and the neat 26-year-old went out to open the innings alongside George Carew, a fine player of pace, but weak against spin. On the way out, Carew said, ‘When de fella Laker come on, he a damn good bowler and I going to fire. It him or me.’ Both batsmen started well and passed 30 at around the same time, whereupon Carew cut loose against the spinner. Fortune favoured him and Carew reached three figures as his colleague recorded his 52nd run. Ganteaume points out that ‘Any thinking batsman will keep his end up and push singles to give his partner the strike whilst he is running hot.’ 108
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Ganteaume was not all that slow. After four and a half hours of steady batting, he became the first Trinidadian to score a Test century in front of his home crowd. His innings included thirteen boundaries. West Indies was poised for victory until a rainstorm turned an easy chase into a race against the clock. The match was drawn. Of course, it was a wonderful achievement by the young opener. Nonetheless, he was dropped for the next match, and replaced by a fast bowler. It rankled then, and it rankles now, though Ganteaume tries to hide it as the waiter brings coffee and his wife of many years sits demurely by his side. In Stollmeyer’s absence, Gomez had captained the team in Portof-Spain. John Goddard was appointed for the third Test, another white man of dubious merit under whose leadership men of darker complexion and superior ability, experience and intellect were supposed to play. Ganteaume does not conceal his contempt for Goddard or his dislike of Stollmeyer. ‘He opened with me for many years. If he wanted me in the West Indian team, it would have happened.’ Soon Master George also tired of the shenanigans, and withdrew from the fourth match of the series complaining of an injury. Ganteaume was not taken to India that winter, the selectors preferring Allan Rae, who was studying in England and whose form and fitness were unknown. He was white. Ganteaume was not wanted. It was as simple as that. In three matches against the Englishmen, the opener scored two centuries and a ninety. In his only Test innings, he reached 112. It is not quite the end of the tale. Ganteaume retired, slightly hurt, but then Learie Constantine and CLR James persuaded him to try again. He returned and played well enough to be chosen for the 1957 tour to England. It was a rotten tour. West Indies had two managers and ten world-class cricketers, none of them opening batsmen or bowlers. England destroyed their spinners with pad play and low morale did the rest. Ganteaume withdrew to family life. Perhaps it was slow scoring that held him back, or his refusal to kowtow, or the colour of his skin, or a combination of these factors. Certainly, he was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. In retirement he helped to raise three daughters; one works with retarded children, another in land distribution and a third married an American philosopher and became a ballet dancer. 109
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Mr and Mrs Ganteaume seem a healthy and happy couple, proud of their children and with plenty of years left in them. Perhaps he has had the last laugh, for the rest are gone and he is 82 not out and heading for another hundred, this time at a pace to satisfy even his most demanding critic.
Basil Butcher Basil Butcher sat in the Queen’s club pavilion at Bourda Oval in Georgetown, surveying the prematurely empty field, greeting his friends and grown-up sons and talking about the state of the game in the West Indies. In his time, Butcher batted at second wicket down for the West Indian teams of the 1960s, after Rohan Kanhai and before Seymour Nurse and Garry Sobers. In 1963, he played one of Test cricket’s most celebrated innings, scoring 133 out of 227 at Lord’s against a strong English attack. Before going in to bat, he’d been told his wife had miscarried their first child and he took it out on the ball. Along the way, Butcher mixed with the great men of West Indian cricket and enjoyed the experience. ‘Worrell and Weekes were the heaviest drinkers I ever knew,’ he laughs, ‘and Garry was a very close third.’ Nowadays, he runs his own bauxite company and watches as Guyana and West Indian cricket try to turn their fortunes around. Not bad for a boy raised on a sugar estate in nearby Berbice, a humble country boy, incompletely educated and without any particular ambition. ‘What I was then,’ the 64-year-old points out, ‘is not what I am now.’ Nor was Butcher the only cricketer to emerge from the estate. Kanhai lived a stone’s throw away, Alvin Kallicharran was a neighbour and Joe Solomon grew up 600 yards away. He remembers Kanhai as a little fellow, three years his junior, whose father bought and sold rice. When Butcher found a job with the local suppliers of water, he’d ‘go to work and he’d be batting. I’d come home and he’d be batting. Always Rohan was at the crease. Next day the same thing.’ Kallicharran was raised by his grandad not far away. His father was trying to buy a house on a welfare scheme. Both worked on the estate. Butcher recalls seeing ‘this tiny fellow with a bat up to his chin 110
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carting the bowling around. I ask “Who dat?” and they said it was Pagla’s son, Alvin. He was twelve. From there he just took off. I was proud to be captain in his first match for Guyana.’ Joe Solomon’s father was butler to the manager of the estate, so the boy rubbed shoulders with the mighty and was regarded as affluent and not really ‘one of us’. Butcher remembers his refusal to hook. ‘He’d sway till the right ball came along and then he’d cut hard,’ he says, recalling the unruffled manner of a man whose unerring throw caused Test cricket’s first tie in the epic series of 1960–61. Butcher’s own father worked on the estate and his mother ran a bakery. Cricket was played endlessly and for fun, a game without horizons. He says, ‘We never dreamt we could play for Guyana. There was a big difference between town and country. We were supposed to be second-class citizens. It took us a while to shake that off.’ At first, bats cut from coconut trees were used. Presently, proper bats were provided by local clubs. Rivalry was keen between the schools, with Butcher representing the local Anglicans and Kanhai the Catholic seat of learning, and the entire community coming along to watch. Not that Kanhai spent much time studying, reaching only third standard before departing. Butcher is indignant that administrators nowadays regard education as important in selecting teams and captains. By his estimation, Shivnarine Chanderpaul has all the ingredients required for captaining a cricket team and never mind that upon leaving school he could barely read or write. ‘These things can be learnt,’ he points out. ‘Cricket is an experience, not a lesson in a book.’ He is not sure how the sugar estate produced so many top sportsmen—a boy in his house played tennis for his country and there were other less famous national and international cricketers. John Trime had played a couple of times for the West Indies as a pace bowler and he was from the same background ‘so maybe that was an inspiration’. No less importantly, Robert Christiani, a former Test batsman, retired to work as personnel manager for the company and brought Clyde Walcott along on coaching visits. He did not so much coach as talk about the game with Christiani. Meanwhile, the boys listened. ‘We were learning all the time. These men commanded respect because they had gone the distance so many times. They could help us over the hump,’ says Butcher, his eyes alive and intelligent. 111
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Walcott encouraged the lads from the estate to go to the city for trials. At first, they were overawed, but after a couple of matches realised they had the city boys covered. They’d talk about the weekend’s cricket on the train back to Berbice. Butcher believes in these cricketing conversations, and regrets that more is not made of past players. He does not see them in the dressing-rooms, discussing and assisting, not even Walsh and Ambrose, and thinks a vast resource of knowledge and goodwill is being wasted and that the game has fallen into the hands of non-cricketers, immeasurably to its detriment. Soon the country boys were making their mark. Mind you, Butcher barely survived his first match. Batting with Walcott, he saw the great man tap an easy single and waited obediently for the call. No one had told him about push and run. Belatedly sent back, Walcott was run out by yards. ‘He was a big man,’ Butcher chuckles, ‘and could not turn around. I thought I may as well pack my bags and go home!’ Before long, they were all playing: Kanhai, Solomon, Kallicharran and Butcher, four gifted youngsters from the cane fields. Butcher should have been chosen for the famous 1961 tour of Australia, but Worrell did not watch the trials. Later, he became close friends with the great man and was a regular visitor to the ‘A1 suites’ he occupied throughout the 1963 tour of England. Worrell did not mind the boys drinking, but said he ‘wanted six hours from them next day, not five and a half’. ‘If anyone fell short, there was hell to pay. He wasn’t interested in excuses.’ He says that Worrell drank ‘like it was going out of business. He saw life as a one-innings game.’ Butcher still admires Worrell. ‘A lot of things he said made an awful lot of sense,’ he observes, ‘then and now.’ West Indies defeated England 3/1 in 1963. ‘As far as we were concerned, once we had beaten England that was it. That’s how we saw it in those days.’ He thinks the English are too stereotyped. ‘You’re not going to produce sausages for cricketers,’ he says, ‘not going to get them all the same, with left elbows and all that. You got to let the other things loose.’ Butcher regards poor preparation and not money as the downfall of West Indian cricket. ‘We need good leaders to prepare them. Cricket is a big thing now. The boys need people to inspire them. West Indians believe in stars, even when they are talking nonsense. We have people who talk sense.’ 112
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He laments that non-cricketers have taken over the game in the region because ‘it cannot work’. Our time is nearly up and Butcher is becoming reflective. ‘Cricket means so much to us,’ he sighs, ‘and we do so little to prevent its destruction.’ He reflects upon the phrase and repeats it. But he smiles as he finishes, for there has always been more laughter than tears in his innings.
Andy Roberts Anderson Montgomery Roberts is not around. According to his workers, he’s away somewhere and ‘due back soon’. He’d been to the Recreation Ground around breakfast time to continue last-minute preparations on the Test match pitch. Contacted by phone, his replies are friendly and monosyllabic. He has never been a man to waste words. Didn’t bowl much down the leg-side either. After sending down a thunderbolt, he’d stand silently a yard from the batsman, looking at him from the corner of his eyes, a brooding presence. He has been neglected and was among the greatest bowlers the game has known. Roberts was the first man from his tiny island to play for the West Indies. His successors are still around, Sir Vivian as chairman of selectors, while Kenny Benjamin, Winston Benjamin and Curtly Ambrose work for the government’s sports department. In truth, they are not an impressive collection. West Indies had reason to rejoice at the rise of the Antiguans and later had reason to regret it. Among the rest, Richie Richardson, a man of principle, runs sports shops in town and was considering running for Parliament till friends advised him to steer clear of ‘those people’. Eldine Baptiste has been coaching in Kwa-Zulu Natal and applied for the job of West Indian coach. Dave Joseph plays for Antigua and Ridley Jacobs is the only local in the Test squad. Andy Roberts arrives at the ground, an unmistakable figure. They used to call him ‘The Tornado’, but these days he lumbers around. Immediately, he says hello to Gravy whose antics have enlivened many Test matches at the ground. Gravy says his walk around the boundary in his wedding dress on the previous Australian tour was his farewell performance. He has retired. Roberts laughs, inspects his pitch and then finds a quiet corner and starts telling his story. 113
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He grew up in Urlings, a village on the south of the island where his father had a boat and fished for snapper. He was somewhere in the middle of ‘about sixteen’ children. Agriculture also ran in the family and often Andy was in the hills, chasing cattle or sheep. Or else he was diving and swimming with his pals. From the outset, he was strong and had plenty of stamina. Cricket was his game. Soccer was not played in the countryside. Until he was sixteen, Roberts did not see a hard ball, instead playing with a shaven tennis ball, which proved advantageous because ‘effort was needed to send it down fast. And I wanted to do that.’ Even now there is lots of informal cricket in the Caribbean. Barbados has tape ball and tennis ball leagues and Antigua is not far behind. Roberts did not play for his school, but at eighteen was spotted bowling in the parish league and summoned to represent his country. In those days, Antigua did not play in the regional competition, so this was only a stepping stone. A year later, he played for the Leeward Islands and at twenty made his first-class debut for the Combined Islands. It took him three years to catch the eye of West Indies selectors because ‘we had to be better than the rest to get noticed’. Roberts and Viv Richards were sent to England in 1972 and attended Alf Gover’s indoor school in London. Before long, they were snapped up by English counties. In 1974, Roberts became the first Antiguan to play for West Indies. He took 100 wickets in nineteen Tests. Richards followed him into the team and soon it was clear that this tiny island had produced two extraordinary cricketers. World Series followed. Roberts says the cricket was the hardest he ever played. ‘Every morning, you’d wake up and know it was going to be tough.’ He was at the peak of his powers and arguably produced the best sustained exhibition of pace bowling Australia has ever seen. Absurdly, the figures are not included even in the first-class records. Roberts believes that their experiences in World Series put the West Indians on the path to greatness. Thanks largely to the Antiguans, the West Indians swept all before them in the first year. ‘We beat the Australians every time,’ the greying and broadening fast bowler insists, ‘and that gave us the confidence.’ Things did not go so well in the following year until Kerry Packer called them in for a meeting. ‘He said we had to pull up our socks,’ Roberts recalls, 114
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‘except he did not quite put it that way!’ Realising their paymaster was right, the West Indians started playing as a team and dominated world cricket for the next fifteen years. By that reckoning, the Australians still have a long way to go. Eventually, Roberts retired and nowadays he fishes, runs a supermarket and helps any fast bowler seeking assistance. He will not volunteer his services, because then the coach is taken for granted. Of course, he despairs of West Indian cricket. He coached the team for a couple of years from 1995, but became frustrated because ‘nobody was listening. Bad habits had set in.’ He believes the rot began in Richards’s time. ‘Richie was blamed, but it began earlier than that. Viv was such a dominant force that no one spoke about it publicly.’ Discipline fell away and the work ethic followed. Soon it was hard to get the players to train. ‘They thought it was a matter of just walking on the field,’ Roberts says with the quietness of the proud man. He thinks West Indies started rebuilding too late, lost sight of the basics and believes there is too much emphasis on scholarship and coaching. ‘At this level, a coach just makes plans and spots weaknesses and strengths in the opposition. It’s up to the players to take responsibility.’ It is a cry from the heart. Some rain falls and Roberts became agitated about his pitch. Mike Proctor appears and the old cricketers exchange felicitations. It is time to go. Roberts has been underestimated. He helped West Indies to the top and did his best to prevent the fall.
Nolan Clarke Nolan Clarke sat in his hotel room. He’d been poorly and his Dutch team-mates said it served him right. All week he’d been ribbing them about their ailments, saying it was just nerves. But now the Cup’s oldest player—‘Not 46, I’m 47, don’t steal one of my years’— had himself fallen ill. At last he was rallying, and a bottle of something lively lay nearby. Holland’s champion was on the road to recovery. His has been an unusual career. Twenty-two years ago, he scored 159 for Barbados against England and was chosen as twelfth man for West Indies. But he couldn’t hold his tongue and soon afterwards went to play in Holland. He’s been there ever since. 115
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Cricket had been in his blood. His dad should have kept wickets for Barbados, Clarke says. ‘My uncle was also very good. They were the best-dressed cricketers ever. Khaki pants were worn in those days. They wore flannels.’ The youngster liked their style and adopted it as his own. ‘People used to bet whether or not I’d get my trousers dirty.’ From the start, he was unrepentant and aggressive. A young Andy Roberts tried him out and was hit out of the ground. Roberts smouldered. ‘I said, “People can’t get me out with spikes and you are wearing pumps.” I had no respect for fast bowlers. Had all kinds of fights with dem. Something in me said I got to destroy dem.’ Courage was not his problem. He stood at short leg as Glenn Turner scored 200. Only Rod Marsh worried him. ‘I was standing there and I see de man’s hands and de man’s wrists, and I couldn’t believe he was a normal man. I wanted to move. He slapped one past and the captain moved me.’ Clarke’s brilliance took him into the Barbados team, but his hot temper hindered his rise. ‘I kept doing well and it bothered people. They dropped me and Everton Weekes said, “You see what happens if you want to do it your own way?”’ Nevertheless, Clarke’s batting took him to the edge of the West Indies team. But his mouth would not stop talking. Rohan Kanhai was captain and Clarke recalls, ‘When I heard him talking at the players, I saw he was a slave master. I thought, “Is this what cricket is all about?” One day he told me to fetch some water. I said, “The pipe is over there.” I told him he had no culture. I told him he should never captain the West Indies because he had no morals. That put the nail in the coffin.’ Clarke had the talent to reach the top. Had he been more malleable, his name might have featured more regularly. Instead, he will be remembered as a man who went his own way and took the consequences. He settled in Holland, and has been its champion, regularly scoring centuries and playing a big part in his country’s victories over West Indies, South Africa and England A. He has enjoyed his time there, though frustrated by the dominance of hockey and soccer. A passionate, direct and formidable man, Clarke believes himself possessed of unusual powers. ‘I see a lot of things before they happen—so many you’d be scared,’ he says. ‘In Kensington Oval 116
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I saw a guy in a crowd of 15 000 and said, “He don’t live another day.” He died that night. It helped my batting because sometimes I can tell what people are going to bowl before they bowl it.’ Occasionally, he returns to Barbados. He did so last November and brought the house down by scoring 80 and 89 in brilliant style for Sparta, his club. Thousands came to watch him. Bajans still talk about him. And he’s still scoring runs for Holland. His team needed to beat Bermuda to reach these finals. Clarke couldn’t sleep that night and instead played cards, danced and drank. ‘In the morning, I was ready for them. I had runs in my head.’ And soon, runs on the board, too—121 of them, not out.
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8 From various angles Warne struck again as a delivery skittled through to a batsman trapped like a thief in a spotlight. For some it remains bewildering . . . that such gifts could be bestowed upon such an apparently vulgar fellow.
C
ricketers are men of many parts. Try as the reporter might, it is just not possible to squeeze them into a single article, let alone a solitary phrase. Over the years, an awful lot has been said and written about the importance of sportsmen as role models. Most of it has been tosh. The idea that a youngster looks towards his sporting heroes as embodiments of all that is noble in life seems to be the most extraordinary fantasy. A tale is told of a child gazing sorrowfully at one of his baseball idols involved in the match-fixing scandal of the Depression years and sighing, ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe, say it ain’t so.’ Of course, the story may be apocryphal. About the only quote I have used from a child concerned the World Cup semi-final in Kolkata, which ended in a riot. Surveying the scene, a boy murmured, ‘India bad today.’ Even then, it was hard to tell whether he was commenting on the performance of his team or the misconduct of the crowd. In any event, his remark found its way into the newspapers next morning. The point about the story is not that the heroes had let down their followers with shenanigans. Rather, they had betrayed them by rigging a match, thereby destroying the bond of trust that exists between player and supporter. The idea that children inhabit some 118
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innocent reverie has been disproved a hundred thousand times. No one familiar with schoolboys or their own consciences could argue otherwise. They expect their sportsmen to be honest and to perform mighty deeds in the critical hour, and that is all. Of course, the modern penchant for intrusion is regrettable. Bill O’Reilly always insisted that the players entered our lives only in the hours of play. Everything else was their concern, and theirs alone. Now and then, he’d talk about the high jinks undertaken by cricket teams in his time. The idea that the men of the past were more abstemious did not survive his recollections. Since replacing the great leg-spinner and orator as a columnist, I have tried to maintain that tradition. To my mind, cricketers are fair game on the field and otherwise off limits. Not that I ever hear any gossip. Of course, the same principle applies elsewhere. Moreover, there is no need to scour a man’s private life in search of his character. In this chapter can be found articles about two contrasting and equally brilliant Australian cricketers. In both instances, the idea is to allow events to speak for themselves. Robin Smith is also mentioned. Only twice in a long journalistic career have players thanked me for an article—Robin Smith and David Gower. Neither article was especially flattering. Perhaps that was the point. They felt they had been understood ‘warts and all’. Both articles are included in this book. In Shane Warne’s case, the furore surrounding his suspension for taking a banned substance was surpassed only by the drama that attended his reappearance in a Second XI match played on his home ground in St Kilda. A veritable rash of journalists, cameramen, photographers and commentators made their way to Melbourne to describe the great man’s return. It was part farce, part comedy, part history and part documentary. Somehow the confounded conveyor of leg-breaks had drawn us back into his web. Throughout, he grinned and managed to appear perplexed by the fuss he had created and so much enjoyed. As it happened, rain ruined the opening day of the match, so everyone had to book into hotels for the night. As usual, Warne did not let us down. He has been many things in his life, but seldom dull. Adam Gilchrist has been the most challenging of the Australian cricketers to catch on paper. In truth, that may say as much about the 119
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author as the subject. Always the writer looks for the darkness and the depth. Gilchrist is ambitious and adroit in most situations, not least business, but he seems to lack ‘side’, so the search may be in vain. For a time, the fact that he had been reported to the cricketing beaks more often than any colleague provoked confusion. In each case, though, he had been fighting a perceived injustice. His ‘walking’ also created friction and it took a conversation—an unusual event, because beyond courtesies and professional requirements I do not talk to players—to clear the air. Eventually, I realised that Gilchrist was sincere and had taken upon himself the task of leaving the game in better health than he found it. Of course he is also a fabulous cricketer. No article of mine has created more interest than the piece on walking. Yet it was written off the cuff at the behest of the ‘front page’, as sports reporters call the bothersome news editors. Somehow it touched a nerve, provoked heated debate. At the time it had seemed a minor matter that did not greatly disturb the mood or, as it turned out, destiny of the match. Later the newshounds were to be proved right.
Shane Warne returns Nothing and everything happened at Junction Oval in St Kilda on 10 February 2004. Everyone had turned up—film stars, company directors, footy players, former cricketers, wagging schoolboys, visiting coaches and a veritable throng of photographers, reporters and interviewers—all of them eager to see how Shane Warne was travelling. A businessman watching from behind the wire perimeter said he had come along because he ‘wanted to show Warne the past is forgotten’. Nor was it merely an Australian affair. The Times of London had found space for 1000 words. The Manchester Guardian was almost as keen. And what unfolded? It rained a lot. Cricket is like that. Truly it is a beautiful game, and blessed with a sense of humour. On the surface, it was a routine Second XI match between Queensland and Victoria, but it was also much more, not least the return of the prodigal son. Bless their cotton socks, but the hundreds of spectators present at the ground had not come to see Brendon 120
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Joseland drive through cover or Grant Sullivan fling down his seamers. Asked to explain his presence at the ground, an unemployed man replied, ‘Have you ever seen Warney bowl?’ Everyone wanted to see him bowl a leg-break. Just one. Instead, he batted, fielded and even warmed up and then the rain started and everyone sat around glaring at the heavens and pondering upon the phenomenon that had dragged us all to the ground. Of course, he has been a wonder since the Gatting delivery, the ball that landed a foot outside leg-stump and turned across a seasoned English professional to take the off-bail. It was the first ball the blessed fellow sent down in Test cricket in the country where the game began. Not his second offering mark you, but the first. Clearly, the fellow had the extraordinary within his grasp. He can attract and repel, but seldom disappoints. Shane Warne’s first day back at work had begun early with yoga on the outfield, followed by nets with his comrades. In the rooms he mixed easily with the players. After an hour, Victoria’s reserve team finally lost its fourth wicket as Nick Jewell, son of the celebrated football coach, charged down the pitch and forgot to take his brains with him. Nathan Hauritz took the wicket, a young finger-spinner striving to revive a stalled career. Rumours abounded that a higher than usual place in the batting order had been found for the great man, so all eyes turned to see who was emerging from the Blackie-Ironmonger stand. At first, it seemed impossible that the creature making his way down the steps was the aforementioned muncher of pies. He was much too skinny. Only the presence by his side of a security guard gave the game away. Aiden Blizzard, the other contender, does not need such company. Warne looked the slimmest he has been for twenty years. Apparently, butterflies were fluttering in his stomach as he walked to the crease for the first time in twelve months. In the past there was room for ravens. The oddness of the occasion must have struck the leg-spinner as he took guard with young banana-benders swarming around. Doubtless, the sight of Paul Reiffel officiating at the bowler’s end added to the sense of the absurd. Reiffel did not think much of umpires in his playing days, but now says the job is harder than it seems. Warne played some bright and breezy strokes in his inimitable way. He has always been able to play the shots. But batting demands 121
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restraint and judgement and they have not been his strong points. After eleven runs had been collected, he lunged forwards at a ball sent down by Steve Magoffin, a regular wicket-taker whose dad fences pools and whose family comes from Oronsay, an island off the coast of Ireland. An edge resulted and Warne walked even before the finger was raised. Soon Victoria declared and then all and sundry waited for the ball to be thrown to ‘de man’ as our Afro-American friends are inclined to call these fellows. Warne took a slip catch and started to loosen his body as rain started to fall. Someone in the crowd yelled ‘Give ’im a bowl!’ and the home captain seemed to share the sentiment. Alas, the rain became heavier and the covers came out, followed by the cards. After that, the main excitement was the arrival in the ground of the bowler’s wife and mother. Presently, the crowd began to drift away. They’ll be back. Warne can lure otherwise intelligent and busy people to cricket grounds on gloomy Monday mornings on the chance of seeing him bowl. As a cricketer, anyhow, he has been missed.
Next day Surprisingly, Shane Warne did not take a wicket with his first ball back from his spell in the outer. Thrown the red leather at 4.40 p.m. on a murky afternoon in St Kilda, the leg-spinner peeled off his sweater and propelled a delivery from the front of his hand that started down the leg-side and refused to change course. Chris Simpson, who had been cutting a swathe through Victorian ranks, missed the ball, as did Peter Roach, a keeper well aware that the delivery was destined to be shown around the world, but still hoping that his mum would miss it. In truth it was an ordinary offering, but then, wrist-spinners are entitled to a loosener, especially when the ball is slippery and spectators are shivering. Bit early to rush to conclusions. At least it landed on the cut strip. He had been the fifth bowler introduced, though the only one granted an initial on the old wooden scoreboard. Warne’s second ball was also sent down from the front of the hand, but it was better directed and landed on a length. Aaron Nye, the Queensland captain, played it with due decorum. Warming to his task, the wrist-spinner dared to try his full leg-break and must have been pleased as it dropped on a length. Another leggie followed, and then a zooter or back-spinner or possibly a slider, hard to tell from 122
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the sidelines and anyhow they all go straight through. Warne is the most beautiful of conmen. Cunning and innocence contend within his brain. Finally, with the sixth ball he has bowled in public since his suspension, Warne dared to tempt the batsman with a flighted delivery. Doubtless, Nye had been warned about this sort of thing and declined to take a bite from the apple. Warne turned to the umpire and took his sweater. He had bowled a maiden. Considering 41 runs had been clobbered in the previous six overs, it wasn’t too bad. Warne’s first over was unthreatening and utterly compelling. The sight of him tossing the ball from hand to hand, walking and then trotting to the crease has retained its fascination. Around the arena, enthusiasts appreciated his artistry and schoolboys relished his rebelliousness. Reporters gathered behind his arm and tried to read his deliveries. Of course, there was nothing in the pitch for him. Warne returned for another over and spectators sensed that he was settling in for the long haul. Plenty of bowlers have fallen apart in less testing circumstances than these. And leg-spinners must perform such improbable contortions that it’s astonishing the ball ever lands in roughly the right place. Small wonder that leg-spinners are regarded as the anarchists of the game. Sensible people find simpler ways to earn their keep. Gradually, Warne started mixing up his deliveries, though the flipper and googly were not unleashed in these exploratory overs. At last, he bowled a long-hop and was cut to the boundary, an event whose rarity reminds spectators of his astonishing accuracy. In his pomp Warne hardly ever bowled a loose delivery, which allowed him to crowd the bat without releasing the pressure. Even now, he does not give much away. Nor does he wilt in the face of an onslaught. By now Simpson had carted his way into the nineties. Realising that he might not get another chance to reach three figures by hitting the game’s greatest spinner for six, the banana-bender swooped upon an inviting offering and dispatched it over the boundary, a stroke that seemed to please his comrades in the stands. Warne congratulated his opponent and promptly tossed the next ball a little higher, slower and wider. Warne kept wheeling away. He loves bowling, loves the chance to take wickets and to display his prodigious powers. He has never 123
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doubted that he is special. But he is also an immensely disciplined bowler and could not succeed otherwise. At last, with his 59th delivery, Warne took his first wicket for twelve months as Nye pushed at a leg-break and was taken behind the wicket. An over later, he struck again as an appeal for leg before wicket was favourably received by his old mate Reiffel. By now, Warne had taken 2/23 in eleven overs of accurate, teasing wrist-spinners. Warne can be infuriating, but he brightens the game and dares to explore its possibilities. He bowled well and does not seem to have deteriorated in the interim. If anything, he seemed fresher and sharper. Of course, it’s just as well. In 25 days he may well be playing Test cricket. Cricketers will wish him well while hoping that discretion has tapped on his shoulder during the break. It’s good to have him back.
Robin Smith struggles There comes a time in most sportsmen’s lives when the cheers, the lights and the rest of it are no longer enough to drive them through the mud, actual or metaphorical, and towards the sunlit uplands beyond. They’ve already been there. A time comes when, somewhere deep inside, a man does not want to put himself through it all again. Already he is beaten because it is in the yearning that the secret lies. The hesitation is fatal. And then, perhaps, his life begins, bringing the boredom of ordinary existence or the contentment of sudden normality. Usually, if there is a going, there is no coming back. Only those forced away, dropped, imprisoned or injured are likely to return in triumph, their spirit rested. A bad patch is one thing, a fractured will another. Only Robin Smith will know, as another April turns to another May, and as another West Indies team approaches these shores, if, in addition to the after-effects of a shoulder operation, he is feeling the hurt of the dispossessed or the weariness of the exhausted. If it is the former, he may well return to the England team to launch a fresh attack upon the fastest bowlers, the sort of assault of which few are capable, a battery full of cracking cuts and rasping drives. England might need a little rawness to add to Atherton’s meticulous method. And yet rawness can be hardest to sustain, for it 124
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demands greater sacrifice, is founded upon a wildness that is often lost in the cultivations of adulthood. It is an approach of reaction rather than calculation. Thinking can be its undoing. Smith is the most physical of batsmen, a player of simplicity and strength, of straight lines; a furrowed brow is his enemy. At his best, he takes the fight to the foe; at his worst, he is fighting himself, the battle that is joined once a secure position has been established. Of course, there is no security, only the illusion of invincibility. A man must press ahead or perish. In Smith, those constant duellists—certainty and confusion, ferocity and gentility—contend as they have always contended, but more keenly, so that the extremes of emotion impose themselves. Sometimes he can appear a giant among men, while at other times seem quite the opposite. If Smith is feeling the hurt of the dispossessed, he can return because he’s good enough and brave enough to score runs against the most ferocious of fast bowlers. If his mind has given way, then it will show soon enough because the performance will be mere caricature, a snarl rather than a bite, an attempt to recapture and to repeat, but without the belief upon which sportsmen depend. Smith cannot succeed without absolute commitment, cannot bluff his way through. He has none of the fraud in him. At heart, he is a boxer, and woe betide the pugilist entering a ring unprepared, or half-willing, or with doubt in his mind. Not even Mike Tyson could survive that. Once the intensity has gone, it is all gone. Once the willingness to take a punch has gone—and Smith has taken plenty in his time, not least while facing Ian Bishop in the West Indies five years ago (and he took them well, grinning and grimacing as he went)— here can be no return. An occasional success, maybe, but not the old force, the old vitality. Like Tyson, Smith has had time to contemplate his previous mistakes and to think about life hereafter. Neither was quite in solitary confinement, but neither was in the ring, either. Maybe Smith had been enjoying the lifestyle too much and the life too little. It wasn’t only the puritans who thought so. Perhaps he drifted a little, not onto the rocks, but in their general direction. At first, Smith would have none of it. Instead, he thought himself poorly treated, as so many have done before. But this is no braggart, or any fool, either. Gradually, the red mists began to disperse and the 125
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formidable batsman began to realise that he had been master of his own destiny, that he had lost a little of his sense of direction. Perhaps he had turned from an expression of talent to celebration of self, a turning whose mischievous journeys include the dreadful transformations of philosophers into pundits, politicians into pontificators and sportsmen into stars. The figures told their own tale. It had taken a century in the final Test in Antigua to rescue a series that had previously brought 145 runs in eight innings. Nor did he prosper against New Zealand last summer, his three Tests bringing 120 runs and eighth place in the averages, above Angus Fraser and no one else. No wonder he was discarded for the series against South Africa and omitted from the tour to Australia, where his fallibility against leg-spin was taken into account. Smith’s friends and relations did not spare him, either. Rather than offering easy comfort, they held up a mirror to him and Smith was shaken by what he saw. At 31 had he played the last of his 53 Test matches? Smith’s spring has not yet been full of runs, but he is not alone in that. Nevertheless, even as England takes stock once again, there surely remains a place for him, if only he has the nerve and energy to seize it. After all, he scored two hundreds in the last home series against the West Indies. Much will depend on his shoulder. A man cannot nowadays be hidden in the field. But more will depend on his innermost thoughts, on how much fight there is left. And he may not know that until the bell rings.
Robin Smith succeeds Barely seven months ago, Robin Smith was in dreadful trouble. Having arrived in Australia with a fearsome reputation as a batsman capable of committing assault and battery upon all sorts of bowlers, a batsman who had hit 553 runs against Australia in 1989 and 361 for twice out against India, he suffered a decline as painful as any by an England batsman down under since Denis Compton scored 53 runs in seven Test innings 40 years ago. To fight back so convincingly from such a wretched and unpredicted slump has required courage and heart. To see Smith walking 126
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out to bat in those dismal months was to see a man desperately trying to recapture a mood, for this is a man who must assert himself, must swing his arms aggressively as a boxer does entering a ring. This is a batsman who bristles or dies. And herein lay Smith’s difficulty, because his game is all belligerence, yet he is not a belligerent fellow. He has gods who cannot be defied, who must be answered, for they hold the secret, demand obedience and, in Smith’s case, their name is aggression. Smith cannot filibuster, cannot reconnoitre, must move and hit, must seize command, hence his panting exercises and the possessed expression in his eyes. Here is a batsman who scores when he is hot, yet here is a man who is uneasy with such attitudes, an old-fashioned sporting type, one who married a Hampshire girl, enjoys fishing, shooting, and drinking in his local pub, ‘The Three Tuns’ (just one ton would have done last winter). For him batting is a crusade, not a calculation. To be such a player demands an inner swagger absent in Smith, who seldom feels as masterly as he appears. Accordingly, he suffers periods of doubt, as he did in Australia, as he sometimes did in his early years at Hampshire, during which he believes he cannot be nearly as good as he seems to be. In these periods, he is probed and teased by skilful spinners and medium-pacers, against whom he can feel inadequate, for his defences are not so much weak as nonexistent. Once doubts emerge, he habitually thrusts his pad forward, for he knows not submission, must do something, and yet this solution merely adds to his difficulties by cramping the shots square of the wicket which are his strength. This is Smith’s dilemma. By instinct he must get close to the ball and slug it out, yet technically he needs to keep a distance to execute those conclusive cuts and clips off his pads. Out of sorts, Smith’s technique and temperament are in conflict, and so he is liable to suffer bad trots in which he will sink to depths much deeper than those plummeted by lesser players. Everyone tried to help Smith in Australia, and no doubt he listened carefully, partly because he is dutiful and polite, partly because he lacks Gower’s resistance to change. No doubt, too, he tried to put wise words into practice, and yet perhaps such introverted analysis is as much a hindrance as a help. 127
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Apart from the sheer cussedness of life, Smith’s failures were due mostly to doubt and its chum, tension, for they caused an inhibition that his game could not absorb. In part, too, those failures were due to the pressures he put himself under, pressures that mounted once he and his team had performed badly in Brisbane. In trouble, he sought a trustworthy method rather than relying on the instincts that had hitherto served him so well. To remember Smith in those hard times, and to see him this summer, has been to observe scarcely a difference, and yet to detect a profound change, for he has been like a man who, having been diagnosed as cancerous, has just been given a clean bill of health. Joviality and aggression were not forced, they carried conviction. All season Smith has been formidable. This was his sort of cricket, dangerous cricket full of cut and thrust, not a matter of dancing and jabbing. All season he entered with England tottering, joining his captain, or perhaps young Mark Ramprakash, and all season he hit crisply and bravely. Of course, Viv Richards had no Terry Alderman or Bruce Reid to probe away and create passivity where passion wanted to be. Rather, it was cricket as Smith had been raised to play it during those early-morning sessions with father and brother in his backyard at home in South Africa. This must be Smith’s way hereafter, and against all sorts of bowlers. When he first appeared for Hampshire, he used to smite spinners because he could not play them properly. As balls were returned from distant flats, his opponents were not altogether convinced by arguments that he was only belting sixes because he could not play this sort of bowling. For a time, he tried to be respectable rather than disrespectful, and really it did not work. Eventually, he began to hit the ball again, began to bat up the order rather than away from the new ball and gradually he realised that he might be as good as everyone said, no matter how inadequate he sometimes felt. He is a splendid man to have around. He cares about his colleagues, averages 50 in Test cricket and enjoys a battle, especially if it is fast and furious. No doubt, he learnt as much last winter as he has this summer. Although his returns were disappointing, Smith survived with spirit intact. Now he has reappeared, much restored, a little wiser and as a batsman powerful enough and brave 128
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enough to render irrelevant flaws of technique that would destroy a lesser man.
Adam Gilchrist walks Something strange happened in Port Elizabeth on the morning of 18 March 2003. An Australian batsman left the field without waiting for the umpire to raise his finger or even nod his head. In cricketing parlance, he ‘walked’. As he did so, a hush came over St George’s Park, the sort of silence that generally indicates that something so astonishing has occurred that a period of reflection is required. Had all and sundry rushed away to check that the world remained round and that Alec Ferguson was still managing Manchester United, they could hardly have been blamed. Had a dodo been spotted flying around, the amazement could hardly have been more widespread. Life cannot proceed without its certainties, among them that Australian batsmen do not leave the crease voluntarily unless their stumps have been scattered, and even then not on a windy day. Of course, it is too early to tell whether Adam Gilchrist’s departure heralds a new age of sportsmanship or was merely an aberration. At such times, it is inevitable that observers study the evidence in search of clues that might have been missed, warning signs indicating that the distinguished and recently deposed vice-captain of Australia had taken leave of his senses. After all, we need time to prepare ourselves for these radical manoeuvres. They cannot be sprung upon us, for we are not entirely without feeling. Several things are known about this lively left-hander, among them that he has a family, a grin and a penchant for striking the ball over the boundary. At first sight, none of these traits suggests a propensity for walking. Perhaps Gilchrist, or Gilly as he was called by confidants before this strangeness came over him, was making a point about the futility of sporting endeavour in a time of war or else showing that despite the sound and fury Australians are not such bad fellows. Suspicion grows that he does not take his cricket entirely seriously and may even believe that other things are more important than trying to hit a bit of leather with a chunk of wood. 129
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Perhaps the story should be told in its entirety, so that readers can decide for themselves what came over their champion. Australia had reached the semi-final of a World Cup and was playing Sri Lanka in the seaside city of Port Elizabeth. Ricky Ponting and his men were nervous because semi-finals are traumatic, besides which the terrain favoured an opponent that had several unusual characters of its own, including one chap with the most bizarre bowling action ever to pass muster. In the first hour of the Australian innings, Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden, a muscular banana-bender, took such a toll of the opposing fast bowler that presently the ball was thrown to Aravinda de Silva, a seasoned campaigner who bowls with the air of a man not expecting much. Gilchrist was facing. Presently, he stooped to sweep. To his dismay, he did not execute the stroke with quite his usual precision. Rather than rushing to the boundary, the ball followed a gentle parabola and was taken by the Sri Lankan wicket-keeper. Uncertain of its whereabouts, Gilchrist scanned the horizon. Meanwhile, his opponents appealed for a catch. Rudi Koertzen, a stern and respected umpire from the host nation, shook his head. Realising it had all happened in a blur, the Sri Lankans took the setback in their stride. Certainly, they considered the matter closed. And then Gilchrist decided to depart of his own accord. It was an extraordinary gesture to make at the start of a crucial match. Australians have never believed in walking, regarding it as a strategy easily misused by the unscrupulous. For a long time, they stood alone in their refusal to give themselves out. Between the ages of WG Grace and Geoffrey Boycott, Englishmen walked or faced the wrath of friend and foe. Honesty was instilled in schools, clubs and counties and spread across the empire. Only the Australians resisted. Not till the 1970s did anything change. Then the stakes grew so high that players across the world stood their ground. Only one man had walked previously in the tournament: Aravinda de Silva, the very man bowling when Gilchrist gave himself out. If Gilchrist’s gesture indicates a new age of cricket, then it will be a fine thing, for the world has enough troubles. Certainly, it has helped to improve the sometimes frayed relations between these competing countries. Sporting deeds remain long in the memory, for they reflect well upon the man and his team. As he left the field, 130
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Gilchrist reminded all and sundry that it is only a game and though winning is important, it is not the only consideration.
Adam Gilchrist complains Far from complaining about the penalty recently imposed upon Adam Gilchrist, the Australians should take it in their stride. Copping it sweet is part of the antipodean tradition and must not be lost in this litigious age. Ricky Ponting and his players must ignore the nationalists who have sprung to the defence of their man. Instead, they must accept the verdict gracefully, thereby displaying the sportsmanship and humility everyone expects from sportsmen representing their country overseas. Gilchrist deserved his fate. He protested publicly about a decision and could hardly expect to escape without some form of censure. He is an experienced and highly regarded player holding a position of responsibility within the team. Moreover, he was standing at the bowler’s end when the finger was raised and cannot complain about the red mist that from time to time descends upon most batsmen. No excuses can be made. It behoved the dashing left-hander to say nothing beyond a quiet ‘Bad luck’ to his crestfallen colleague. Many instances of sportsmanship have been witnessed over the last few seasons. Cricket is fortunate that the greatest batsmen of the era, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar, invariably show the utmost respect for umpires, and fieldsmen for that matter. Considering the pressure upon them, this is a fine achievement. Repeatedly, Lara has accepted the word of opponents that a catch has carried, and has continued to do so even when replays indicated that he had been misled. Tendulkar has always left the field without fuss. No one can remember a single incident of this sort involving either champion. In contrast, Gilchrist ‘has previous’. Indeed, this was his third offence. That he has also shown many outstanding qualities is beside the point. Not long ago, cricket was forced to choose between maintaining manners upon the field, or saying ‘anything goes’. Politeness was preferred. Nothing else could have worked. Cricket is played by Muslims, Hindus, Christians and peoples of many colours. 131
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Participating countries have different traditions. Accordingly, a strict code is needed to prevent misunderstandings. Cricket also has another characteristic, one it scarcely acknowledges. In the past, it was a white man’s game. Not until the 1950s was a black man considered worthy of leading the West Indian team. Nor did cricket exactly lead the fight against white supremacy in Africa. Only against this legacy can the present properly be understood. Without kowtowing to hysterical elements, the Australians must be sensitive to these developments. Ponting and company must try not to throw their weight around as English commentators did, not so long ago. England won an acrimonious series in Sri Lanka, but in 2003 the locals were able to turn the tables because their opponents remained wary and defensive. Far from meeting the challenges of playing cricket on this newly independent island, the Englishmen withdrew into their shells and the rest was inevitable. Ponting must ensure that his players forget about this minor aberration. The protest became an issue because the umpire changed his mind, a dubious precedent because an umpire’s word is supposed to be final and unaffected by the reactions of players, supporters or businessmen watching replays. Now a batsman will not be out till he has left the field. Rather than complaining, the Australian captain must remind his players of the importance of accepting decisions regardless of their merit. Andrew Symonds left the field with sufficient dignity to satisfy the match referee. He played a bad shot and was saved by the sort of snick umpires sometimes miss amid the hue and cry. Worse decisions have been made, not least by Australian umpires. Gilchrist overreacted. He is not a saint, but an aggressive cricketer constantly in the thick of the action who has had his moments with subcontinental umpires. Nevertheless, his bank balance has suffered more than his reputation and he will bounce back. Happily, his fine has been supported by most commentators down under, with players and selectors alike pointing out that a batsman standing at the bowler’s end has no business saying anything, let alone making a public protest about a decision.
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9 From the Dark Continent Fire, ash and sun could not stop Allan Donald, Fanie de Villiers, Hansie Cronje and company, and their successors must prove that they, too, can defy the odds.
A
frica has become the making and breaking of cricket. At the last under-19 World Cup, the Ugandan batsmen swapped helmets and bats on the journey to and from the crease. Noticing their shortages, their Australian opponents gave them everything they could spare before returning home. Later, Bankstown, one of the strongest clubs in Sydney, organised a collection of spare bats and pads and so forth and sent it to Uganda. Soccer has become Africa’s game. Provided a makeshift ball can be found, the game can be played on the dustiest corner of the poorest village. And the ball can be made from almost anything. Nor does the game change much further up the ladder. Boots are needed, and shin-pads for the most refined, but that is about it. Soccer is the game of the world because it is also the game of the street corner. Improvements in communications have also helped the code. English Premier Division matches can be watched all around the world. My orphans in South Africa support Manchester United and Chelsea. Wayne Rooney counts among the most famous men on the planet. Soccer is part of globalisation. Ultimately, the game will dominate everywhere except on the Indian subcontinent with its gods and its films and its cricket. 133
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Cricket in Africa is hard-pressed to compete. Although rudimentary bats and balls can be used in backyards, expensive equipment is needed at higher levels. Space and time are also required. Moreover, cricket is a complicated game inclined to befuddle those unfamiliar with its rules. Accordingly, cricket is handed down from father to son and from village elders to inquisitive youth. My reasons for going to Africa were unconnected with cricket. Tribal structures and hierarchies appealed, with their respect for elders and appreciation of tradition. I wanted to combine leftist and republican thinking with a conviction that respect and manners also had a part to play, especially in the raising of youth. African schools expect their pupils to be courteous and hard-working. Of course, the appeal of Africa went deeper. After the subtle shades and grey skies of England, it was glorious to encounter the brightness of African flora and the astonishing animals. Inevitably, cricket in Africa reflected the forces at work in that difficult continent. Although articles about several black cricketers have been included in this book, this chapter concentrates on white players. This focus is the merest chance—none of the handful of leading black players in those countries has been interviewed or satisfactorily described. The conversation with the Flower brothers took place at the Sydney Cricket Ground in the dying stages of a Shield match. Andy and Grant sat in the green seats outside the pavilion and teased each other most obligingly. At the time, they were the mainstays of the Zimbabwean side and its only truly professional players. Even then, they were frustrated not so much with the issue of colour as with the refusal of their authorities to put cricket on a proper footing or to take any notice of the players’ points of view. Later, Andy talked about the need for a Players’ Association, but by then it was too little and too late. Had the other players supported him, much of the subsequent conflict might have been avoided, for it was as much about bad management as race. Andy had a complicated relationship with his Board. His father worked in the high-density areas and also at rich white schools and Andy left his white club to join Old Winstonians, Takashinga as it became, the strongest and most influential of the black clubs in Harare. Not that his gesture convinced important people in the 134
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ZCU (Zimbabwe Cricket Union) about his bona fides. One senior figure condemned him as a racist, though the cap belonged on his own head. Our paths continued periodically to cross. After wearing his black armband during the World Cup, Andy was pondering his next move. My view was that the point had been made. Flower replied that past protests had petered out and he did not want the people of his country to think that he, too, could be intimidated. Accordingly, he decided to wear a black wristband that sustained his point without breaking any rules. At that stage, the older Flower brother was drawing attention to the political situation as opposed to the misdeeds of the ZCU. Not long afterwards, the subject of sporting boycotts cropped up. Since I was arguing that cricket could not involve itself in political protests (as opposed to condemnation of racism in sport), a meeting of minds seemed unlikely. But Flower agreed, saying that he could not see any point in halting cricket tours to Zimbabwe. He was keeping quiet only out of loyalty to his courageous fellow protester, Henry Olonga, who was going around England advocating a boycott. Having settled overseas, Andy had realised that rich white Zimbabweans had done much too little to help their struggling black countrymen. Some things can be seen more clearly from a distance. My position on sporting boycotts of Zimbabwe changed after the peremptory sacking of Heath Streak and the insults that accompanied it. Flower may also have changed his position in light of developments, but that is for him to confirm. Neither of us needed to be lectured on the nature of the Zimbabwean dictatorship or the plight of its people, least of all by silly little Englishmen. Flower had risked his life in pursuit of justice. I was putting five black Zimbabweans through university, three of them boys adopted from an orphanage in Harare and the others variously the son of a cheated MDC candidate and the younger brother of a human rights lawyer. Upon the publication of the Flower article, their father Bill appeared in the press box in Sydney to introduce himself and to say that the content was ‘pure poetry’. Of course, he may have meant that it was a flight of fancy with little relation to actual events! Lance Klusener, Ray Price and Graeme Smith were seen from a distance and included here because their lives were taking an 135
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interesting turn. Kevin Pieterson is included here because he is African and attended Maritzburg College, a state school in Pietermaritzburg known for its tough discipline and concentration on sport. He was encountered at a club practice at the University of Sydney. Later, someone said that he had been a shrimp in his first few years at senior school and had been forced to bury his vulnerability. Perhaps these experiences explain the arrogance detected in his character these days. Or perhaps it was the backyard games with his older brothers, or the school he attended, or the demands he makes upon himself.
Andy and Grant Flower Two Flowers of a different sort open the innings for Zimbabwe. Andy, the elder and the captain, smiles and goes for his shots. Flower the younger (‘Bud’ they call him, though Grant is his name) is of a more suspicious disposition and reckons the world, and particularly its bowlers, is full of trickery. They make a fine pair, though to listen to them talk about their relationship is to form the impression that one might, at the drop of a hat, drive a stake through the other’s head. They sit in pavilion seats sipping beer, as New South Wales pursue some outrageous target, relentlessly teasing each other. Apparently, they’ve been at it for twenty years. But there is a point to their thrust and counterthrust, a point that goes to the heart of sporting experience. Andy thinks Grant could do much more, if only he’d let himself go, whereas Grant says he is already at his limit and fighting for survival. Secretly, though, Grant wonders if his brother might be right. Grant is reading a book called The Pursuit of Excellence and finds within thoughts helpful to his game. To him cricket is an internal journey, a defiant struggle. Andy thinks he ‘enjoys the torture’ and reckons he leaves all his strokes in the nets. He points out that ‘reading a book is all very well’. Grant knows this, of course, but knowing is only a part of it. He yearns for release, yet believes that freedom is beyond him. It is often like this with sportsmen searching for the way forward. Are his limitations imaginary or real? And so it is in cricket. A player must find a technique and an approach that fits his talents and personality, must know himself 136
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before he can judge his game, must play to his strengths, for only then can he improve. It is our fate and our futility to wish that Boycott played more like Gower and Gower more like Boycott. And so the teasing continues, brothers-in-arms and at war, Andy trying to goad his team-mate into reaching for more, Grant fearing that more will be his undoing. Sibling rivalries start at an early age and are beyond the softening of time. Perhaps, too, they are sharpened by the need for the lesser talent to stand up for himself and against all-consuming failure. As it is not easy being the son of a famous father, so the younger brother of a talented sibling can have a rough ride. Failures bite the deepest into those whose self-esteem is most precarious. They cannot afford to fall short and so barricades go up. In our youth we need someone to tell us about life’s possibilities. And yet the Flowers have much in common and fight side by side. To see them running between wickets is to know that harmony outweighs friction. They are as swift and unstoppable as any pair has ever been. They take singles to gully. Andy and Grant grew up together as schoolboys in Johannesburg and teenagers in Harare and they’ve been professional cricketers all their lives. Some people are just born that way. In their youth, they feared they might never be able to test themselves in the highest company. Had not the poet written that ‘full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air’? Herein lay the Flowers’ greatest fear. They wanted to be proper cricketers and dedicated their lives to that end. No sooner had they left school than they concentrated on their game, playing in Zimbabwe every summer and flying to England in their winter to play in the northern leagues. Apart from David Houghton, they were Zimbabwe’s only professional players, which was often a source of frustration because others could walk away but they were bound to fight it out. As far as the Flowers were concerned, cricket was life. Most colleagues regarded it as a game. Naturally, they considered moving to South Africa after school, but no firm offers came, and anyhow, South Africa wasn’t playing Test cricket either. To their surprise, Zimbabwe was given Test status a few years ago and ever since they have been the backbone of the team. In India they felt they must stay 137
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in or else. Andy scored 100 and Grant passed 90, but Zimbabwe collapsed once they were parted, and slumped to defeat. Both were conscious of the need, as Andy puts it, ‘to justify ourselves. We can’t just go out and play. We must prove that we deserve Test cricket.’ It was easier in their earliest days, when nothing was expected. In Pakistan, the boys had played with abandon. ‘And the people loved us,’ Andy recalls. ‘They could see we were enjoying ourselves.’ It didn’t last; it never does. Eventually, the game becomes hard work because there is a job to be done. And defeat concentrates the mind. Andy believes Grant would be a much better player if he could bat in a powerful side rather than a struggling one. Perhaps he is wrong about that. Perhaps it is his brother’s destiny to work for his runs, to make the most of a smaller talent, a most worthy goal. In different ways, each is giving his country stout service. Both are trying to prove themselves, trying to compete. The teasing between the brothers will continue and it will hurt occasionally, as only the truth can. But they work hard together and are carrying a considerable burden as a new cricketing nation battles for survival. If Andy carries his load lightly, his brother carries it with no less determination. As ever, their team will rely on them and hope that each in his different way advances the cause.
Pat Symcox Pat Symcox was at it again on 11 December 1997. No sooner had the second wicket fallen than he was walking to the crease, as erect as a soldier and as salty as an old sea dog. South Africa needed someone to go over the top. They’d found the right fellow. Symcox has been going over the top for years. Nor did he take long to begin his appointed task. He’s never been a fellow to dip his toes in the edge of the water. To the contrary, he plunges into the waves. After the briefest of surveys, he stepped down the track and thumped the ball over long-on. Good morning, Mr O’Connor. Next ball, he drove through mid-off as the score clattered along. Once again, it was a full-blooded stroke. Symcox doesn’t do things by halves. 138
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Pretty soon, he was talking to all and sundry, even to Adam Parore, and hardly anyone does that. Doubtless, he talks in his sleep. Throughout, he gave the impression of a fellow enjoying himself, a cricketer who is deadly serious about his game while at the same time regarding it, and life, as a great lark. This attitude is hardly surprising because Symcox views every minute of this tour, every moment of his revival, as an unexpected bonus. The game owes him nothing. Five years ago, he retired, more or less, and it took encouraging words from Graeme Ford, the newly appointed and highly successful coach at Natal, to lure him back. Ford had lots of young players and needed another old hand to help Malcolm Marshall knock them into shape. It was a gamble and Symcox took it. Throwing away his whitecollar job, he hurled himself back into the fray. He had never been the abstemious type. He’d always been willing to practise, but took some persuading about diets and training and batting properly. Natal prospered and so did its ageing fox. Moreover, South Africa couldn’t find any spinners except Paul Adams, who might not last. Symcox forced himself into the reckoning. He’d always been underestimated, especially by himself, had never taken himself seriously, hadn’t thought he belonged in this company. But he’s a fighter and such men can rise further than anticipated. He’s become quite a cricketer and a decided handful. In appearance and manner he resembles Dennis Lillee, and, like the old maestro, he is all fire and brimstone on the surface—an irascible, drinking, cursing opponent, forever young and clearly relishing the scrap. Probably Symcox wishes he were a fast bowler, able to stick it up the batsmen whenever he wanted, which, in his case, would be every ball. But he adds guile to his gall and proved as much with his dismissal of Tom Moody in Melbourne. Already, he had reacted to Mark Waugh’s six by sending down a faster one and following it through with an assault of words. Under pressure, Waugh soon cut to point. Now came Moody, as lanky as a lamppost. First Symcox pitched short, showing the batsman his spin and driving him on to the back foot. Next came the sucker punch, a subtle delivery that floated from his hand, pitched on a fuller length than expected and ran straight on. Moody was confounded, pinned on his stumps, fooled by his brazen 139
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opponent. And they’d said off-spinners couldn’t bowl? In Hobart there was a sign saying, ‘Excuse me, Pat, can we have some sauce with those pies?’ Even at the batting crease, Symcox has widened his range. Subtlety has been added to his strength. Pressing for runs, he rocked back to cut Chris Harris. Instead of piercing the field, Symcox found a Kiwi and again he laughed. But it was a revelation. Blimey, he could play off the back foot, too. Pretty soon, it was over. Like the post, Harris deliveries generally arrive an hour or two later than expected. Detecting an offering he fancied, which did not put it in isolation, Symcox drove and cursed himself as the ball landed meekly in the hands of his opponent. He shook his head, put his bat under his arm and strode from the field. Would you believe it? Harris! Ah, to hell with it. What’s done is done.
Graeme Smith Graeme Smith is a remarkable young man of 22 years with an important part to play in the rebuilding of his country’s cricket. His contribution can reach beyond a mere game, for he can help a changing society to confront its fears. He is not responsible for the past, is not bound by it and does not apologise for it. He spent the last days of apartheid in junior school. Unlike past players, he has nothing to forget, no need to dress in liberal finery. Refusing to be inhibited by history or cornered by politics, he marches forward, jaw set and victory in mind. He believes in himself, believes in his players and believes in his country, an approach that has rekindled the enthusiasm of a group weary of compromise. Although Smith did not score many runs at Headingley, his influence could be felt throughout. Even the old codgers had a spring in their step. Gary Kirsten played the innings of his career and found by his side Monde Zondeli, a young man with a ready smile, a black skin, a wonderful temperament and a straight bat. Together this pair rescued their team. In a short time, Smith has made an enormous impression. He leads in an intelligent and uncomplicated way, demanding the best, 140
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telling the truth and seeking victory with every cell of a brain that ticks but does not explode. His players had been united in the apparently simple task of winning cricket matches. Some of them had become demoralised, feeling they were fighting not just opponents on the field but administrators in offices. Now the sense of representing a nation has been restored. Smith’s appointment was a gamble. Notwithstanding the furore raised in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Shaun Pollock’s time was up. Rushed into the captaincy at the fall of his compromised predecessor, he looked like a man fighting on too many fronts. Far from inspiring his men, Pollock had become bogged down and his team suffered. Failure in the World Cup was the inevitable result, as was the cleaning of the stables that followed. Smith was not the obvious replacement. He was not a regular in the team, not even an original member of the World Cup squad. In short, he was an outsider with an untested game and the face of an especially fierce sixth-former. One thing, though, was known about him, and its significance was not missed. He had irritated the Australians. It is hard to think of a better reason for choosing a man as leader. He had spoken openly, almost disingenuously, about the observations made by these opponents on the field of play. His remarks made headlines and were regarded by the Australians as a betrayal of the code of silence about events on the field. But Smith was not complaining, and that is the point. He was simply confirming that Australians talk a lot and sometimes with forked tongue. He was just telling the truth. A question had been asked and he had provided the answer. Cutting through the nonsense counts among his qualities. He seemed amused, almost flattered, by the hostility of the Australians and surprised by the ensuing fuss. But he did not back down, for he is not to be intimidated. After the wretchedness of the World Cup campaign, South Africa needed to find someone fresh, a leader untouched by failures and frustration and capable of carrying with him a complicated cricket community. Within a few hours of his appointment, it was clear that Smith was the right man. No sooner was his nomination announced than the 22-year-old said he was happy to accept and had been dreaming of captaining his country since he first took guard. Not a word about surprise and respect and honour and all those things a 141
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man is supposed to say. Instead, he told the truth, admitted he was ambitious, had hoped to be appointed and was confident he could do the job. His candour was invigorating. Asked for an opinion on Hansie Cronje, he said simply that he had ‘never met him’. In a sentence the ghost had been slain. Later, he made some remarks that were not universally popular in the Klusener household. Again, he was simply answering a question as honestly as he could. And he was right. Klusener had put on weight and was looking hangdog. A brighter approach was needed. It was up to the all-rounder to show that he still wanted to play. Smith showed the ruthlessness needed by a captain determined to turn a team around. From the outset, he knew what he wanted and went after it. He looked comfortable among his players, many of whom had imposing records and plenty of reason to be wary of the newcomer. Watching from the players’ balcony, he’d occupy a middle seat, live and die with every ball and show unfeigned delight whenever one of his men surpassed themselves. Leeds in 2003 was his reward. When Gary Kirsten held the low catch that brought victory, his captain punched the air and then the sky. Mark Boucher ran across and hugged him. A broad grin appeared on the face of Jacques Kallis, whose outswingers had brought the match to an abrupt conclusion. Makhaya Ntini grabbed a stump and gave it to Monde Zondeli, an undaunted young man who had batted with astonishing serenity. South Africa was a force again. The past, recent and ancient, had been forgotten. A team containing two men with bullets in them, an abused orphan, a pair of black pace bowlers, youngsters from various tribes, including Afrikaner and Anglo-Saxon, had overwhelmed England on its own patch. And South Africa’s best bowler was not even playing.
Ray Price Most of the Zimbabweans have colourful pasts. Many were mauled by lions in their formative years. Price was struck down by meningitis and survived by the skin of his teeth. He was left hard of hearing and his balance was affected. At school he was regarded as a willing 142
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but abysmal fieldsman and was not given much chance of making the grade. But the youngster loved the game and was not easily discouraged. Gradually, he learnt to adapt to his new circumstances. Slowly, he fought his way through the ranks. It has been a long haul for a man whose face would tell of a thousand sufferings if only the smile would once abandon its station. In those days, Zimbabwe had lots of highly regarded spinners, most of them leggies, a breed known for its volatility. Accordingly, Price did not give up and, with an injury here and a protest there, presently found himself not merely representing the country of his birth but bowling to the Australians on a turning pitch in Sydney in 2003. He is the sort of bowler easily underestimated. In the nets he looks like the type of trundler your aunt could play. Trotting in off a few paces and with an air of innocence, he sends down apparently innocuous deliveries and laughs as team-mates dispatch them into the never-never. Certainly, he does not look like a bowler capable of taking six wickets in a Test innings against anyone, let alone Australia. But Price has strengths hidden to the naked eye. Most particularly, he is a competitor to his bootstraps. Toss him the ball and he will bowl all day. Nor do his spirits drop in the face of a buffeting. Much could be told from the resilience he shows while batting, an occupation not greatly to his fancy in which he generally contrives to contribute something. Beyond dispute, he is a game ’un. In Sydney, Price marched onto the field with the air of a man determined to bowl out the Australians and convinced such was within his powers. He had the nerve to bowl exactly as he does in the nets, tempting the batsmen and accepting punishment as part of his calling. Throughout, he tried to take wickets; not once did he think or act with timidity. Whereas most contemporary spinners push the ball through, he invites batsmen to assist him in their destruction, challenges them to play their shots yet does not give them anything easy to hit. Nor does he waste time searching for the diabolic. Others may speak of mystery balls; he merely walks back to his mark and tosses the next one a little higher or a fraction wider. Bounce was his greatest asset at the SCG, a weapon available to those blessed with a high arm and an ability to flight the ball as opposed to merely lobbing it. Ponting fell to a delivery that took the shoulder of his bat, Steve Waugh was held at short leg as he plunged forward. 143
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Mark Boucher Mark Boucher is a scallywag and does not pretend otherwise. Anyone seeking insight into his character need only consider the cards he sends back to websites while on tour and his performance in his second Test appearance, when he helped to break the record for ninth-wicket partnerships. Boucher’s reports from overseas are amusing, irreverent and disarming. Far from portraying the correct picture of a bunch of dedicated professionals preparing for matches on a diet of water and self-denial, Boucher cheerfully admits to dancing and drinking. After downing a bottle of rosé, he managed to convince Jacques Kallis that it had been made by pouring a bottle of white wine into a bottle of red. In many respects, he is a typical sportsman: competitive, not especially ambitious and preferring the laughter of the dressing-room to the intrusion of the wider world. Certainly, the contrast could not be greater between Boucher and his predecessor, the endlessly refined and discreet Dave Richardson. Where the older man was greying and understated, his replacement is bustling and sometimes impertinent. Richardson never put a hair out of place, while Boucher cracks boundaries and throws himself around, never bothering with appearances. Richardson was a craftsman from the old school, unruffled and undramatic, while the younger man is emotional and aggressive—a rock band after a string quartet. Not that Boucher is a lesser cricketer. Indeed, it was the younger man who stood firmest against the opportunism that came like a cancer upon South African cricket in Hansie Cronje’s time as captain. Long before the revelations emerged, a senior colleague confided that ‘only Kallis and Boucher care’. In hindsight, it was a telling remark. Kallis and Boucher had seemed among the grumpiest of the South African players. Perhaps they were merely the most frustrated. Boucher rose in estimation during the King Commission, or noncommission as it ought to be called. While senior players disappeared from view or else emulated the three monkeys, he confronted the issue. Most particularly, he told his friend Herschelle Gibbs that he had to answer the questions honestly, for this was a matter of legal process and serious consequences would follow any attempt to 144
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mislead. Accordingly, Gibbs told the truth and was soon able to play cricket again. Boucher’s intervention saved the career of a gifted player, a man like himself, full of mischief rather than menace. Small wonder that the wicket-keeper was chosen to serve as vicecaptain at the age of 23. Not that he sought the position. Rather, his promotion was recognition of the strong points of a responsible rascal. He is a rough diamond with a deep-seated suspicion of polish. Doubtless, he is also wary of administrators and politicking. Unsurprisingly, he has become an independent man. Despite his experience and position, Boucher was not considered the right man to replace Shaun Pollock after the World Cup debacle. Nor did he make any attempt to promote his candidacy. Suspecting he might not be able to swallow the pills nowadays taken by South African captains, he disqualified himself by refusing to present himself in a sympathetic light. In short, he did not want the job or, rather, the compromises that go with it.
Lance Klusener Lance Klusener is the most elusive member of the South African team poised to reach the 1999 World Cup final. A silent swashbuckler on the field, he abhors the nonsense that accompanies sportsmen as they strut their stuff. Words are sniffed with suspicion. Asked for his thoughts after winning yet another man-of-the-match award, he replied, ‘Champagne’s nice.’ Before going in to bat, he sits quietly and reads a book. Of course, the pressure does not get to him. He does not think it exists. He took guard in Zululand among families worried about their next meal and waiting for the rains. To him, cricket is a game, not a mission. Klusener first appeared on a farm in Eshowe, in the northern parts of Natal. Like most farmers’ sons, he had a black nanny and played with Zulu children. He spoke the language and learnt the customs and has always respected the people and land of his birth. Particularly, he likes the Zulu philosophy that says ‘Better a goat than a dollar’, because a goat can be cooked or milked. He boarded at Durban High School, a traditional establishment that had knocked down its draughty ancient buildings and softened 145
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its regime of cold showers at dawn. He was a quiet schoolboy and spent his time thinking and watching. Klusener was also a small chap whose pectorals did not yet contain the power of King Kong. Nor did he stand out as a cricketer, spending most of his time as an opening batsman with the Second XI. Altogether, he was a late developer. In the holidays, he would go fishing in the mountains or hunting for red buck on the plains, pursuits that remain his greatest pleasures. After school, Klusener did his National Service, where he enjoyed himself so much that he stayed beyond his requirement and became a corporal. Nothing perturbs him. Certainly not 4.30 a.m. bugles or the roaring of sergeant-majors. He played cricket for the country districts, where a rough-and-ready form of the game is preferred. Few top players have emerged from the South African bush. Mostly they come from the cities and posh schools. Klusener took to hitting the ball as hard as possible and bowling as fast as he could, an approach that suited his temperament. To his surprise, Klusener found he could bowl fast. He kept belting runs and breaking stumps and word spread. Inevitably, the Natal selectors sent for him. Luckily, their coach was Graeme Ford, a fellow capable of drawing the best from players as diverse as Pat Symcox and Jonty Rhodes. Pretty soon, Klusener was playing for his country. He kept taking more wickets and scoring more runs than he was supposed to do and he kept finishing on the winning side. The farmer’s son became a feared cricketer, but remained his own man, a hunter, a man of the veldt, with its sunrises and sunsets and the endless struggles and glories of nature. He has shot a buck and hit a six; he recognises the primeval and is wary of everything else. He doesn’t say much because he knows what life is about and realises this is only a game and that a fellow ought not to get carried away.
Kevin Pieterson Kevin Pieterson scored 87 for his grade club on Saturday. A month ago, he struck a century in 32 overs to win a match, an innings full of booming straight drives. Next time England tours Australia, he will be available to represent his adopted country. He hits the ball hard and has the strong character, commitment, talent and ambition 146
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young men need to make the grade. Born and raised in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pieterson is building his cricket career in Nottingham and his powerful strokeplay and occasional off-breaks have already made their mark. Disillusioned with a quota system that denied whiteskinned players a fair opportunity in South Africa, he packed his bags and joined Clive Rice at Trent Bridge. These Africans and immigrant families from Asia will revive the fortunes of English cricket. Pieterson cannot play immediately for his new country. Although he has a British passport and says he has been offered ‘a million dollars’ for it, he must wait four years before he is qualified. Two have been served. Meanwhile, he is playing for Nottinghamshire and chomping at the bit. This northern winter he is trying his luck in grade cricket, and is prospering where so many spoilt brats from England fail. Sydney University was his chosen club because he wants to learn more about spin bowling from Greg Matthews. Already it has been a long and eventful journey for a tall, strong young man whose voice hints at a vulnerability absent in his words. His father is a director of a civil engineering company in Durban and his mother takes care of the house. Pieterson began playing cricket in knockabout matches with his three brothers in the backyard, where it was a matter of ‘fighting for your life’. From the start, he learnt to take care of himself and to expect nothing, especially from siblings. He dreamt of playing for his country. Pieterson was sent to Maritzburg College, one of those robust African schools full of rigour, fitness and friendship. Alan Paton and Jonty Rhodes count among its old boys. Parents around the country send their sons to the boarding houses to be knocked into shape. ‘The discipline and attitude to sport helped me a lot,’ Pieterson says as team-mates execute fielding drills nearby. ‘Academics took second place.’ I was surprised by this elevated position. ‘No one bunked school on Tuesdays because it was practice day.’ College trained harder than any team except, perhaps, Grey College in Bloemfontein, and in six years Pieterson can only remember losing two cricket matches. ‘We were taught to be aggressive, to do whatever it took. We had this will to win. We were proud to be playing.’ In those days, Pieterson was predominantly a spinner and his abilities took him into Natal and South African youth sides and 147
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finally into the national under-19 team. He started working his way through the senior ranks and to the verge of a powerful state team and then hit a snag. After a successful tour of Darwin and Broome, he had expected to play in the opening match of the new campaign, only to discover he was not even in the squad. Worse, Natal had imported a coloured spinner from Gauteng by way of fulfilling a quota. ‘So I went to see the selectors and said, “What is the story?” They had to pick players of colour. I went to see Dr Ali Bacher and asked, “It is three coloured players now, next year it will be four. Where will it stop? Will the Natal team ever be chosen on merit again?”’ Bacher replied that it would never be all white because the various coloured communities would improve. It was a response typical of a crafty politician. Bacher wanted him to stay, but ‘Peter Pollock said, “Go for it!”’ Pieterson wanted to stand or fall on cricket alone and realised his decision had been made for him. Accordingly, he accepted Rice’s offer of a contract at Nottinghamshire and enjoyed putting pounds into his bank account. His attitude is simple and reflects his upbringing. ‘I take every single innings as an opportunity for runs,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to give myself up. Winning means so much to me.’ Growing up in South Africa or Australia is an advantage, he says, because ‘the first thing they throw you is a cricket ball. As soon as you can stand, there is a cricket bat in the Christmas stocking. In England it is a soccer ball.’ Pieterson is confident he can score runs for his adopted country and thinks he is ready. Nor will he go off the boil in the next two summers of waiting. Graeme Hick had to wait for seven years and his game lost its edge. Pieterson says he is hungry now. ‘How much hungrier will I be in 2004? The last two years have flown by.’ He intends to improve his bowling and widen his experience as a batsman. Asked what he can add to an England team, he says he can ‘finish matches’. ‘That has been my strong point, finishing games with 60 needed in eight overs.’ Nasser Hussain must wish he had been around in Hobart. Of course, he is impressed by the Australians and says the 2002–03 series shows not so much how bad England has been but ‘how good the Australians are’. He admires the dedication of club cricketers and 148
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points towards 40 colleagues still throwing themselves around as evening settles upon the old stone buildings of the campus. Pieterson has scored a stack of runs in county cricket and will be available for England when he reaches 24. Others will arrive from Africa. ‘It’s on the cards,’ he says. ‘Just watch.’ Pieterson hits the ball hard, is used to winning and has a part to play in the restoration of the game on that cloudy island. Count on it, he will be here in 2006–07, playing for England and looking the Australians in the eye, as he looked his brothers in the eye all those years ago. In the beginning can be found the man.
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10 Salt of the earth Sportsmen need to bear in mind the words of the old poet: ‘Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.’ Still, there is an art in retaining vitality and enthusiasm through a long day, a long season and a long career.
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roperly regarded, sport is revelatory. A man brings onto the field the qualities he takes into the world. Some seek the dramatic role, springing to life in the manner of actors upon a stage. Others go about their task in a more self-absorbed way and regard the fuss as incidental to their activity. They prefer the satisfaction of the job well done to the cheers of the crowd. Professionalism is not a matter of money. Rather, it is a question of application. As the professional writer sits at his desk each day and starts to fulfil his requirement, so the amateur awaits the arrival of his muse. As the professional sportsman sets out to make runs and take wickets, so the part-timer frets about appearances. Golf is a question of getting the ball in the hole with as few shots as possible. Greatness takes many forms, but it never loses sight of its primary task. Players such as Allan Border and Steve Waugh were praised for making the most of a minor gift. It was a misunderstanding founded upon sport’s habit of mistaking style for substance. A pretty wrist is mistaken for talent, an occasional stunning stroke is regarded as confirmation of rare ability. Meanwhile, robust performers are dismissed as battlers. No one, though, has thrown down the stumps more often than this pair of deadeyes. 150
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Superb craftsmanship is not an alternative to greatness, but merely another path to its accomplishment. Genius is another matter, for then extraordinary deeds can be performed repeatedly and apparently at will. Of course, the genius is often less reliable, for he tends towards permanent adolescence, while the master must enter the world before he can properly construct his response. Neither David Boon nor Angus Fraser was touched by magic, but both were magnificent cricketers who served with distinction. Both learnt to accept their abilities and to work with them. Neither sought to soar, for they understood that the journey was futile. Sometimes it is easier for those whose talents could be defined. Of course, they had been blessed with considerable advantages. The Tasmanian had an eye for a ball and could judge length in an instant. The Londoner was tall, strong and could send down a legcutter. Boon was a fighter who conveyed courage and defiance as he wore down an opposing attack. No one ever saw him take a backward step or let down his team-mates. He belonged to the generation of warriors that restored Australian cricket after the setbacks of the 1980s. He belonged to the age of struggle. Hard to imagine him in a huddle. Angus Fraser was encountered on a Saturday afternoon in Sydney, where he was spending the northern winter playing club cricket. His every moment speaks of salt of the earth, yet the description is in part patronising because he was a highly skilled and proud performer and an astute thinker about the game. Fraser led a life without any of the trappings of success, for the things he valued, the things he expected from himself, were not to be found in the fringes. For him cricket was not a means to an end, but the purpose of his early years. In disciplining and expressing his individuality he was putting his life on the correct path. Asanka Gurusinha and the Dutch centurions had the same sense of honesty as their comrades in this chapter. The Great Guru represented all that was fine and sometimes betrayed in Sri Lankan cricket, while the delight shown by Jan Kloppenburg and Klaas-Jan van Noortwijk upon reaching three figures in a World Cup match showed that determined men from other walks of life can now and then accompany the cricketing gods on their journey. 151
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David Boon David Boon was not a man easily removed from the crease. Bowlers battered and blasted him, but he never could be shifted, never did cry ‘enough’. Somewhere along the way, perhaps in his cradle, he had hardened himself against all that. Backward steps were not for him. He’d stand his ground till the onslaught had abated and then launch an attack of his own, cutting and pulling and driving past the bowler, moustache bristling, mouth chewing and legs scurrying. Of course, he took a certain satisfaction in it all, seemed to be saying, ‘You’ve had your go, mate, now it’s my turn.’ And so he’d build his score, taking us with him on his journey—a rugged man crossing rugged terrain. Boon never let you down. Durability has been his trademark. Without it, he might not have left the outpost of his raising. Doubtless, the genial citizens of Launceston think themselves in the thick of life, but that is not the general impression. It isn’t even what they think in Hobart. Boon had to force his way upwards by weight of runs, by the irresistible power of performance. From Launceston he convinced Hobart, from Tasmania he convinced Australia, and from Australia, he convinced the world. Always it was a battle, and that suited him because he thrives on them. And what else is life? Always he has been the pragmatist, his pillars firmly on the ground, concentrating, fighting for his quarter, the little bloke surviving in a hostile world. Always he was showing ’em what a fellow from Tasmania can do, an ordinary man with little legs who played fancy shots now and then in his dreams, but did not indulge himself in waking hours. Defiance has been his mood: defiance of bowlers, defiance of troubled times, defiance of opponents, umpires and journalists who seemed to him to have joined in some fell conspiracy calculated to bring him down. Perhaps he was slightly intimidated by stylists, with their apparent ease. The fighter always overestimates elegance, mistakes it for comfort, does not realise that it is superficial and often unnecessary. But the misjudgement can be turned to advantage. Boon knew himself, knew he was a scrapper. He enjoyed playing under Allan Border because he felt the same, dealt in deeds and not words, shots as opposed to strokes. 152
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Boon’s robust innings for the Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra in 1984 awakened Australia to his merits and secured his prompt promotion. Nor did he fail his country when asked to play against the West Indies in 1984–85, taking his peppering without complaint. His future seemed secure, but it is never as easy as that. Within a year, Boon had lost his place in the team, the result of some tentative footwork against the England tourists of 1986–87. He fiddled away outside off-stump and was repeatedly caught in the slips. He had disintegrated before our eyes, and it was hard to imagine him returning. A few months later, Boon scored one of the finest Test hundreds it has been my privilege to watch, a faultless innings played against Richard Hadlee in Brisbane. Astounded, I rang Boon that night in search of an explanation. ‘I read something Sir Garry Sobers said,’ he replied. ‘He talked about not being at the bottom until you think yourself there.’ Realising he had been thinking himself down, Boon set about correcting his faults, scratching a line outside off-stump to alert him to balls that could be left alone. It was a superb response to a difficult time. Boon did not look back from that moment, was never dropped again, or not from the Test team anyhow. He started as an opening bat and later moved one place down the list in order to accommodate Mark Taylor. Not once did he bat in the softer regions in the middle order, for he belonged in the front lines, where the battle is lost and won. Always, he stood his ground and held his nerve, keeping his game together, never complaining. And times could be hard. West Indies had been a baptism of fire, and the flames did not abate for several years. But, then, Boon was not made for easy times. Indeed, his reputation rests upon his steadfastness, a characteristic that helped to lift Australia from the depths in the 1980s to the heights reached a decade later and maintained ever since. Boon had his revenge upon England, played in a team that proved itself the strongest around, helped to win a World Cup. He was the heart of the team, a man to be relied upon, a batsman to score the hardest runs. And now he has realised it is time to go. Boon has served his country well by announcing his retirement promptly and 153
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with humility. His move gives cricket followers an opportunity to thank him for his contribution. In Hindu mythology there is a force known as the Divine Boon. It is a protection that cannot be destroyed by man or beast. Arrows were fired, stones thrown, but such trifles were brushed aside. Those relying on the Divine Boon were unconquerable and indestructible. Australia has been fortunate to have its very own Divine Boon.
Angus Fraser It was all there: the long familiar trudge back to the mark, the old sagging of the shoulders, the plaintive look that is never far away and says so many things—this pitch needs digging up, these slips can’t catch, the umpires are blind, the ball’s crook, my back’s sore, the whole thing’s stuffed and West Ham are useless. Angus Fraser is in town. It’s there, all of it. The cranking of the body and the mechanical action that leads to a rip of fingers across the seam, a long followthrough, an exasperated peer, a shrug, a plod back to the mark and the paceman’s eternal questions—Why don’t I bowl spin? Why don’t I bat? At last, a turn, a heavy trot and another unerring delivery. Really, the surprising thing in all of this is that Fraser is not playing for England but for Western Suburbs in Sydney grade cricket. England had appeared certain to pick him. Having bowled his country to victory in Barbados last April—‘That was nice, I got more from the pitch than Ambrose’—he had bowled well at home and thought he could pack his bags for Australia. But they had chosen faster men, younger men, players more suited to hard grounds. Oh yes, and they said he’d lost his nip. Naturally, he had been disappointed, especially since he had heard the news on television. He did not think much of that and said so to a journo, which ‘didn’t go down all that well’. It had hit him hard because he knew what he was missing. Heavens, he had even enjoyed the tour last time, amid the defeats, amid the wreckage of a team in which dourness and frivolity fought for supremacy. He’d enjoyed it all except the pitches, which were just as grudging as those in England and the West Indies, and everywhere else. ‘Only Perth has any pace,’ Fraser says. 154
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Playing for England means a lot to him. That’s why his first Test match was a bit disappointing. It had seemed like just another game. ‘I wanted something special,’ Fraser says, ‘national anthems and all that. You’ve got to call on something extra, after all.’ He started well for his country, taking wickets, and a long career appeared certain. But Fraser is no athlete, nor is he strong. His body is not suited to the demands of his trade, with its jarring and its tensions. Injury struck three years ago and imperilled his career. It was a hard time. ‘I couldn’t watch any cricket,’ Fraser says, ‘I was very low. Sponsors invited me to the first day of a Test against the West Indies and I couldn’t wait to get out of the ground and get my mind on something else.’ Against prediction, Fraser fought back and bowled out the West Indies in Bridgetown. Then came the chop and the threat of sudden anonymity. He is frustrated because he feels he has more to offer. Fraser wanted a long career, wanted to be counted high in the ranks of pace bowlers. So far, he has taken 85 wickets at an average of 27; not bad, but not enough, either. Really, England should have picked him because line and length has much to commend it. Happily, his old friends at Western Suburbs asked him to return and he accepted. Denise, his fiancée, has friends in Australia and, anyway, what else is a professional cricketer supposed to do in winter? Later, Tasmania offered him a contract, but he had given his word. Although he would have liked a chance to bowl at an Australian top six he describes as ‘awesome’, he is enjoying his time with Wests. His adopted club is riding high in its centenary year and eager for another win. Earlier, Fraser had scored a noble 14 as Wests reached 185 all out on a pitch producing more shooters than High Noon. Fourteen isn’t bad for Fraser. ‘Only scored 13 the last time I was here,’ he says. Upon being asked if this had been a memorable innings, Fraser replies, ‘No, 13 altogether, in all matches. That’s one run every thousand miles. Mind you, I don’t get many hits.’ Now it was his task to bowl Wests to victory. Over upon over he toiled, his accuracy unfailing. Finally, the last wicket fell with the visitors 35 runs short of their target. In 28 overs, Fraser had taken 3/56. He had reason to be satisfied but, as he left the field, he made only one remark: ‘Ruddy hot, ain’t it?’ 155
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Asanka Gurusinha Predictably, Asanka Gurusinha was at the heart of the fightback on 29 December 1995, leading the way as colleagues lent admirable support. Guru is not the most exhilarating batsman ever to set foot on this earth, but he is among the gamest. Built along comfortable lines, he is not the fittest athlete around, either, but he has the heart of an ox and it is the heart that counts. One can tell, somehow, that he is a good man. Like all notable voyages, Guru’s innings began in hardship and encountered all manner of torments along the way. They were met with equanimity by a batsman not easily shaken from his course. Guru was hit in the nether regions, a blow that laid him low for several minutes. He returned for more. He was hit upon more respectable parts of his anatomy and always came back for more. At various stages, his innings more or less ground to a halt, as if body and mind were not prepared to function a moment longer. And still he came back for more. His journey from 80 to 100 was an epic in miniature. It took him a year or so to move from 80 to 87 where, exhausted by the effort and apparently enjoying the scenery, he remained for another couple of years. Spectators urged him to his 100, but it seemed almost inconceivable he could score another run unless roller skates and a wider bat were provided. Guru did wonderfully well to survive this ordeal. His struggle hereabouts was as much with himself as with his opponents. His mind was exhausted and his bat all edges. He might have given up. To his credit, he did nothing of the sort, simply dusted himself off and came back for more. The Australians tried pace and spin, everything, in fact, except the bowler who had taken his wicket in the first innings. And they could not shift him. At last he found his form again, and the fluency we thought had disappeared forever, clipping a stroke through mid-wicket and then pulling to the boundary to reach his hundred, whereupon he waved to colleagues and crowd before giving the middle of his bat the Friday night treatment. He might also have kissed his outside edge. Yet it would be wrong to give the impression that stoicism was the only characteristic of Guru’s innings. Defiant as he walked out to bat 156
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as the six o’clock news was being read on Thursday evening, he began in sprightly form, pulling, glancing off his pads and, much to the exasperation of the bowlers, edging through a slip cordon that always seemed to be standing in the wrong place. He also drove straight and occasionally through cover, a side of the wicket he usually disdains on the grounds that it is favoured by prettier types. He rattled along, 65 runs in two hours, as the crowd waited for it to end, not realising that something substantial had begun. It was in the afternoon that Guru’s great battle with himself and Australian cricket started in earnest, a battle that had to be won if Sri Lanka was to recover its cricketing pride. This was the part of the innings during which the crowd embraced him as an individual willing to put his entire being at the service of his team. After tea, his 100 secured and the torment behind him, Guru batted more easily, moving solidly behind every ball and occasionally playing a forceful and secure stroke. At last he fell, leg before as Paul Reiffel tried his luck around the wicket, the umpire deciding that the ball did not intend to allow the leg-stump to escape its attention. And so ended one of our game’s most courageous innings. The Australians saluted Gurusinha as he left the field, a worthy opponent given his due.
Jan Kloppenburg and Klaas-Jan van Noortwijk Ordinarily, Jan Feiko Kloppenburg works in a large law firm in The Hague. Every morning, he reports to the office and shuffles through papers containing the private language that lawyers use. Now and then, he puts on some orange clothes and plays cricket for his country. Hitherto, he had not been especially successful and his highest score in this tournament was 18. Considering he was missing work and receiving only 50 American dollars a day, he might have been miserable, but amateur cricketers do not think like that and the Dutch have been having the time of their lives. To a man, they wanted to play against the Australians in Potchefstrron, though the pitch was wet and there were two points for an abandoned match. In the 2003 World Cup, on a hot morning in Bloemfontein, Kloppenburg became the first Dutch batsman to score a hundred in an 157
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official one-day international, a tulip succeeding in the city of roses. A tall man with a fondness for driving over the top, Kloppenburg celebrated his 50 in style and upon reaching three figures swung his bat so that it resembled a windmill in a typhoon and hugged his partner so hard that observers feared he might not breathe again. At the crease he was a man surprised to discover he could bat this well. Released from self-imposed limitations, he stepped down the pitch to drive the slower bowlers over long-on and bent to thrash anything wide over point. Few 28-year-olds have enjoyed themselves as much without breaking a law. Nor was Kloppenburg’s day complete. As the Namibians set off in hot pursuit of a distant target, the tall opener was thrown the ball and responded by taking four wickets for 42 runs in his ten allotted overs, a spell that helped Holland to secure its first victory in World Cup finals. Every cricketer yearns for days like this; even dry-as-dust lawyers have their dreams. Klaas-Jan van Noortwijk was not far behind. In civilian life he works for ABN Anro as a financial adviser. Now he emerged at first wicket down only because Bas Zuiderent, once a child prodigy and these days a struggling professional, had hurt his head in a collision before the match. Van Noortwijk hit the ball hard from a short backlift and directed his attentions over the mid-off. Not long after his comrade, he became the second Dutchman to score a hundred in the World Cup, whereupon he reacted with the restrained pleasure expected from financiers who have seen markets go up and come down without ever taking their eyes off the p/e ratios. Van Noortwijk reached his century in 111 balls, fifteen fewer than his partner, and promptly stepped down the pitch to strike the biggest six of the innings. Helped by some sloppy fielding and wayward bowling, the pair added 228 in 243 balls. Afterwards, the financier was so stiff he could not field. Thanks to this stirring partnership, Holland was able to end its campaign on a high note. Dutch batsmen had the time of their cricketing lives as the lawyer and financier cut loose beneath a hot, Free State sun. Next week, it is back to the desks and the routines of life. For a time they were able to soar, and man can ask no more than that. And they took their chance with a performance they will remember to their dying days.
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11 Australians at work All sport is boxing in another form.
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ustralia has been the dominant force in cricket since the game expanded beyond its English base. Other teams have enjoyed strong periods and the West Indies were powerful for fifteen years, but overall the wide brown land has dictated terms. Of course, England was the main rival for decades, and until recently contests between the nations were close. Remove series played in the aftermath of war, and results were even. Australia’s supposedly strongest teams—Warwick Armstrong’s 1921 side and Don Bradman’s Invincibles of 1948—prospered against a devastated opponent. Since 1989, Australia has surged ahead of England. Of course, the same applied on the rugby field till the old enemy learnt from its rival, invigorated its production line, appointed a gifted and ruthless coach and found some great players, whereupon the World Cup was won with the last kick of extra time. Australia has also moved ahead of other cricketing nations, none of whom has been able to sustain a challenge. As far as cricket is concerned, Australia’s superiority has been a mixed blessing. On the bright side, Australia has played an attacking game, scoring quickly, setting aggressive fields, pressing for results and generally providing entertainment. Hardly any matches have 159
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ended in the sort of stalemate commonplace in the 1960s and at odds with the prevailing mood. Moreover, Australia has played its part in the revival of leg-spin bowling, an art that seemed to be dying as the great West Indian fast bowlers demolished everything in their path. Australia has also produced many of the innovations that helped to revive the game in the 1970s—including night cricket, coloured clothing, circles, lively presentation, more money for players, lucrative television contracts and the spread of one-day cricket. The Australian Cricket Board helped to put the game’s administration on a proper footing. But Australia’s influence has not been entirely beneficial. Whereas the Brazilian soccer team has illuminated its game with a combination of brilliance and sportsmanship, the Australians have restricted themselves to ruthless conquest. On the field, the Australians have lacked charm and generosity. By and large, they have been respected and not admired, let alone loved as the Brazilians, Muhammad Ali, Seve Ballesteros and others have been loved. Of course, the Australian players are the products of a hard-boiled system that crushes sentiment and instils aggression. To say that manners are not enforced even in private school matches sounds like the sort of snobbery a fellow left England to avoid. Yet it is a fact. Spectators at matches between prestigious schools are often taken aback by the conduct of the players. But, then, Australia lives by its own lights. Boys watch their heroes on television and want to play that same hard, daring game. No holds are barred in Australian cricket, not on the beach, in the backyard, in a park on a Saturday afternoon or in youth or adult cricket. Decorum is left to the women. In recent times, attempts have been made to change the approach of the Australian team. Not so long ago, Manly, a suburb of Sydney that fields its own teams in grade cricket, decided to stop sledging opponents, most of whom responded by behaving themselves. By all accounts, the matches were competitive and enjoyable. Not that sledging is any longer uniquely Australian. If anything, English cricket is worse as unpleasant professionals and aping amateurs throw their weight around. Frustrated by their unpopularity in their homeland, some Australian cricketers have set out to improve their reputation. Of course, they had first to accept that the bad image was not merely a 160
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media beat-up, a point that finally took hold after a secretary of their Board told them that she hated going to work as she spent her day answering rude phone calls from angry supporters. Steve Waugh started the reformation in his own way, by trying to broaden the minds of his players so that they enjoyed visiting unfamiliar places and took an interest in the wider world from which they were otherwise protected. But he could not bring himself to show warmth upon the field, for a man cannot betray his entire self. Adam Gilchrist has taken the next step by deciding to leave the crease of his own accord. Much to the frustration of some colleagues, he has also stopped appealing unless he thinks the batsman is out. Other Australians have also walked, not least Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz, though these may have been instinctive reactions as opposed to matters of conscience. Before every series, Ricky Ponting suggests that batsmen on both sides accept the word of fieldsmen about low catches rather than risking a wrong decision and bad blood by waiting for the opinion of the third umpire. Regardless of their approach to the game, the Australians are not a bad lot. Herein can be found a description of Michael Clarke’s first Test innings and articles about Brett Lee, Darren Lehmann, Justin Langer, Matthew Hayden and Damien Martyn, accomplished cricketers raised in the Australian way, not a blue blood among them, but a pianist, a student of martial arts, a young man who has helped youngsters with depression and a senior man who manages to play with a smile on his face. Brad Hogg’s flipper to remove Andy Flower in a World Cup match was included because it was such a fine piece of cricket performed in an unlikely place at a contentious time. The Ricky Ponting piece was revived in a forlorn attempt to convince readers that the author does now and then get something right!
In a foreign land Cricket is an outstanding game. It’s not all bad, not by a long chalk. A few years ago, a group of Australian cricketers embarked upon a tour of England. John Benaud was among them, not so much a 161
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mother hen fussing over her brood as an ageing lion keeping an eye upon his pride. As can be told from his occupation of the position of chairman of the New South Wales selectors, Benaud has the fearlessness of those prepared to walk into the murkiest corners of cricket’s existence. He did not want his curious collection of characters to visit square little places like Surrey and Sussex where people wear cravats and wash their cars on Sunday mornings. Rather, he wanted to plunge into the remoter parts of the old country and especially deepest Somerset. Accordingly, arrangements were made to play on a farm in the heart of the countryside. The match was to take place on a farm in a tiny village called Bishop’s Lydeard, a couple of booming drives from Taunton. After a period spent peering over hedges, the Australians located the field and immediately noticed that it was in some respects different from the MCG. One or two of the younger chaps were surprised to be invited to change in a converted cow shed, but the older hands took it in their stride. They were enjoying the sight of cows grazing and not at all disconcerted that these admirable creatures were, for the time being, doing so in the region usually occupied by cover point. They had also sensed their hosts regarded the match as a mere prelude to singing and drinking, not necessarily in that order. There is no need to dwell upon the early hours of this contest. The highlight was the innings played by Benaud which, though meritorious in many other ways, could not count productivity or longevity among its distinguishing features. Upon his stumps being disrupted, Benaud strode from the field looking not unlike an officer in the Grenadier Guards whose boots had not been polished. Benaud had some hard things to say and the language to serve the purpose. Sportingly, though, he did not mention pitch or umpires, a reaction thought to be unique among those whose innings had recently been terminated. Benaud is a man blessed with forthright opinions and it is, perhaps, just as well that his comments cannot exactly be recalled. Suffice it to say that he expressed the opinion that he ‘never had been able to pick a bloke’s straight-onner’. Some adjectives may have, perchance, made their way into his description but, as Graham Greene and several editors have pointed out, they are an overrated part of the lexicon. Meanwhile, the match moved along 162
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well, with the Australians chasing against an attack that waxed and waned as circumstance dictated. Finally, it came to the last over with thirteen runs required. Since the boundaries were short and the bowling not quite up to the standard set by Joel Garner in these denouements, the task was not as daunting as it might sound. A single was taken off the first delivery. Now came a commotion. The scorers had been studying their books, a thought that had not previously occurred, and to their dismay had found another ten runs. Accordingly, the visitors needed to score only two runs in five balls. Now came a remarkable turn of events. The youngest member of the touring party found himself on strike. Unprompted, he pushed back the next ball, a tactic that provoked curiosity among friend and foe. Unprompted, he pushed back the next three balls as well, so that two runs were needed off the last delivery. Suddenly, everyone understood. He had not wanted to win the game the wrong way. Victory and defeat were a small matter. The day was not to be spoilt. It was a question of honour. With two runs needed off the last ball, the youngster opened his shoulders. The winning runs were scampered, whereupon there was much laughter and good cheer. The fellow’s name has slipped from mind, but his gesture endures. Sport does not so much build character as reveal it.
Michael Clarke Michael Clarke has made the most stunning debut seen from an Australian since Dungog Doug carted England all around the Gabba in Brisbane in 1965. Before our very eyes and in his country’s hour of need, a young Australian produced such a scintillating performance that it was hard to believe he was a novice. On 8 October 2004, Clarke produced a wonderful range of strokes, including drives, pulls and some inventions of his own, and made them all seem as natural as breathing. Nor was it just his batting that caught the eye. Clarke’s innings was not a solitary journey undertaken by a remote figure. During its course, the young New South Welshman laughed, kissed, embraced, cried and rejoiced. He lived and died with every ball and took with him on his 163
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journey his partners, team, parents, grandparents, an entire ground and, doubtless, a sporting nation. It was the most human of performances. Whenever something went wrong, he looked up to the heavens and thanked his gods for their indulgence. When a run came his way, he skipped down the pitch like an excited wallaby. It was Clarke’s journey through the nineties that caught the hearts and minds of spectators. Till then, he had been in command of himself as he batted with the freedom of the young man eager to take an unexpected opportunity. Suddenly, the game became inexplicably difficult. Suddenly, his bat felt heavy in his hands. Suddenly, his twinkling feet had mud upon them. Suddenly, the agony had replaced the ecstasy. In this period Clarke might have fallen several times, but was spared. He was fortunate to have by his side a calming influence in the person of Adam Gilchrist, who curtailed his own activities to guide the youngster towards his dream. Gilchrist himself played a wonderful innings, thereby confirming that he has mastered the skill of starting an innings against the turning ball and putting to rest all fears that he might not prove an adequate replacement for his ailing skipper. No praise can be too high for the way the left-hander went about his work. His timing, judgement and spirit were exemplary and on another day would demand a column to themselves. But this was Clarke’s day and it was his contribution that caught the imagination. Somehow, his hazardous journey through the nineties added to his appeal. A clip off his pads took him to 96, a glide brought another couple and then, at last, after delays and swishes and laughs, another tuck brought the hundredth run. Clarke punched the air, hugged his partner, kissed his treasured baggy green cap (which had been restored to his head for this very purpose). And then he cried. Parents and grandparents hugged and burst into tears. Before long, there was not a dry eye in the house. Everyone else was relieved because the run brought to an end the preceding tortures. It was wonderful to see how much it all meant in this cynical age to a rising young sportsman and the people around him. Doubtless, they remembered in this hour all the sacrifices that had been made and all the disappointments that had been suffered. Both before and after the nervous nineties, Clarke was another batsman entirely. At stumps on the opening day, he had confessed to 164
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being a gibbering wreck as he walked out to bat in the first afternoon. He added that nerves had taken such a hold of him that he had awoken at 5.30, a time he seemed to regard as beyond the pale. If Clarke was feeling shaky in those early minutes of his innings, he hid it well. From the outset, his footwork was smooth and his shot selection was confident. Clarke has a dancer’s feet and seemed to glide down the pitch before playing his stroke. He has a free-flowing game and a simple, clean swing of the bat. Hardly once did the ball strike his pads, for, though he bends over his bat at address, there is nothing cramped about his game. Indeed, his batting expresses a character untouched by meanness. Clarke’s judgement of length was swift and unerring and allowed him to move back to dispatch under-pitched deliveries with a full swing. Twice, he pulled shortish balls over the mid-wicket boundary with the low hands and swivel used by Dungog Doug in his marauding days. Never mind that a man had been stationed thereabouts. Fearlessness could be detected in Clarke’s choice of shots. Nor could his effervescence be missed. Upon reaching 50, he celebrated by driving Kumble for six over long-on. Upon reaching three figures, he cut loose so effectively that the score was sent racing along. After losing his captain, he launched such an assault that fifteen runs were taken off Kumble’s next over. Between times, he ran excellently between wickets and defended with the widest of bats. His game, like his character, is built on strong foundations. It was a wonderful innings from a fine young cricketer. Trevor Hohns and company deserve credit for having the nerve to pick him. Apart from his batting, fielding, bowling and outlook, Clarke brings something else to the game. With his fashionably unkempt hair and adventurous ways, he can convince the next generation that cricket is cool. His pals Shane Watson and Cameron White can lend a hand. Clarke is young and outgoing, but he cares about his cricket and upon reaching three figures he kissed his Australian cap.
Ricky Ponting Ricky Ponting is my nomination to serve as vice-captain of the Australian team, and the sooner he is promoted the better. 165
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Shane Warne’s injury has changed everything and made the appointment much more important. Warne might not play again this season and there is no guarantee he will ever recover his powers. Accordingly, the position is vacant regardless of the rights and wrongs of his sacking. Australia must find a replacement for the longer term, not someone to fill a gap. Steve Waugh and Warne had formed an effective partnership, but those days are over. A replacement is needed and the selection is crucial because it may decide the shape of Australian cricket for the next decade. Ponting has most of the credentials needed to occupy a significant role in the team, not least a sharp tactical brain, superb fielding skills near the bat or far away, a secure place in both sides and respect from his peers. Safer choices can be found elsewhere, but they seem to lack the edge detectable in this urgent Tasmanian. He would be a risky choice, but the risk of ignoring him is greater. He is also the right age to succeed Waugh when this accomplished incumbent decides to put his bat away. At 25, Ponting is a seasoned campaigner whose best days lie ahead. He has scored runs in most corners of the cricketing world, has proved himself against pace and spin alike. Two years ago, he was all at sea against the turning ball, but he studied, listened and learnt. He may lack a certain gravitas, may not have passed many exams in his schooldays, but he has an astute cricketing brain and a hunger for runs and cricket that can be detected in his every movement. Ponting is also willing to take responsibility and did so last year in Sri Lanka, where he became the team’s leading batsman, scoring runs between the showers, holding the side together and showing it was possible to score runs against deliveries turning a yard. The Tasmanian’s batting prowess cannot be doubted. Nor is it merely a matter of scoring 30 or 40 runs. In Brisbane last week, he hit the highest score of his career, 233, and he scores his runs quickly, relying upon nimble footwork and shrewd shot selection. And he proved his temperament by reaching the nineties on his Test debut, only to be let down by a dubious lbw decision. Of course, Ponting also has his weak points, especially a quick 166
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temper that drops him into hot water with disconcerting regularity, a rough tongue and a fondness for watering holes that might perturb the wowser element on the Board. At present, he is also about as diplomatic as Sir Les Patterson. In short, he has a lot of Javed Miandad in him. He does not regard cricket as a gentleman’s game, but as a brawl with no holds barred. Obviously, a lot of sandpaper will be needed to smooth down the edges of this determined product of deepest and darkest Launceston. But this is precisely why he must be nominated. Properly trained, Ponting will be the right man to lead Australia in three or four years’ time. Meanwhile, it’s up to senior figures in Australian cricket to provide the appropriate grooming. Ponting seems to realise the need. Apparently, he has taken to quenching his thirst with light beer, a considerable sacrifice for a fellow of this sort and a hint of the ambition that lies within. He may not entirely have embraced sobriety, but does seem capable of understanding that an Australian captain is in the spotlight 24 hours a day and twelve months a year. It isn’t just a matter of tossing a coin, changing the bowling and shouting a round in the bar. Australia must not hesitate to appoint him, need not dwell too long upon his failings. Ponting’s strengths outweigh his weaknesses. And he will learn.
Brett Lee Brett Lee was the bowler of the 2003 World Cup, the cutting edge of a powerful side, the maverick in a team of professionals whose flag was not lowered in 42 days of campaigning. He was the debonair and fierce face of Australian cricket, always laughing, always trying, always unsettling batsmen with his pace and versatility. Australia might have retained the Cup without this force of nature from the southern beaches of New South Wales. After all, there were several furlongs between the antipodean thoroughbreds and the rest of the field, a point confirmed in the final. But Lee brightened the competition immeasurably and turned several matches upon their heads with shafts of lightning sent down on sunny afternoons. He was the man 167
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of the tournament, an important player in a powerful team and the most exciting competitor to appear in those long and sporadically inspired weeks. All the great cricketers of the world turned up to play and Lee went home with the spoils. Any man could be proud of such an achievement. He chose a fine time to raise his game. Lee was fun to watch and hard to face, for beneath a grin that could sell toothpaste lurks a ruthless and sometimes devastating competitor. Lee burst upon matches so regularly and effectively that his interventions were almost anticipated. A buzz used to go around the ground whenever Shane Warne was thrown the ball. Now the same applies to Lee and he must have sensed it and relished it. Given his head, he did not lose it, sending down more thunderbolts than an enraged god, changing matches in a moment and otherwise prowling in the outfield, waiting till the call came again. Here was a cavalier whose time had come. No one else bowled as fast or created as much danger, no one brought the field to life as he did. Fifty-over cricket was supposed to be a batsman’s game, with even the fastest bowlers tossing the ball down and fetching it back. Helped by the restoration of the bumper and the consequent return of fear, Lee changed all that. He seemed to enjoy the sight of batsmen hopping around, for he is mere flesh and blood. But he did not get carried away, and concentrated upon playing his part in a team that swept to victory. Quite a change has come over Lee these last few months. Although the transformation did not happen overnight, it did not take all that long, either. Perhaps the sound of an approaching World Cup brought his ambitions into focus. Not so long ago, batsmen would keep their wickets intact till he was thrown the ball, for his spells were eventful and often costly. He’d charge in and fling the ball down with little regard for length or direction. In those none-too-distant days, he’d respond to punishment by raising the stakes, so that his overs started to matter too much. If Lee had a good day, Australia was bound to prevail. On his bad days, colleagues had an awful lot of ground to recapture. Often, he was more trouble than he was worth and he was by no means certain of his position in the team. With the World Cup approaching, he lost his place in the 50-over side and said he was confused about the different instructions given by his country’s various captains. His supposed consternation was 168
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regarded in some quarters as an indictment of the splitting of the captaincy. But Lee was talking nonsense. Steve Waugh wanted him to be aggressive because wickets matter in Test cricket, while Ricky Ponting wanted him to blend attack with economy because runs cannot be given away in 50-over matches. Top bowlers regard adjusting their games as part of the challenge. Only boneheads cannot tell Test and limited-over cricket apart. Nor did Ponting spare his friend and fastest bowler. Australians are not inclined to tiptoe around, particularly when there is a tournament to win. Lee was a liability. In the nick of time, Lee realised the error of his ways and he set about putting things right. First, he accepted the need for accuracy. Thereafter, he concentrated on bowling as fast as he could while maintaining a tight off-stump line. Bumpers and yorkers were allowed, but no easy pickings off the pads. In short, he worked within parameters that allowed his captain to place attacking fields. In a trice, he became a formidable opponent. It was not so much his bowling that changed as his tactics. He bowled with his head as well as his heart. Circumstances also conspired to help him. If Warne’s departure gave him the room he needed, then the loss of Jason Gillespie gave him the responsibility for which men of spirit yearn. Gillespie’s injury made his place secure, so that he was not looking over his shoulder but into the eyes of his opponents. Hitherto, Lee had seemed immature with his occasional beamers, jumps for joy that resembled an audition for an advertisement and moments of excess when he searched for extra pace and found it by going wide of the wicket, opening his chest and allowing his action to deteriorate. Now he settled into his work, became part of a machine as strong as its weakest link. He was not selling himself or indulging his youthful whims. Rather, he was a professional sportsman carrying out his tasks, and doing so with the enthusiasm and selflessness of the humble. Sometimes Lee took wickets in his first spell as he hurled the ball down and laughed as it swung away from nervously proffered bats. Of course, he enjoyed bowling with white balls that were far more obliging than their red brethren, further confirmation that communism does not work. In these spells with the new ball, he generally remembered to pitch the ball up, an approach that goes against the grain with every fast man with fire in his belly. Pace bowlers hate to 169
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be driven, for it offends their dignity, ridicules their efforts and surrenders the initiative. Most respond by pitching the ball up about every second Tuesday in March and otherwise concentrating entirely upon pushing the batsmen backwards. Fortunately, the Australian coaches have managed to persuade Lee that wickets alone count and that they are usually taken by deliveries threatening the stumps, a point amply confirmed by a scrutiny of the figures produced by John Buchanan to reinforce his argument. Now and then, Lee forgot himself and pounded the middle of the pitch in that opening assault. He was especially wild against England on a Port Elizabeth pitch about as lively as a bingo game in Pontefract on a cold winter’s evening. Rather than taking a look at the pitch and realising that it had fallen into a deeper sleep than Rip Van Winkle, Lee bowled ever faster and shorter and soon the score was galloping along at ten runs an over as Marcus Trescothick and Nick Knight hooked and cut in the manner of Errol Flynn after an unusually early night. His refusal to adapt almost cost his team the match. Andrew Bichel took seven wickets for a farthing and played the innings of his life and still Australia only scraped home. Significantly, the swashbuckling paceman did not repeat the mistake. Although Lee remains a gambler, the wildcard in an attack that relies upon precision, he has realised that he is expected to use his brain. His second spell was much better and he did not drop short again in the tournament, except as part of a plan. It was not merely him being pitted against his opponents. There was a Cup to lift. Sometimes Lee did not take wickets till later in the innings. Indeed, it was a mark of his improvement that he has learnt how to use the old ball and can move it around almost as well as the celebrated but ageing Pakistanis. In the past, he has looked at an old ball rather as a classical musician looks at a banjo. Now he realises that it has its uses. In fact, in the right hands it can be downright unplayable. Lee displayed his newfound skills in a burst against New Zealand in Port Elizabeth that will linger long in the memory. Australia had few runs to spare and something special was needed from the paceman. Lee took the ball and tore in. Releasing from wide of the crease, he sent down a succession of inswinging yorkers that The Don might have kept out in his prime. The Kiwis were cut down like grass beneath a mower and the issue was settled in one devastating spell. 170
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Lee kept punching the air and the stumps kept going over as the crowd roared at the sight of athleticism, pace and late movement in furious combination. Although he was not called upon to play such a decisive role in the final, Lee went home a happy man. In many respects, he is an uncomplicated soul who has tried to take life lightly ever since a friend of his youth committed suicide. Mostly his joie de vivre has reflected the good nature of a boy raised in the simplicities of the bush and the pleasures of the beach, a young man nowadays often to be found strumming a guitar as if posing for Picasso. But it was also a decision to grasp life with all its twists and turns. In his private times, he helps troubled teenagers; in his own hours, he tries to reach the speed of light armed only with a cricket ball. Perhaps the traumas and delights of his background held back his cricket, for he did not take it entirely seriously but still expected everything to fall into place. At the Eighth World Cup an exceptional young man emerged, a fellow of a hundred laughs blessed with the ability to bowl fast and latterly an understanding that life is indeed too short to go around with a long face, but also too precious to be wasted upon tomfoolery. Lee’s moment came and he grabbed it with both hands. As ever, the performance revealed the state of the man within.
Adam Gilchrist A breezy, humorous and gregarious century from Adam Gilchrist on 3 January 2003 renewed the spirits of a crowd dismayed by the prompt loss of the home champion. Australians concerned by the early departure of their captain and several tailenders could take consolation from the sight of Gilchrist not so much standing his ground as charging towards the guns. Whereas Steve Waugh’s expertise lies in the reconstruction of an innings, Gilchrist seeks to change the mood of a match. Waugh calculates the angles and the odds, or he did before this second youth came upon him. Gilchrist sees the ball and hits it hard into a gap. Whereas Waugh works from behind, like a hard-tackling midfielder, Gilchrist goes in pursuit of goals. Together they repaired a wounded innings and brought their side back into the match. 171
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Combining the fearlessness of a hitter with the technique of a toporder man, the wicket-keeper can turn a match around in an hour. If he cared about such things, he’d be averaging over 60, but he does not allow such considerations to restrict him. If swift runs are needed, he will have a go and lose his wicket with a laugh. His previous innings in Melbourne told the story, a swipe across the line before a declaration. Don’t tell him about facts and figures. Talk instead about wins and losses and life itself. Playing a wide range of strokes, some of them recognised by the tennis correspondents arriving in town for forthcoming tournaments, Gilchrist renewed his team’s hopes with a hundred scored in 94 balls. He has played many brilliant innings since the selectors were wise enough to bring him into the side. None has been better timed than this bold effort. No wonder the crowd continued to buzz throughout a morning full of spread fields and hooks and lashes through cover. Gilchrist is an irrepressible cricketer and a wonderful batsman. Of course, all his eggs are not in a single basket and batting mishaps can be corrected in the field. His grin is carefree and reflects the delight he takes in playing cricket and smacking the ball around. In recent times, the northern New South Welshman has not had many chances to build his innings. Mostly, he has been restricted to cheerful cameos. Here he joined his captain with his team in trouble and plenty of time left in the match. Almost unnoticed, he rushed to 45 on that second evening. Of course, it helped that England bowled badly to him. Under the impression the left-hander cannot hook, England pounded the middle of the pitch and Gilchrist kept rolling his wrists and dispatching the ball into the deep. He plays this stroke well, taking his hands above the ball and hitting it early. Actually, he plays every shot well and England’s desperation reflected its inability to find a weakness in his game. His bat is straight, his head is still and his mind is uncluttered, yet he bats intelligently too, seldom loses his wicket to a foolish stroke. His brain lives in his batting. His approach reflects his character. Gilchrist helped his partner reach three figures before stumps and took almost as much pleasure as his captain from this memorable contribution. After losing Waugh upon the resumption, he took charge of the innings. Driving powerfully through the covers, stepping down the pitch to lift over the bowler’s head, hooking hard 172
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and running harder, he kept the score moving along and coaxed from Jason Gillespie an unsuspected range of shots. England has not worked out a way of containing, let alone dismissing, Australia’s no. 7. Accordingly, a measure of panic sets in when he arrives at the crease. Nasser Hussain fears he will lose control and hopes that the menace will go away. His tactic of sending eight fieldsmen to protect the boundary and crowding Gillespie did not work. Nor did it seem sensible to assume that bouncers must sooner or later trouble a batsman used to the WACA ground. Gilchrist counts among the happiest of hookers. Top-class spin has been his weakest point, especially early in his innings, a frailty these opponents have been unable to exploit. Perhaps Ian Blackwell could have been chosen, and asked to bowl into the rough. Regardless, Gilchrist played a marvellous innings, changing the course of the match with his inspired strokeplay. He is an excellent cricketer and a strong competitor who has played his part in turning a dead rubber into a contest that has kept tightly packed spectators on the edges of their seats.
Darren Lehmann Buoyed by his state’s victory over the Blues in Sydney and roared on by his home crowd, Darren Lehmann is poised to introduce himself as a Test match cricketer. Lemon, as Indian spectators are pleased to call him, has long been a bucolic and buccaneering wielder of the willow, but has not so far made his mark in Test cricket. A popular fellow, and better tempered than, say, Russell Crowe, Lehmann knows that time is not his friend. Given his familiarity with this pitch and the difficulties his opponents are encountering in raising a side, the burly South Australian must sense opportunity knocking on his door. An innings of substance is required to confirm that strong material lies within that hefty construction, the sort of innings played by Mark Waugh on his debut or Wasim Akram, whose hundred on this ground included more flashes of lightning than an electric storm. Most talented players are given a run of matches early in their careers, as selectors find out whether the juvenile is made of gold, as 173
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family and critics insist, or the merest flesh and blood. Of course, youngsters imagine themselves immortal and accordingly open proceedings with numerous dazzling displays. Usually, these upstarts falter and are dispatched to the backblocks for a few years to learn their trade. Lehmann has been granted no such licence. For him, it is now or never. Adelaide can look forward to cheering as he charges around the field like Mr Pickwick pursued by an ill-disposed horse and cheering again as he unfurls an array of subtle and brutal strokes. At least he does not feel like an outsider, because he has travelled around with the team. Not that he quite fitted the bill. Lehmann is not easily pictured writing verse of the printable variety and tends to take a pragmatic view of life. Despite a sore finger, he comes into this match on the crest of a wave. As tranquil as an NRMA board meeting, state matches provide ideal preparation for the Test arena. Lehmann played his part with a large first innings and calm captaincy on a compelling last afternoon. He did not, though, look comfortable against Brett Lee’s thunderbolts, but that’s a weak point England is unable to exploit.
Justin Langer Showing considerable powers of concentration, an unfailing appetite for runs and a relentlessly straight bat, Justin Langer has demolished a woebegone England attack. His batting had a rhythm about it that defies easy description. For a time, he’d nibble away, then step down the pitch to drive over the top or try something daring outside offstump. His straight-driving was the highlight of his innings as the left-hander pounced on over-pitched deliveries and sent them speeding past the bowler. In the past, Langer has relied upon shots square of the wicket, but his balance, timing and confidence in this match allowed him to widen his repertoire. The Western Australian has long been regarded as too limited a batsman to hold a position in a powerful line-up. His form over the past couple of years, and this sustained assault on the cream (or rather, the yoghurt) of English bowling, will help to change these perceptions. 174
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Langer’s effort was the culmination of years of hard work. In the nets at his club, he has driven ball after ball thrown down by his friend Noddy Holder, nicknamed after a spirited gentleman who provided the vocals for such masterpieces as ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ by a 1970s group called Slade. After school, Langer attended the cricket academy alongside Shane Warne, Greg Blewett, Damien Martyn and Laurie Harper, under the stewardship of Jack Potter. A steady career was predicted by most observers. Dogged and doughty, he was condemned by the adjective. Langer played with passion, put a heavy price on his wicket and left it reluctantly. Summoned from Perth as a late replacement, he played against the West Indies in Adelaide in 1993, took their bumpers on the body and head, eked out 20 and 54, and shed tears as his team suffered a narrow defeat. He went to New Zealand, prodded around and was promptly dropped. His face fitted but his game did not. Next came Langer’s period in the desert, and for five years he struggled against the anonymity that enshrouded him. An outcast can either surrender or fight back. Langer chose to fight and set about proving he deserved another chance. He needed to change his outlook to the game. Hitherto, he had been a ball of intensity; every delivery brought life or death. Balance was required, an approach that could carry him through his days. It was not easy, because Langer is an unusual mixture of diligence and exuberance, emotion and reason. Always he was trying to find a tempo that suited him, a game that reflected the strengths of his character and subdued the weak points. It was a long process and at its end he was familiar with the challenge of reconstructing life after a setback. Eventually, a gap appeared in the national team as Michael Slater lost his way. Langer returned and set about securing his position. His attitude had changed. It was not enough to build a wall around his castle. He had to leave its portals to attack the enemy. Reputations are hard to lose. Even now, Langer is dismissed as defensive, though he cuts and slashes like a man trapped in a mosquito net. Not until he added more than 200 for the sixth wicket with Adam Gilchrist, as the Australians rallied to overcome Pakistan in Hobart in 1999, could he be confident of selection for 175
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the next match. Even that innings had its dramas, as Langer survived a clear snick and later announced that his bat handle had broken as the ball passed. He has an extraordinary ability to convince himself that, despite a mountain of evidence pointing towards the contrary, he is not out. Otherwise, the innings that changed his life was a chanceless effort, a combination of aggressive bursts and unobtrusive accumulations. Perhaps the problem with Langer has been that he is not an especially interesting batsman to watch. Like his colleagues, he collects efficiently off his pads, tucking the ball away through mid-wicket and square leg. Delicate leg-glances appear, alongside cracks through cover. Now and then, something lavish is attempted as the aggressive and even artistic part of his character asserts itself. Reversing the usual adage recommended by Greek philosophers and confirmed a hundred thousand times during the course of history, Langer has succeeded precisely because he has not conquered himself. By nature, he belongs to the age of struggle. By accident, he found himself living in a time of affluence, off the field and among batsmen. Casting aside his native caution, accepting that courage was not as active an ingredient in the batting pot, desperate to survive, releasing parts of himself that might forever have been suppressed, the roundhead became a cavalier.
Damien Martyn On 6 January 1994, Damien Martyn played a shot that was to haunt him for years. On a scorching day in Sydney, with fires burning in the outskirts of the city and ash landing on the inner suburbs, the Australians were trying to eke out a paltry score to beat South Africa. Fanie de Villiers and Allan Donald were bowling fast and straight and giving nothing away. Minutes ticked by and the pressure grew as fieldsmen circled like vultures above a traveller breathing his last. Everything depended upon Martyn as the Australians scrimped and scraped towards their target. For 87 minutes, he defended carefully, his score almost immobile. Australia kept losing wickets and the winning line did not seem to get 176
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closer. At last, the Aussies needed a handful of runs with a couple of wickets to fall. Already, Martyn had passed 50 in the first innings and now he’d reached double figures in the second innings. And then came the moment that almost ruined his career. Rather than grasping, he gambled, throwing caution to the hot wind with a blazing drive. Unfortunately, the ball was caught at cover and Martyn trooped off, a diminished figure. Australia lost. He did not play Test cricket again for six years. Obscurity has been the making of Martyn. For a long time, he refused to recognise any failings, blaming everyone except himself for his downfall. He was still the same headstrong young man he was at the academy. He’d even captained Australia’s under-19 side and managed to upset officials. He seemed unable to curb himself or control his gift. Along the way, Martyn was given the captaincy of his state, an attempt to foster maturity. Spurning his opportunity, he was erratic and almost lost his place in the Western Australian team. His club was disappointed by his reckless batting on Saturday afternoons. Martyn’s life was in turmoil, a talent was going to waste. Hereabouts, Martyn did not listen to counsellors. Rather, he followed his own counsel. Determined not to lose him, the Australian selectors put him in charge of the A team and he did well, but it was a false dawn. Martyn’s spell in the wilderness did not harm him. To the contrary, it was needed so that a proper man could emerge from the shell of self-celebration. Cricket put him in his place. Eventually, Martyn realised that time was passing and the world still awaited his mark. Ever since, he has been seen in a better light. He has become a responsible member of the team and a reliable man at first wicket down, whose economic style counterpoints the power and brilliance of his colleagues. Yesterday, Martyn was rewarded for his efforts. In 1994, he was a gifted young man touched by brilliance and wrestling with demons. He had everything a sportsman needed except a head. In 2001, Martyn is in his batting prime. In Adelaide, he batted for 295 minutes and throughout appeared settled and superb. He has turned his life around. And if he can, anyone can. 177
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Brad Hogg Brad Hogg’s removal of Andy Flower on 24 February 2003 was the highlight of a match that began nervously and started to relax as threatened protests petered out. Hogg came on to bowl as the Zimbabwean innings was gathering momentum after another shaky opening from a brittle top order. The brothers Flower had responded capably to their team’s predicament, only for their partnership to be cut short as the younger sibling omitted to follow the instructions of his elder, a turn of events that did not please Andy all that much. Not for the first time in Zimbabwean cricket, everything seemed to depend upon Andy Flower, whose position in the side had not been settled till late the previous night, after his Board had tried to force its selection committee to leave him out for disciplinary reasons. Rather than taking umbrage, Flower senior set about rebuilding the innings and unfurled some lovely cover drives during an impressive performance. Men like Flower can put different parts of their lives in different places and concentrate upon matters in hand. After surviving the onslaught from the Australian pacemen, he must have thought the worst was over. An adroit player of spin and a better sweeper than Mrs Mop, Flower began tucking the ball away with deflections and swift running between wickets. He looked settled at the crease as Andrew Symonds wheeled away and Hogg sent down his deceptively innocent offerings. Hogg lacks the mystique and menace of a certain contemporary from Victoria. Hitherto Hogg’s bosie has bewildered lots of Englishmen but Flower has scored hundreds of runs against Sri Lanka and has won duels with all the great spinners of the era. Over the years he has proved harder to fool than a seasoned detective. Accordingly, this crafty customer was not expected to have any particular difficulty reading Hogg from the hand. Flower appeared serene against Australia’s purveyor of Chinamen as he kept Glenn McGrath busy on the fine-leg boundary. Zimbabwe was starting to move again and Flower had regained his composure after reacting furiously to the errant ways of his younger brother. Perhaps the sight of his father pushing a pram occupied by his son Sam calmed the former captain, for there is nothing more calculated 178
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to keep a man at the crease than the recollection that changing nappies sits high among the alternatives. Hogg began his second over and decided to try a flipper, a sign that his confidence is rising. Seeing the ball dropping shorter than usual, Flower stepped back with intent. Under the impression the ball would spin away from him, this accomplished practitioner prepared to cut. Rather than bouncing invitingly, the ball skidded through upon landing and made a dash for the stumps. Flower had no time to respond to this changed set of circumstances. He had taken his man for granted and had no fallback position. In a trice Flower was cut down. To the bowler’s unhidden delight the ball crashed into the top of the stumps, whereupon Hogg pumped the ground like his fast-bowling friend from Wollongong.
Jason Krezda Jason Krezda sat quietly in the stand contemplating the empty field before him, upon which a few minutes before South Australia had been vanquished. Secretly, he wanted to join the boys in the rooms for the post-match celebrations, but he had been trained and understood that obligations had first to be fulfilled. Accordingly, he came to talk about himself and his hopes of success in a game that so far has been unable to hold the attention of settlers from his neck of the woods. Krezda is not merely one of the most promising of the young spinners running around in Australia, not merely a regular in a state team that has secured three successive victories, but he is also the best cricketer the country of his extraction has produced. Since the male part of his family comes from Czechoslovakia, the boast is not quite as impressive as it sounds. Not that a switch to the maternal side changes anything, since his mother comes from Poland, that land of Gdansk, Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II. Krezda was born in Sydney and has set out to combine his countries of blood and birth. In some respects, he is a typical Australian with his lip salve, his sport and his desire to belong to the group. In other ways, he is mid-European, for he yearns for a stronger, richer family life and wants to go back to Prague one day to meet all his 179
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uncles, aunts, nephews, cousins and grandparents. When he visits the homes of mates from Greece or Croatia or Yugoslavia, their houses always seem full of relations. A private young man, Krezda wants to sample the warmth evident in these communities, with their soups and smells and laughter coming from the kitchens. He regrets that his life is Anglo-Saxon in its isolation. He is a man of many cravings, a cricketer, a sportsman, an Australian, a Czechoslovakian and a soccer player. Therein lies his challenge. Of course, he is also a young man trying to make his way in the world, and that is a daunting enough task. Jason’s dad left his homeland at the age of nineteen. His younger son is not too sure why. Perhaps he could not make enough of a living to feed his family, or perhaps he wanted to try his luck overseas as a professional soccer player. He does not recommend contacting his father, because he is not the communicative type. George, the aforementioned progenitor, insisted that his mother tongue was spoken in the house when the family settled in Sydney and both sons are fluent in the language. He also insisted that Czechoslovakian food be prepared by Jadwiga, his Polish wife, for he is proud of his heritage and does not want his offspring to lose touch with it. Krezda senior was a skilful soccer player and joined clubs in New Zealand and Australia. Jason paints a picture of a hard man who raised his boys as he was raised, in the tough European tradition. Even now, his father and chums from Croatia and Lebanon and Greece meet every Sunday to play soccer on the large field behind the family home, the field upon which the rising off-spinner first encountered a very different game. Both sons attended St Francis Xavier school in Liverpool, where they studied a bit and yearned for the lunchbreaks when they could play sport. Jason started playing cricket at seven years of age and, like many a spirited youngster, set out to be a fast bowler because they were allowed to bowl bumpers. From the outset, he regarded himself as Australian. Perhaps it helped that the Czech community was small—he says he has only ever met three Czechoslovakians. Accordingly, it was a matter of mucking in with the rest. His background did not block his path. He says that teachers are more important than parents in this regard and adds that he was lucky to be encouraged by enthusiasts at St Francis Xavier’s. He turned to 180
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spin after suffering a double stress fracture in his back and has learnt to flight and turn the ball tellingly. He can bat as well and confirmed the point by contributing an important half-century in the recent engagement with ‘The Vics’. He thinks others from similar backgrounds will come to the game as he did, by playing with their pals in the backyard. He does not see himself as a role model or anything of that sort, just wants to cement his place in the state side and in the winter to visit his father’s homeland to see what it means to be a Krezda and a Czechoslovakian. Australian cricket needs to nurture fellows like him, for otherwise it will become a game whose time has passed.
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12 Reputations Sport is a rage against anonymity.
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man only has his reputation. He wants to walk into the world as a respected figure, wants to be able to enter his local pub without provoking scowls, wants to meander through his high street without feeling any sense of embarrassment. Cricketers live in a constant state of fear. It is not a matter of physical timidity. A blow on the body is nothing to a battle-hardened batsman. It is the blows to the psyche that cause alarm. Every day a man’s scores appear in the papers, every day the world is provided with the latest news about his progress and makes its judgements, or so the player assumes because he lives in an enclave and hardly knows that the rest of the planet has more serious concerns. Even the most brazen characters are in constant need of reassurance. Shane Warne rings friends and tells them how well he is bowling and how unlucky he has been and awaits the response. A man with hundreds of Test wickets still needs to hear that he has not lost it. Everything is more fragile than it seems. Insecurity stalks the sporting landscape. Always it is a question of self-esteem. Sportsmen are driven people. They must succeed because the alternative is too painful to contemplate. Moreover, cricket offers a unique combination of cold facts and 182
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collective warmth. Golfers become used to isolation. Cricketers need to test themselves, yet appreciate the company. That is why suicide is more common in cricket than golf. A disappointed golfer suffers an eclipse; a struggling cricketer loses a life. Cricketers are constantly worried their form will desert them at the wrong time or that a rival will pass them by. Players respond to these threats in different ways. Ken Barrington and Colin Cowdrey built walls around their wickets in an attempt to prevent failure’s incursion. Never mind that the former was a battling professional and the latter an apparently comfortable amateur; money has nothing to do with it. Contrastingly, Australians refuse to admit anything is going wrong even as they refuse to boast. Listen to an antipodean batsman talk about his form. Either he is ‘hitting the ball well in the nets’ or he is ‘hitting them all right’. He refuses to undertake the soul searching that attracts the more analytical mind and likewise does not want to skite. Partly it comes from a desire to keep things simple. Whereas the English regard sporting performance as a manifestation of the inner man, the Australian focuses on the contest. Englishmen enjoy torment; Australians like to pretend it is just a game. By refusing to give any ground to negative thoughts, let alone critical analysis, the Australian player rids his brain of forces that inhibit other performers. They may be beaten by opponents, but will seldom beat themselves. Of course, the need to command respect reaches beyond the field. Nothing is more important to a sportsman than his ability to hold his head high. Whenever troubles arise, he fears not the penalty imposed but the loss of face. Mohammad Azharuddin and Hansie Cronje were the men most obviously affected by the betting scandal that rocked the game in 2000. Both were captains of their countries and accordingly carried responsibilities towards their players, countries and the game itself. Both betrayed their trust and the fact that they were not alone and others still playing or recently retired were involved and enjoy spotless reputations is hardly the point. Cronje and Azharuddin’s cricket careers were ended by the scandal. Thereafter, the issue became their place in the cricketing world and among men. My task in these articles was to find solid ground upon which their reputations could rest. The Azha piece was a contribution to a debate that began after a television channel 183
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offered him work as a commentator, a move that raised a hullabaloo. Vengeance has never seemed to be an attractive emotion and the article argues that the time had come to forgive and forget. If the Cronje piece seems harsher, it is because matters seemed to have run too hard in his direction. An impression was being given in some quarters that he was more sinned against than sinning. Certainly, the piece needs to be considered in that context. Among cricketers, Stephen Fleming had the most appealing approach to the topic. He was approached by the bookies and, though he turned them away, he sympathised with the exposed players because he knew how tempting it must have been to accept an apparently minor offer. Bob Simpson, Sourav Ganguly and Arjuna Ranatunga are included in this chapter, not through any sense of comparative guilt but because they, too, are significant cricketing figures burdened with mixed reputations. Readers must decide for themselves whether these servants of the game deserve to be seen in a better light.
Hansie Cronje In winter 2004, Shaun Pollock spoke from the pulpit at a church service in Kwa-Zulu Natal. His chosen task was to restore the reputation of his fellow Afrikaner and former captain, Hansie Cronje. He has not been alone in endeavours that reach beyond the requirements of Christian forgiveness. A tribe and a country want Cronje back. Pollock and company are eager to rescue a man they respected from the caverns of history. They want to remind people, and especially historians, that corruption was but part of his life and not the entire tale. Till his story was contaminated, Cronje seemed like a colossus amid a compromised people. He was a hero in uncertain times. A religion had abandoned its most basic tenets, a strong nation had been forced from its enclave, the pillars upon which life had rested for generations had been shattered. And there, upon the field, was a remote and unyielding figure, a conquering son reminding all and sundry that the possibilities of life endured. And then came the fall, and a terrible fall it was. Afrikaners, especially, were stunned. Slowly, the shock has subsided and evidently the time seems right to reassess the boy from Bloemfontein. Afrikaners 184
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are keen to embrace Cronje, in part because his story has been their story. Also, many have convinced themselves that he was unfairly singled out, a sentiment that runs through hundreds of years of history. Had not his father complained that his son was taking ‘the blame for the entire world’? Has it not always been so? Hansie Cronje has a peculiar place in the hearts and minds of his people. Afrikaners have been suffering from a crisis of confidence. Moreover, they have been affected by collective condemnation. To arrive in South Africa fourteen years ago was to be advised on no account to go to Bloemfontein because it was full of Afrikaners. Thinus, a schoolboy, asked ‘Have there been no good Afrikaners?’ Now he is working as a doctor, surrounded by AIDS patients. Hansie Cronje stood resolute amid the pessimism. He was not merely the hope of the side. He was the hope of a generation dragged into a world whose iniquities had been emblazoned in its soul and a tribe that had not previously been forced to look inwards at the darkness seen by Kurtz as he whispered, ‘The horror, the horror!’ For good or ill, Hansie seemed to represent his people, symbolising the ways that had set them apart, turning them inwards till the world seemed a strange and hostile place. Afrikaner society, and for that matter African families, are patriarchal, with obedience and respect for elders instilled at an early age. The father is a mighty figure, an icon to put beside the schoolmaster and the priest. Cronje understood the expectations of the leader, that he must be unyielding and remote. Upon the field, he was the Afrikaner paternoster writ large. He had another trait that bound him to the tribe from which he emerged. Stoicism lay at the heart of his character, alongside a passion that burnt like a low flame. Afrikaners count among the most romantic of peoples, a description that distinguished prop forward Oos van Randt might not recognise, though it is expressed in his snorting defiance of age. Arguably, this outlook has been a weakness, yet it has often been a source of strength. Afrikaners want to believe. Cronje expressed the tenacity of his people. In Sydney in 1994, with bushfires raging and grass smoking before our eyes, he led his team to a famous victory. The heat was almost unbearable. Always there must be the suffering. Cronje was the great leader of men, a towering figure urging on his players till the moment of redemption arrived. 185
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But it was more than that. Cronje is not so easily defined, for he was also a man of his times, a cosmopolitan, dashing figure, whose toughness was respected by men and whose appearance was admired by women, many of whom flocked to the speeches he gave after the fall. He was rich, sexy, uncompromising and successful. Moreover, he was a match for Ali Bacher and all his machinations. He reassured a tribe that the world had not come to an end. He expressed the yearning of his folk. No wonder South Africans, especially Afrikaners, did not want to believe the tapes. Indeed, the reaction to the revelations reeked of racism. Was some Indian buffoon accusing a favourite son of malpractice? The cheek of it! Alas, South Africans had misjudged both of the main players involved. Detective Paul is cold and efficient. Cronje was flawed and greedy for money. His team-mates at Leicestershire called him ‘Crime’ because ‘crime never pays’. Cronje was tight and routinely spent his meal money on a hamburger, pocketing the rest. Eventually, Cronje had to admit that the tapes were genuine and he had not only taken money to play badly, but also had used his position as captain to persuade others to put their ladles in the pot. No one will ever know the full story. The King Commission was a charade. But the possibility that Cronje stashed millions away in tax havens cannot be discounted. Cronje was hardly in his grave before the campaign began to restore his name. An impression was created that some Australians had behaved just as badly, but it is not true, merely a self-comforting notion calculated to reinforce feelings of victimisation. Cronje was grasping, disloyal and manipulative. He knew what he was doing, talked privately about the corruption of the touring Pakistanis in 1994, but did not add that he intended to join in. He was caught redhanded. Of course, they went for him. Now the reassessment. Cronje was not wicked. Nor can he be restored by tribal or national acclaim. Given time, he might have repaired his reputation. No one will ever know. Others cannot act on his behalf. Plainly, though, he was not a legitimate champion because he could not be relied upon in the hour of need. South Africans deserved better. Other heroes have been found. And the Afrikaners are bouncing back. They have not surrendered anything that matters, merely 186
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power and position. The search for the new life within a new dispensation is underway. Cronje cannot light that path, for he took too many false turns. But his strong points deserve recognition. Mature societies realise that the world is not divided into heroes and villains and that every man and every nation endures the struggle between the forces of light and dark. Cronje deserves neither our contempt nor uncritical admiration. His life should serve as an inspiration and as a warning.
Sourav Ganguly Sourav Ganguly arrived in Australia in 2003 in charge of a talented side whose imminent destruction was widely predicted. He started this series with a team still spluttering like an engine on a frosty morning. Nor is that the end of his difficulties. His own form has been poor, the result of rustiness after a period in dry dock. No one expects him to score any runs. No one expects his team to emerge unscathed from the Gabba, ‘the fighting place’ of Aboriginal tradition. By rights, Ganguly ought to be looking as glum as a docker who has missed his morning fry-up. Instead, the Indian captain seems surprisingly jaunty, like a child on the way to the swings. But then, Bengalis are a proud and stubborn lot. Ganguly, too, is more resilient than he seems. Certainly, he is not easily broken. His entire career attests to the fact. They keep throwing him upon the floor and he keeps getting up. Now, Ganguly faces his most daunting challenge, the task of leading a cricket team on a tour of Australia. In many respects, his presence in the touring party indicates his durability. Ganguly first visited these parts as the junior member of the 1991–92 touring team. Typically, he did not attempt to please the elders of the side. Carrying bags for older players was, in his opinion, beyond the pale. Accordingly, he was dismissed as a youngster unprepared to dance to the contemporary tune. Certainly, he was not willing to bow and scrape for grace. Ganguly’s rejection of the role of the younger player was put down to the arrogance of youth and the laziness of a boy raised among cushions. In fact, it was an act of courage. Ganguly understood the 187
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risks attached to upsetting senior players. Deference is embedded in the Hindu way of life. In India it is normal to address elders and betters as ‘Sir’. Likewise, it is normal to refer to respected seniors as ‘Uncle’ or to add ‘bhai’ to their names. Juniors kiss the feet of respected seniors. Ganguly’s defiance of the prevailing culture defined him as a man apart. Such fellows either end up on the scrap heap or leading the party. Time has softened Ganguly’s individuality without breaking his spirit. Nothing irritates him more than intimations that royal blood flows through his veins. In fact, Ajay Jadeja was the highest born among contemporary Indian cricketers. Ganguly is merely rich. His wealth has been a boon for Indian cricket because it made him both invulnerable to the apples offered by bookmakers and independent of the cricket politicians. Throughout, Ganguly has been above the fray, a lofty figure, popular among his players and disdainful of other opinions. From spoilt youngster to respected leader has been a long and rewarding journey. Along the way, he has taken his team to the final of a World Cup, only to lose his nerve at the last moment. He has also captained his team during the greatest fightback in the annals of the game. As a consequence, India holds the Border–Gavaskar Trophy, no mean achievement for a side obliged to play without Anil Kumble, a bowler deadly on crumbling surfaces. Throughout that epic series, Ganguly showed that he was not afraid of the Australians, even turning up to play against them for India A, an arrangement slightly marred by the fact that he stayed in a different hotel from team-mates and spent most of his time on the telephone. Now Ganguly must score runs and inspire confidence in his players, or else his career will be incomplete and his position will be fatally weakened. Finding holes in this Indian team is a simple task. On the other hand, India fields some wonderful cricketers and several superb batsmen. Ganguly and his countrymen must hope that India’s gifted batsmen produce the form that alone can keep this series alive till Christmas. It is not a forlorn hope, because some of these visitors are capable of the big idea, the great innings that is needed to bring down such a formidable opponent.* *
A few days later, Ganguly saved his side with a brilliant century. India squared the series and retained the Border–Gavaskar Trophy.
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Arjuna Ranatunga Arjuna Ranatunga has been an extraordinary cricketer and among the finest to wear the colours of his country. Amid the controversies of his later years, it is a point easily forgotten. Certainly, his batting commanded respect. Until a fondness for hamburgers took its toll, Ranatunga was a quick-footed predator capable of scoring hundreds against any bowling. The audacity of his strokes in the carefree days of youth is remembered, and even now he can score runs against any bowler except the fastest. His record speaks for itself. At the crease he was alert, crafty and quick. He was, too, an inspirational figure whose very walk to the crease—slow, serene, yet somehow abrasive—seemed to calm comrades almost as much as it irritated opponents, among whom the Australians were the most expressive. Ranatunga reserved his own ire for the English, for whose condescending ways he did not care. Everything else was a performance calculated to attract attention and please the masses. He was a skilful cricketer whose stubbornness has been both his strength and, sometimes, his undoing. Against Australia he repeatedly lost his wicket to wild strokes played against Shane Warne, whom he wanted to dismantle. He’d allowed the leg-spinner to needle him, and it showed. Otherwise, he mostly ran himself out. But he could bat with economy, power and timing. Inevitably, though, it is for his leadership that Ranatunga will be remembered. He brought to his team and Sri Lankan cricket the pride of competition and the sniff of victory. Nor was he inhibited by the ways of the old Ceylon, replacing them with a more uncompromising approach, a mixture of cunning, opportunism and banditry. There was always a hint of Napoleon about him, and a touch of Che Guevara too. Nor was he unduly restricted by scruple. Opponents muttered darkly about local pitches and umpires, but Ranatunga was not bothered about their complaints. Experience had been a hard master. As captain his greatest achievement was to turn a charming bunch of cricketers into a fighting unit. As a result, Sri Lanka won the 1996 World Cup and held its own, even against the Australians. It was a matter of belief and nerve. That he carried on so long is hardly surprising, for he had built Sri Lankan cricket around himself and 189
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thought it might collapse without him. Moreover, he was enjoying the fruits of his labour. He was a father figure to his players and the godfather of his country’s cricket. Part of love, though, is the ability to withdraw. Ranatunga played past his time, a self-indulgence from which Sri Lankan cricket has not yet recovered. This is a man driven by desires he likes to keep hidden. Of course, he wanted to see Sri Lankans hold their own, an attitude he had in common with Sunil Gavaskar, a greater batsman but a man of similar disposition. Gavaskar used his bat to prove that Indians could stand their ground. Every emerging nation needs a figurehead of this sort. Imran Khan served the purpose in Pakistan, ridding his country of any lingering sense of inferiority by proving himself a great cricketer and captain. All three have played in sides that unexpectedly won World Cups. But it went further with Ranatunga. Certainly, he was committed to instilling pride in Sri Lankan cricket, but he was an innovator committed to widening the game so that everyone had a chance, regardless of faith or location or upbringing. Cricket had been a game for the privileged and most players had emerged from the famous Christian schools in Colombo. Ranatunga was born into a rising family who sent him to a Buddhist school from which he emerged as a superb cricketer determined to fight for his place among the old guard. Ever since, he has appealed to the people in the villages whose passion he has sometimes inflamed. By and large, Ranatunga and company have succeeded in giving opportunities to youngsters regardless of background. Significantly, the current captain comes from humble stock and first took guard in the south coast, and the leading bowler sent down his first off-break in Kandy. This Sri Lankan team also includes a couple of Tamils and an opening bowler educated in a Catholic school. Ranatunga’s later years were marked by conflict, with coaches appointed and ousted. He failed to check the deterioration that led to Sri Lanka’s dismal failure in the 1999 World Cup. Where once he was the solution, now he was the problem—an ageing player refusing to let go, a man obsessed with furthering his career to the detriment of the game in his country. Of course, the last has not been heard of him. Ranatunga is a consummate politician and was always suspected of plotting some190
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thing, even on those rare occasions when he wasn’t. His ambitions extend beyond the backbenches of Parliament and the national cricket team. During the course of the next few years, he will choose his path. He could emerge as a demagogue or as a true leader. Upon that choice his reputation will ultimately depend. Meanwhile, it is enough to acknowledge his contribution. He led a team representing a country ravaged by civil war and hindered by poor resources, and he prevailed. Before him the Sri Lankans played well, but did not win. Playing by his own lights, he built an enthusiastic side and won a World Cup, a privilege granted to few.
Bob Simpson Robert Baddeley Simpson is a strange and uneasy man driven by ambition and a suspicion that keeps a distance between him and the smooth-talking world. Battered of psyche as of a face distinguished by craggy features, swept-back black hair and wary eyes, Simpson emerges as a person who has been hurt, as someone who believes this to be a dog-eat-dog world, as someone determined to prevail. He is a gifted man, a fierce and unforgiving competitor suffering from a sense of inferiority and bent upon proving his worth. His world has done him no favours and he holds it in no sentimental regard. Aesthetics are not for him, nor softness of brain, for he is a grafter, one who cannot be loved by the sporting crowd. He has been scorned by insiders and contemporaries alike, but has fed off their rejection and self-satisfaction, knowing that his salvation lay in repeated triumph, for all other avenues had been closed. In failure, Simpson learnt the vacuity of mere style, learnt to be acquisitive, never to surrender ground easily. He is an uncomfortable man with whom to do business. As a player, he was outstanding, one of the finest openers of his generation and a magnificent slip-catcher. As a captain he was resolute, and as coach he built his reputation by using acute analytical powers and a ruthless mind. Players under his control were made to work hard on their basic skills and to think with no hint of laziness; if they could not love Simpson, they could respect him, for they saw the results produced by these toils. 191
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Origins may offer clues to this prickly character. Simpson’s father was a Scottish immigrant who moved to the hot, motorised Sydney suburb of Petersham, a place untouched by fancy, a place from which to rise. Already a picture of Scottish canniness forms. They were a cricketing family and Robert Baddeley practised on a tennis court under a beating sun. At sixteen, he played for New South Wales. Only the doomed Ian Craig was selected at a younger age. A brilliant career was universally predicted. It was not to be so simple. In these early years, Simpson was a creative batsman, almost an innocent, a fellow capable of breezy fifties, not a sticker, for he had not yet realised what a rough life it can be. And then, in 1954, he was poised on 98 against Len Hutton’s tourists when a light rain fell, whereupon the Englishmen ran from the field, leaving umpires and batsmen behind and provoking spectators into loud barracking. Play resumed immediately, but Simpson lost concentration and swung at John Wardle without addition. The incident rankled. He is not a man to forgive and forget. For years, Simpson drifted, but slowly he tightened his game, turning himself into a robust opener by eliminating his hook, using a shorter and heavier bat, and learning to play off the back foot. He had found his metier, yet Test hundreds remained elusive, not one being scored in 29 Test innings. Then Richie Benaud retired as captain in 1964 and Simpson was appointed. Blossoming in his first autumn, he batted with authority and brought to England a team described as ‘the worst ever sent’ and ‘the faceless ones’. Plotting a dour campaign, he ensured victory by compiling 311 in 762 minutes at Old Trafford. No one had ever batted as long against England. Fred Ramsey gasped, ‘Any of you blokes ever taken a fourth new ball?’ It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective, like its progenitor. Simpson retired in 1968, after scoring 4900 Test runs at an average of 47, taking 71 wickets and holding 100 catches, a splendid record. He had programmed himself to score runs, batting ‘as if by computer’. Afterwards, he played superbly in grade cricket and otherwise busied himself wheeling and dealing. And then came the Packer rebellion and an official request to resume office. Enemies never forgave him; admirers praised him. Typically, Simpson batted magnificently against the Indian spinners, scoring 130 more runs than anyone else. He was less fortunate in the West 192
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Indies, where he next took his team, thereby imperilling his 41-yearold bones. Upon returning, his selectors would not guarantee a regular place against England and Simpson retired, this time for good. After Australia’s debacle in England in 1985, he was summoned once more, as coach. Until Allan Border’s triumph over a broken England team in 1989, his position was in jeopardy, for success was elusive and Simpson was inclined towards complaint. Shirkers and stirrers were dropped and still nothing good happened. Still victories were rare. And then came England and triumph. Critics have been inclined to dismiss his contribution, praising instead Terry Alderman and Mark Taylor. This is harsh, for Simpson had moulded the team. Moreover, he had taken England’s premier batsmen to pieces and provided Border with powers of observation and execution.
Mohammad Azharuddin Mohammad Azharuddin has not suddenly grown horns. As far as can be told, he has not harmed a mother or child, has not betrayed the secrets of his country or spent the taxpayers’ money on himself or prevented a foreign-born leader taking the position of Prime Minister. Not that he has been a saint or anything of that sort. Better men can be found upon every street corner. But sooner or later the past must be forgotten and a man allowed to resume his life. If the prodigal son could be welcomed back, then Azha can be allowed to work on television. No fuss should be made about Azha’s appearance as part of the media attending the 2004 Asia Cup. Apart from anything else, he has paid the price of his misdeeds. To the best of its ability, the law of his land has called him to account. Cricket has also scrutinised his activities as part of a wider investigation. His game, the game that never lets go, the recreation that took a hold upon him when he was a poor Muslim child playing in the back streets, has rejected him. He cannot play cricket again, or not in public. Batting was his life. Worst of all, Azha has lost his reputation. Till his dying day, he will be remembered not as the sleek batsman who scored a wondrous hundred at Lord’s, but as the man who used his position as captain 193
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of his country to feather his nest. Whenever he walks into the ground, he will hear the whispers and sense the mixed emotions that his arrival has provoked. He could have been a hero, but threw it all away in an attempt to fulfil the other dream of the sporting child, to live in the grand way, surrounded by marble, adorned by jewels, wearing fashionable clothes and with an attractive wife upon his sleeve. Doubtless, Azha now understands the folly of his ways. Doubtless, he has encountered the emptiness to be found inside the pleasing shell of the stylised life. Doubtless, he yearns to turn back the clock, a licence permitted only to writers of fiction. In public, he may excuse himself, may refuse to show contrition. In private, he is hurting because he has lost his reputation, the most valuable thing a man possesses. Only the vengeful will seek further recrimination, and they ought to examine their own souls before worrying unduly about Azha’s. The idea that a man of his sort had nothing to offer merely upon the exposure of financial misconduct is absurd. An offence is revealed and punished and then life starts again like a forest after a fire. Nor does the idea that the world is divided between black and white sit easily with anyone who has seen journalists fill in their expense forms, businessmen claim their allowances or politicians misuse their funds. Sportsmen, too, are notoriously mean. The notion that famous sportsmen inhabit a world separate from the rest of mankind is dishonest. Like the rest of us, they are made of flesh and blood. Curiously, it is the most saintly of people who are generally the swiftest to forgive because they know the power of the temptations they have resisted. Not that a red carpet needs to be laid upon the ground for Azha as he rejoins those living under the thin veneer of respectability. Cricket barely survived the self-indulgence of its corrupted players. He should be regarded as a professional earning his crust by making comments on television, as a man of past glories who fell with a thud from a high place and now deserves the chance to try again. Cricket teaches its practitioners to forget about the last ball and to think about the next one. Man himself deserves the same opportunity. Azha’s past is irrelevant. He, too, must be treated upon his current merits. Welcome back, Azha, and may happier days lie ahead.
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13 Leaving the stage Regardless of past deeds, a man walks out to bat with nothing to his name and in silence, except for the sound of his own footsteps and such remarks as his hosts care to make.
N
o time in a successful sporting career is more fascinating than its twilight. Famous sportsmen lead a life of eternal youth, a Peter Pan existence sustained by fantastic events upon the field and fanciful stuff off it. They conquer worlds, and feel within the rush of importance, the sense of grandeur encountered by the rock star as he twirls his microphone. Of course, it is a drug. Who has turned his back upon adulation? Only those who walk away truly reject it, and their names could be written on the back of a postage stamp. At its highest levels, the sporting existence is extraordinary. At times, the star must crave the anonymity others strive so hard to avoid. Celebrated actors regularly appear in glossy magazines complaining about the intrusion of, well, glossy magazines. Yet it is not completely dishonest. A man may want many things in his life, some of them contradictory. Often there is the craving for ordinariness alongside the drive for success. Many sportsmen relish their fame and wish it was a switch that could be turned off, now and then. For exalted performers, the idea of leaving the stage for the last time is hard to face, for the crowd’s roar has stirred their soul. They know that afterwards there is only Kellogg’s for breakfast and forms 195
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to fill. Returning to civilian life is not much easier for the sportsman who has bathed in approval than it is for a soldier who has smelt cordite. For a sportsman to withdraw is to admit that the vital, fulfilling part of his life is over. It is not a concession easily made. Businessmen and politicians can continue deep into their seventies. Sport offers no such grace. Always the clock is ticking. And does even the ageing corporate leader or the declining statesman easily walk away from his field of activity? Those who have escaped anonymity seek with every power at their disposal to maintain their hard-won privilege. Even the better adjusted sportsmen obliged to fight to survive, who always felt relief when night came or rain fell, for then the cloud of threatened failure receded for a few precious hours, even these battlers generally try to hold on for another week or month or year. Neither David Boon nor Allan Border wanted to leave. Geoff Marsh was so offended by an article suggesting that his time was up that he brushed past the next time our paths crossed. No one wants to hear the news. Steve Waugh fought furiously against his passing and only when its inevitability was accepted did he start to think about its manner. Of course, these famous men fight to the end. Dollars and cents are seldom the issue. None of the men mentioned above expected to make his fortune as a cricketer. That came later, with the television and the success and the sponsorship. Cricket was a calling that became an opportunity. Rather, it is an anxiety to remain within the confines of the only existence they had known. Women constantly underestimate how much men like spending time together, how much they enjoy the rooms with their secrets and vulgarities and laughter, for there they feel understood and appreciated and their full selves. Once the silence descends upon sportsmen, there is no turning back. Only boxers try to reclaim the fleeting glory, and most of them end up on their backsides or worse. Cricketers, rugby players, athletes and so forth know the truth. When it is over, it really is over. Often it is illuminating to watch the champions as they breathe their last upon the field, for then can be seen a blend of defiance and acceptance. Sometimes the player sinks into self-caricature as he struggles to produce one last performance, while at the same time trying to respond to the warmth that embraces him like a blanket on a cold, dark night. 196
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Of course, it is different for lesser lights, those destined to pursue their calling in more obscure places, those who regard themselves as failures or at best only partial successes. Often they are relieved when their time is up, for then duty has been done and life proper can begin. Sport concentrates upon its most brilliant performers and leaves in its wake a hundred million disappointments. Sometimes sporting failures destroy a man’s self-esteem and for such players there can be no easy passing. In a minor county game some years ago, an opponent drove a ball to a boundary fieldsman, miscued and trotted to the bowler’s end. Upon hearing my cusses, he apologised and added heavily that he had always been a useless player. It ought to have been a warning bell. He had played as a county professional for several years and had tried his hardest. Certainly, he had nothing to be ashamed about. Yet he had expected more of himself and a year later took his life. Herein can be found descriptions of the last international appearances of Michael Atherton and Allan Border, and Steve Waugh’s last stand in first-class cricket. These men knew their time was up and the crowd was able to rise to them. Merv Hughes is seen hobbling from the field for the last time, while Lance Klusener is caught trying to recapture a gift that stubbornly refuses to be bottled.
Allan Border’s last match Few sportsmen have been awarded an ovation as heartfelt and prolonged as that given to Allan Border as he stepped onto the SCG on the evening of 25 January 1994. Under the intoxicating blackness of the skies and with colour all around, a crowd rose to him as a nation bid farewell to one of its favourite sons. Australia is a land of brilliant colours, of fire and rain, desert and snow; it’s a land of extremity and endurance, a place whose characteristics the departing hero expressed and enhanced. Australian heroes are not a breed apart. They belong to the people and are admired and protected, for the nation is young and yearns to make its mark. As Border walked out for the last time, the match was forgotten. Suddenly, we were celebrating not a game but a man. Supporters were saluting the contributions of a fellow who has risen above 197
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himself on countless occasions (it is hard to avoid clichés with Border, a man who favours them himself, yet has never become one). Australia was never beaten till Border’s wicket had been taken. To watch him during those closing overs on Tuesday night, prowling the ground and resenting every run, even after the issue had long since been decided, was to see his strengths on display for one last time. Casting aside the grizzled exterior that has over the years been such a comfort, and no mean disguise, Border responded to the crowd to the extent of allowing himself to bowl the final over. At last he let down his guard, allowed himself to be reached as the crowd sang, ‘Border, Border, give us a wave’. In the past, he had heard the roars and had put them out of his mind. He did not trust himself enough, did not believe in himself sufficiently, to involve himself in the fleeting moment. He batted against fear and failure, protected his wicket with his last breath because to do otherwise was to take a step down the slippery slope. Accordingly, Border played his cricket in a matter-of-fact way. He came across as an ordinary bloke, trying his hardest to score runs, take wickets, and run some of these blighters out. It was an illusion. It was not really the common man out there at all. Mark Waugh and Dean Jones are more touched by human frailty. Border was an extraordinarily skilful and consistent cricketer with phenomenal control of his mind and emotions. He had an absolute command of himself. Ordinary men cannot rise to that. It was a remarkable evening, and a display of affection that almost reached hero-worship. In some respects, it was unanticipated. Border is the bloke who stands with hands on hips, his fury plain, when things are going wrong. Sometimes he kicks the turf, often he scratches his head, occasionally he growls at umpires. No one wanted to win more than him, yet he reacted to victory not with ecstasy but relief. Another battle had been won, another day survived. Border played without joy, for he is a straightforward man and does not get carried away. Border’s waves as he walked onto the field were repeated as he departed into the privacy of the dressing-room where he has lived so long, where he has belonged. It was a heart-warming occasion, and the three cheers at the end rounded off a marvellous night. Border lacked all pretension and concealment. He just wanted Australia to win and, after a rough start, he generally made sure that they did. 198
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Michael Atherton’s last stand Michael Atherton’s last innings for his country, on 26 August 2001, was brief and typically understated. As he walked to the crease, the crowd rose in recognition of long and distinguished service by an Englishman of a particular sort: scruffy, pale-skinned, educated and fond of proper beer and Manchester United. As the ovation continued, a softening could be detected around the eyes of a man who has always avoided emotion. In his younger days, Atherton did not fully understand the furies and passions that drove others forward. Later, he yearned for them. As ever, Atherton did his utmost. He has never sought the easy way. Rather, he set himself to bat until hell freezes over, pitted himself against the entire opposition and fate itself. He tried to do the complete job and not just his bit. Often, he fell short, for he has been a highly skilled batsman a few notches short of greatness. But he always came back. Long ago, he had chosen his course and he kept to it because it expressed the inner man. Atherton’s manner is deceptively plain, for he avoids show, has no interest in celebrity or populism, relies upon deeds and relaxes only in the warmth and privacy of the dressing-room. Away from prying eyes and sporting conflict, he can be amusing, interesting and opinionated to the point of stubbornness. He has not bothered much about money, clothes or cults. Rather, he has been a mixture, a man of many parts. At times, he is the northern lad following his soccer team; at other times, the everlasting student taking his clothes from an over-full drawer. Sometimes, he becomes the intelligent, questing young man reading books written by South Americans. Above all, he remains youthful, for, though he has known setbacks and anger, he has not aged. He is an independent fellow, untouched, mostly unruffled. Atherton has been a fine batsman and a committed cricketer who sold his wicket dearly and held England together in troubled times. Something was missing, for he was solid rather than substantial, skilful rather than imposing. Perhaps he lacked the force of personality of the sort seen in Geoff Boycott, John Edrich, Ken Barrington or Bill Lawry. Alas, his final appearance was brief, though he bettered The Don by some distance. Once again, Glenn McGrath was his nemesis, a 199
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bowler whose skills he could not contain. McGrath repeatedly produced the ball that most troubled the Lancastrian, just short of a length, just outside off-stump, rising and deviating. Atherton’s backfoot defence has been his weak point because it’s played with chest pointing down the pitch. Often he has been caught behind or in the slips, touching dangerous deliveries as they pass. He prefers spinners or bumpers or anything except this torment. Of course, Atherton did not ask his partner to take first ball, not even in this final innings. He did not allow softness to enter his mind. He took guard and embarked once more on the task of subduing his most fierce opponent and the bowler who had on eighteen occasions been his undoing. Perhaps he dreamed of a glorious last stand, though he is not the sort whose head spends long in the clouds. Before long, he touched another probing delivery, whereupon he sighed as he awaited the umpire’s verdict. Then he trudged once more towards the pavilion, a slight shake of the head accompanying him, and then the rising applause. As he closed his innings, he could reflect upon a job well done and could hope, as he always hoped, that better days for England lie just around the corner. The Australians clapped Atherton as he left the field. At first, they had dismissed him as a toff, but he kept coming back and then they realised he was a man to respect. It is not such a bad epitaph.
Merv Hughes leaves the field As Merv Hughes trudged from the SCG on 12 January 1995, it was hard to avoid thinking that, for him, it was the end. And he seemed to sense it, too, for he walked slowly and, as he walked, he paused to glance at the hubbub all around. He was in pain, and puzzled too; time had flown by so quickly. It had not been much of a day for Hughes, yet it was not atypical of the days of his career. Somehow, despite it all, despite himself, despite everything, he had done his bit, taken his wickets. And the Australia A team had won, though by then Hughes had made his forlorn departure, body drooping in sympathy with his moustache. Hughes’s opening overs were awful. Oh, he ran in with intent, 200
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arms by his side, pitter-patter steps to start with and then a surging, heavy rhythm, a blast of arms and, though there was no body in it, an unleashing of power. But there was no pace or direction, unless repeated waywardness can be called direction. He had bowled so well in previous games, well enough to promise the prolonging of his autumn. He might have played in the Melbourne Test had not injury struck. That was barely a fortnight earlier. And now he was on cricketing skid row. The secret of it all is to know when it is time to go. That opening spell was punished at a rate of seven an over as England raced away. Hughes was sent to patrol the boundary at fine leg. He was not in disgrace. He had too much in the bag for that. Yet it was hard to imagine that night would bring improvement. He had roared like a bull, but only a croak had emerged. Soon enough, Hughes was recalled to the crease to replace Paul Reiffel. Humiliation did not seem far away, for Hughes had been lumbering and looked tired and unhappy, an old man in a young team. For once, his urgings were not to be heard across the ground; for once, he was the player in need. Further embarrassment appeared certain as Hughes began his second spell. The batsmen were set, the pitch was firm and the field was spread. Was there one among us who did not sigh and say for the umpteenth time, ‘He’s finished, he’s going to cop it now’? Oh, we of little faith! Ever since he first appeared in Australian colours, Hughes has been making fools of us all. Now he hurried in to bowl at Graham Gooch and somehow enticed an edge as the batsman waved at an unexceptional delivery. A few overs later, he thudded a ball into Mike Gatting’s pads and his appeal was answered. He’d done it again. Hughes is a match player, and a darned good one. Now he rested again, breathing heavily and retreating to the boundary. At last he was recalled, but could manage only two more overs. They weren’t bad, but they were painful. Hughes isn’t a man to let his team down, not a man to leave the field, yet he did so now because he was hurt. It’s hard to see him playing for Australia again, and he may not last much longer for Victoria. There’s no need for regrets. His time has come. The spirit is willing, but the body can’t take it any more. 201
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Mike Gatting gets his century All summer Mike Gatting had huffed and puffed and blown down nothing. All summer he seemed a cricketer from a bygone age, a relic whose career was destined to end in disappointment. It was hard to feel sympathetic; he may have been a victim of the turbulence that was English cricket in the 1980s, yet he was also a cause. Besides which, it had been a good and long innings. But no one likes to see a cricketer end badly and everyone urged Gatting towards his 100, even his opponents, or so it seemed, though they tried hard to stop him. It was as if the game yearned to say goodbye in a fit and proper way. It hadn’t been much of a tour for Gatting. Bad luck had stalked him, his scores had been low and humiliation followed close on his heels. A career part brilliant, part folly, part inspiration, part frustration, a career not without its blind alleys or disputations, was reaching a sorry conclusion. Accordingly, Adelaide barracked for him on 27 January 1995. After all, he had given service, and service must be acknowledged. He had led England to victory in the summer of 1986–87, its last win, had scored a century on this pitch eight years earlier, and had generally impressed as a no-nonsense type, a man to roll up his sleeves and shout a beer. If he could not be cherished, he could at least be respected. A hundred constructed in adversity would, it was widely agreed, be an appropriate farewell. Scoring the first 89 was easy enough. Admittedly, he made his usual jittery start and was bowled by a no-ball, but this was no more than expected after previous misfortunes. Admittedly, Craig McDermott troubled him, as he usually does, for Gatting’s feet no longer stride forward to the faster men. Yet he played the spinners handsomely. Previously, Gatting had been all at sea against spin, much to the surprise of selectors who had chosen him because of his expertise in this area. Now he seemed in charge of the turning ball. A further eleven runs were needed. It took an unconscionable time to get them. Craig McDermott and Shane Warne gave him nothing. Warne’s fingers were snapping at last, and his followthrough bristled with energy. McDermott was outstanding, producing a searing eleven-over spell after lunch, pinning England 202
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down and taking wickets. But he could not remove Gatting. Somehow the batsman moved to 95. About three years later, he touched 99. One run needed. The crowd was on tenterhooks. Every fieldsman was alert. A cover drive was stopped, and no other scoring opportunity arose. A run can take an awful lot of getting. And then Gatting cut hard through gully. Relief, at last. Off he charged, those little legs pumping. If this wasn’t a run, he’d never score another. But what was this? An interception from Steve Waugh, a confusion, men running in all directions, cries of ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Hurry up, you old fool’ pierced the air. A throw, a miss, a run and an ovation. Gatting had his 100.
Lance Klusener in decline Lance Klusener is looking a shadow of his former self. Of course, it is dangerous to discount anyone capable of reaching a par five in one blow. Still, his 30-year-old bones are creaking and his confidence has sunk as low as it can go. This year, 2001, he has averaged 21 with the bat and over 40 with the ball. It is the wrong way round. His place is in jeopardy. Even Klusener’s booming off-drive is letting him down. Previously a strong point, owing to its habit of landing in a nearby suburb, this shot has, of late, repeatedly proved his undoing. Klusener fell this way in Adelaide and twice in Sydney. Taking guard on a pair yesterday, Klusener could not even survive Mark Higgs’s innocent offerings. Before long, he pushed a catch to mid-off. Probably it was not intended to go into the air, but he was crouching more than usual owing to his nonplussed state of mind. It came as no satisfaction to witness the fall of the ageing lion. One yearned for the roar and the savagery and was presented instead with a lame performance that told of waning powers.
Steve Waugh’s last innings Steve Waugh has gone. At 6.08 p.m. on 6 January 2004, he walked through the pavilion gates and into the Australian dressing-room for 203
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the final time. His last departure was saluted by cricketers, umpires and a large crowd present to farewell a favourite son. His last performance was an epic of sorts and, though the story ended unsatisfactorily, it contained the elements seen throughout an astonishing career, especially doggedness and sudden blows that sent the ball charging to the boundary. Most of all, it was a typically cussed, skilful contribution in which Waugh found the powers needed to save his side in its hour of need. No one was surprised by his contribution. His defiance has been a byword. Apart from its closing minutes, Waugh’s last stand was admirable in every way. His career ended as it began, with a pinch-faced, gumchewing refusal to surrender. Of course, he had wanted to end his career on a winning note, but no sportsman, not even an Australian captain, can dictate the course of an entire match. Recovering the Border–Gavaskar Trophy proved beyond his powers. Still, Australia has won lots of trophies in his time as well as breaking numerous records. No man can have everything. Arriving at the crease with his team in trouble and India pressing for victory, Waugh began by constructing a brick wall around his wicket and repelling all invaders. His glint-eyed backward defence has been a familiar part of the cricketing landscape ever since the shy youngster from an unfashionable part of town played his first Test match all those years ago. No one has ever found a way through it. If Waugh’s heart was beating unusually fast on this final afternoon, he showed no sign of it. Not that Old Stone-face has ever betrayed anything as unhelpful as sentiment. Always it has been a matter of getting the job done. As far as he is concerned, the rest is poppycock. In the heat of the battle, under gloomy skies, in front of a large audience for the final time, it was the same old Waugh, a little thicker around the waist maybe, but as stoical as ever. He had plenty of company as fieldsmen crowded the bat. Indeed, he found the time to engage them in ‘conversation’, his comments creeping out from the corner of a mouth that otherwise remained tight-lipped. Waugh has always been able to take care of himself. And he has always known the exact location of cameras and microphones. Throughout, he has been a competitor by instinct, a sportsman by necessity. Hours passed and Waugh continued batting. Sourav Ganguly must have sensed the match slipping away, yet he seemed strangely 204
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paralysed, unwilling to change his bowling or set challenging fields. A stalemate developed as Australia fell further behind the clock and wickets refused to fall. India did not seem to believe in the possibility of winning. Waugh has that effect upon people. They cannot read his mind and, accordingly, fear his intentions. India was wary lest he launch an improbable attack; never mind that the target was beyond reach. The Australian captain reduced his opponents to ineffectual probing by weight of reputation alone. Waugh’s dismissal was curiously unsatisfactory and at odds with his philosophy. Once the match had been saved in all but name, he responded to the urgings of 27 056 spectators disappointed to find the match petering out by launching a ferocious assault upon a weary and defeated attack. Plainly, he wanted to end with a hundred. With a few overs left and needing another twenty runs, he bent on a knee, swept towards deep square-leg and watched as the ball flew towards Sachin Tendulkar, whose batting had illuminated an enthralling match. Tendulkar took the ball. Waugh had scored his 10 887th and last run in Test cricket. In some respects, these last minutes were unworthy because they glorified the individual and exposed tailenders to the trials of a rejuvenated Indian side. The match might have been saved but, still, it was a poor piece of cricket and left some observers feeling empty. Perhaps the end did not signify. On a day of intense competition and widespread frustration, Waugh had outstared and outwaited his opponents. For eighteen years, he has epitomised the relentless drive and ruthless spirit of an Australian team that has been more executioner than murderer. It will be strange to see an Australian side take to the field without him.
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14 Retirements Cricket is a pursuit wherein the lessons of life are learnt. They are not taught with the tenderness encountered elsewhere, for the game does not permit its children an easy raising or its veterans a comfortable passing.
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henever the curtain falls upon the career of a noted figure, the opportunity arises to attempt a summation of his or her contribution. Since sporting careers usually come to an abrupt halt in the mid-thirties, the assessments can read like obituaries. Actually, it is not the end, merely the start of the next stage of an active life. Thereafter, the departing sportsmen face a new challenge as they search other means of obtaining the satisfaction that sport has provided, or at any rate something to make them feel worthwhile. Living in retirement is not easy for anyone, let alone a young man still near the peak of his powers. A worker with 50 years’ experience may feel that he deserves a rest, yet the day spreads out long before him and unless interests have been found, the hours are hard to fill. Never mind the longer term. What is a man supposed to do after breakfast? Many people keep working as long as they can because they enjoy the company and the activity and fear the isolation. For them retirement is not a hard-earned rest but an unsettling prospect. A man needs to know how to retire, but it is not something that can be gleaned from manuals. As far as sportsmen are concerned, the withdrawal from the action is especially traumatic because it occurs at an early age. A man or 206
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woman of 65 may admit that their race has been run. The sportsman has another 30 years of working life, more if he is employed as a cricket commentator. Accordingly, even the most flattering review of past deeds is received with mixed emotions. Few sportsmen easily depart the world they have for so long occupied and sometimes illuminated. Of course, there is the question of employment. Many sportsmen have few other qualifications. Naturally, they try to find work within its portals, for otherwise it is the factory for them, as it was for Harold Larwood in his day. But there is more to it than that. Many ageing sportsmen are no more willing to retire as journalists or broadcasters because that, too, thrusts them into the cold unknown. Richie Benaud and Bill Lawry are cases in point. At the time of writing, neither man has shown the slightest inclination to put his feet up as recommended in contemporary advertising. To the contrary, they turn up fresh every year. Lawry bristles at suggestions that his innings is almost over and to prove the point remains the most obviously enthusiastic of his colleagues. Every year, word spreads that Benaud is about to leave, rumours swiftly squashed by a press release announcing that he has signed another three-year contract. Obviously, the skills and knowledge displayed by these men are appreciated, but their reluctance to depart also tells a tale. Geoff Lawson is a qualified optometrist, yet he must remain within the game, for otherwise he’d die—or so his wife insists. Others serve as selectors. Bob Simpson still roams around helping club and national teams. Nowadays, many sportsmen manage to stay within the game, which allows them to lead the same life without the attendant pressures. Nevertheless, the fear remains. The list of cricketing suicides is long and the reason is simple. Cricket attracts sensitive men and fills their time from the age of twelve to 35. And then it sends them back into the world. Even now, not everyone makes the adjustment easily. Although retirement may be anticipated years ahead, it can still somehow creep up on a fellow. Dennis Lillee admitted that he found fitting into everyday life difficult and faced periods of emptiness. Here is a sociable man, who helped to fund Crocodile Dundee and coached fast bowlers around the world. But he also made a comeback with Tasmania and, typically, took a wicket in his first over. Lillee was 207
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reported for damaging a dressing-room in the same match, the last eruption of a quietening volcano. Geoff Marsh was a different man entirely, yet he too encountered problems in adapting to life outside the Australian cricket team. It is hardly surprising. Since the age of 23, batting for Australia had sustained him and suddenly it was over. He spoke to Mike Coward about his melancholy, and the subsequent article was as moving as it was helpful to others in the same boat. Happily, Lillee and Marsh survived their return to routine. Among those included in this chapter, Graham Gooch and Allan Border have also prospered. If anything, Border has grown in stature because he remains the same unpretentious man. Both have remained within their game. Michael Atherton has become a respected writer and broadcaster, but has kept a certain distance between him and the world that embraces him. He has written about matters other than cricket by way of stretching himself. Hopefully, the Waugh twins will also flourish. Their futures are in their own hands and no man can ask for more than that. They started life in the same womb and left the cricket scene on the same day.
Allan Border Departing has never been Allan Border’s strongest suit. Give him out caught at the wicket and he’ll growl and glare as if final proof had arrived that the world was a rotten place and life itself not to be trusted. Deny him a leg-before appeal and he’ll spit and kick at the turf. Defiance was ever his way; that is why he defended so fiercely and was so reluctant to declare his Test career over. Never give an inch was the philosophy of this most unbudging of cricketers. Graciousness was not for him; he could see only through the eyes of a victory, only through the needs of Australia. He was determined to deny his opponents every last run, hated to bowl lest he give a few away. He hit the stumps with throws directed by those pitiless eyes partly because he was gifted, partly because he wanted to hit them so very much. The world was not going to put one across him. Gentlemanly gestures had little appeal, and a smooth departure was not to be anticipated. He is a cricketer, after all, and never said 208
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he was anything else, not more and not less. It was his proudest boast. And he was still scoring runs. Was it time to go? Pick a team to play for your life and try leaving him out. No, he didn’t want to go, couldn’t see the need. Within him was a voice saying, ‘You can still bat, AB.’ Throughout his career, he had trusted those voices, urging him to keep his head down, telling him not to declare yet, driving him away from another defeat and, sometimes, towards victory. It had been his second greatest weapon, the instinct of the fighter who brought Warne on to bowl in Sri Lanka at that perilous hour, the instinct that always knew which end to throw. He could sense weakness because he was so aware of his own—too aware, really, for it did not make life easy for him, his colleagues, his opponents or spectators. Willpower was his greatest weapon, though—the will to prevail, the will to score runs again and again. Courage was not far behind, as was evident during his finest innings, the century and 98 in a single match against Joel Garner at his most explosive on a pitch as green as pastureland. He did very little that took the breath away, yet he was better loved than many of those in close contact with the sporting gods. In part it was the love of longevity, of those who have served for a long time and with unfailing devotion. People appreciate a familiar face, enjoy the sight of a reliable man walking out to take on all comers on all pitches. And yet it was more than longevity that brought to Border the cheers of the crowds. It wasn’t skill either, not that technique was lacking. Rather, it was his apparent ordinariness, the very fact that he did so little that you or I could not do, a man apparently untouched by magic who simply rolled up his sleeves and took ’em on. He has been a magnificent servant and it is up to his successors to match his unfailing dedication and to add a little something of their own— generosity perhaps, the sort of gesture Border rejected because it was not a tea party out there. Doubtless, someone will, one day, make sense of all the shenanigans of the past few days. Let us not get bogged down in all that. It was the right time to go, while people still thought of him fondly and respectfully. This way, whenever Australia is in trouble, folk will sigh and say, ‘If only Border was next man in.’ 209
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Ian Healy Ever since he first appeared in Australian colours, an appearance that surprised all except those familiar with his feisty personality, efficiency behind the stumps and competitive zeal, Ian Healy has been a committed colleague and unrepentant foe. In his country’s cause he has endured blows, broken fingers, cursed batsmen and argued, all the while barking remarks into opponents’ ears in a voice that resembled an electric saw. Healy stood unyielding behind the stumps, making his presence felt upon friend and foe, and anyone else near at hand or far away; nothing was ever quiet while he was around. He had the effect upon complacency of a low-flying aircraft upon glass. Always he was pressing forward, demanding high standards, his movements precise, his glove work clean, his voice urgent and often saying, ‘Bowled, Warnie.’ Throughout, Healy has been an aggressor and an agitator, a candid and confrontational character with cold eyes and a hard mind. When a victim came along, he celebrated unapologetically, for he had been blessed with, and nurtured, a killer instinct. Not the least of his attractions was an unwillingness to placate the bystander. He fought with sundry querulous opponents, including Arjuna Ranatunga and Desmond Haynes, and once threw his bat in anger at Centurion Park, where the provocation had been severe, coming as it did from a local whitecoat nowadays serving as a timekeeper in Gladiators (where his particular qualities are better appreciated). Healy was a constant companion and hardbitten player, a man dedicated to his calling. Yet he was something more, too: an artist capable of finesse, a craftsman blessed with grace. At first, his subtlety and style came as a surprise because his cricket was a creation of his mind, yet artistry was in his dexterous glove work as Shane Warne was flinging down deliveries that bit and turned and bounced from the rough. At such times, the ball seemed to nestle into Healy’s gloves as gently as a bird dropping into its nest. Warne and Healy worked together as well as any pair of comedians or composers, or detectives. There was a ruthlessness about their performances, and a brilliance that seemed to extinguish hope. In all circumstances, Healy was a precise, tidy and accomplished wicketkeeper. Paired with Warne, he was pre-eminent in his field. 210
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To meet Healy was to encounter a man of drive and energy. To watch him was to observe a worthy member of a great tradition that includes Bert Oldfield, Don Tallon and Rod Marsh. Towards the end, Healy lost form with the bat. Perhaps, too, his mind had also lost its edge. He belonged to the times of Allan Border, David Boon and Geoff Marsh and must have felt his day had passed. As a player he needed to apply himself body and soul, needed to commit totally, or else he was nothing. Such men cannot contemplate the call of civilisation. By nature, they are warriors and once peaceful notions enter their mind, they are finished. Happily, Healy read the signs. His batting had deteriorated because his footwork had slowed down. His footwork had slowed down because his will had been compromised. He was a remarkable cricketer. Sometimes he might miss a take, but it’s hard to remember him dropping a catch. He has always been a man to rely upon. Throughout his years of service, Healy never let his team down or put his own interests too high. He made himself into a great cricketer and belonged to a hardbitten bunch who helped to restore the reputation of Australian cricket after the deprivations of the 1980s. Healy had hoped to finish in Brisbane, in front of his home crowd and with 400 victims to his name. It was not to be. The selectors said it was time to go. So he went. Healy has always been a practical person, a proud competitor and a loyal servant of Australian cricket.
Graham Gooch Although it did not fall to him to be the colossus of his time, Graham Gooch was an immense figure in English cricket. He was an outstanding batsman whose forceful style brought numerous hundreds and whose fallibilities produced periods of confusion resulting from a certain inflexibility in his game, a failing also detectable in his character. He did not change much in his time at the top, remaining at heart the simple Essex lad searching for home truths and often yearning for home itself, a loyal local man whose abilities took him beyond the world in which he felt comfortable and into an arena whose challenges he was prepared to meet but whose ways did not much please 211
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him. Although he enjoyed the rewards of greatness, one sensed that Gooch really belonged in the cricket of the 1960s, a more private age of cricketers and cricketing talk. In his heart he was more sawdust pile than zinc cream, more Market Rasen than Ascot. But a man cannot choose the time of his coming. He can only make the best of things, a mission by and large accomplished by this warm and driven man. Gooch had no relish for the life his abilities obliged him to lead. It says much for him that he survived to serve with such distinction. Throughout, he sought the companionship of the faithful, the humour of the Essex dressing-rooms to which he learnt to add his own wry remarks, the ancient wisdoms of ‘Tonker’ Taylor, David Acfield and Keith Fletcher, the sense of club and team and kindred spirit he missed whenever he played for England. It was his strength and his limitation, for it conveyed loyalty and revealed a want of imagination. True leaders cannot live in the past. He grew close to people because he wanted affection, wanted to believe in things. He did not go to South Africa in 1982 through greed or ambition. He went because he had lost faith in English cricket. He was a proud man, too, and wasn’t prepared to be ordered around by those he did not respect. He had been close to Ken Barrington and resembled him in many ways. Barrington’s untimely death was keenly felt. It took English cricket twenty years to recover. More than had been realised, the Surrey man provided the patriotism and humour needed to bind together a disparate group of men. Mickey Stewart was not much of a replacement. Indeed, he was as responsible for the subsequent deterioration as Barrington had been for the rise. Gooch kept searching for an emotional commitment beyond his family, yearned for pegs upon which he could hang his hat without fear of removal. He forged some relationships calculated to surprise outsiders: with David Norrie, the cricket correspondent of News of the World, and with Alan Lilley, who became his personal coach. Both men acted as advisers and Gooch had faith in them. Off the field, Gooch was a wary, apparently aloof character, admired for his dedication, respected for his batting, but not much known because he kept within his circle as if fearful of hurt. Accordingly, his understated humour could be missed. Most particularly, his mimicry provoked surprise because wit is not expected from 212
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roundheads with hangdog moustaches. Of course, he was defined and dismissed by caricature, but now and then the human emerged and then Gooch could be seen, not as a comic-strip figure belting the bowling around, but as flesh and blood. His vulnerability was his most endearing quality, yet it was also a frustration to Gooch and a nation searching for champions and desperate to beat the Australians. Among bowlers, only Terry Alderman really troubled him, a canny medium-pacer who exposed and exploited a flaw in his technique. Gooch failed time and again, a gut-wrenching experience that brought first confusion then despair, then fatalism as an often-dominating batsman was reduced to anxious shuffling. Once the Australians had his measure, they did not let go. Otherwise, Gooch feared no one and especially not the fastest and most ferocious bowlers of an age noted for its uncompromising aggression. He batted superbly against the West Indians, the toughest opponents of the era. In his cricket dotage, he came to Taunton to face André Van Troost on a firm pitch. Although the flying Dutchman bowled his fastest, he could not shift the old blighter. Gooch scored a-hundredand-lots and afterwards was full of life, as if the challenge had revitalised him. Of course, he has played even more accomplished innings in Test cricket. Only those who did not see Gooch score 154 not out against West Indies at Headingley and 153 against West Indies on a fast pitch in Jamaica in 1981 could doubt his greatness. Undoubtedly, he was the leading batsman among the three Gs, whose various temperaments, strengths and flaws were the talking point of English batsmanship during the 1980s. Gooch was no happier than David Gower or Mike Gatting, or for that matter Ian Botham, in the role of captain. Perhaps he lacked an acute awareness of the personalities of his players. Men who train themselves to subdue their own faults are often unsympathetic towards the self-indulgent. Nor was he notable for the imagination of his tactics. Perhaps it was his stubbornness. England’s inability to find either an appropriate captain or coach in his period meant that the 1980s became an age of unfulfilment. And so the curtain falls upon an outstanding career. Some will not forgive the wretchedness of the 1982 tour to South Africa, but that 213
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occurred in another time and in a different country and, in any case, the good outweighed the bad. Cricket is left with the memory of a tall, strong batsman standing determinedly at the crease, insecurities mostly hidden and batting with all his might for Essex and England. He was a foot soldier upon whom greatness was thrust and he wore it manfully.
Michael Atherton Throughout the 1990s, Michael Atherton was the face of English cricket. Head still, eyes wary, left elbow high and feet moving neatly into position, he dedicated himself to the tasks of scoring runs, resisting bowlers and protecting his team’s position. Beneath his pale, youthful and sometimes defiantly stubbled exterior could be found a wilful man blessed with skill and determination. What was wanting were the particular abilities needed by the hour; he lacked the sparkle and drive required to rouse a team from its slumbers, and if ever a team needed rousing during his years as Test cricketer and captain, it was England. But it was not his way to intone. He was more inclined to say, in his suburban way, ‘Come on, lads, let’s get stuck in.’ In every respect, Atherton remained untouched by the vicissitudes of fortune and the ravages of time. Stoicism was his most obvious quality (he played for a decade on constant medication for an inflammatory condition affecting his spine). There was a dryness of outlook that made him as much an observer as a participant. He was tough, though, and did not flinch in the face of furious bowling or allow his spirit to wilt in adversity. Indeed, he was in his element in these circumstances, as the ingredients of his Lancastrian character came together to produce a towering effort. Just as he did not strive to appease his opponents, nor did he seek to impress the baying public, even if in time the public took him to its heart and claimed him intimately as ‘Athers’. Not that this affected him; proud and private, he performed his duties on the field and then withdrew. Atherton enjoyed the community of the dressing-room and the fellowship of the football crowd, but otherwise he was content to be alone, reading, fishing or looking for a pair of socks in a bulging drawer. 214
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He was a tidy cricketer, and yet also expressive, for he did not depend entirely on the regimented. There was a touch of subcontinental subtlety in a mainly Anglo-Saxon game, a thinness of the arm, a hint of wrist as he stroked the ball through point, sending it skimming to the boundary. Nonetheless, he regarded himself as a craftsman, not an entertainer, and he did not listen to the whispers of indulgence. His northern common sense outweighed the delicacies he had learnt and occasionally studied at Cambridge. It was Mike Atherton’s fate, though not his fault, to represent his country when its fortunes were at a low ebb. England had been unable to find any cricketers capable of dictating terms in any arena. Atherton did his utmost, especially against the Australians, whose directness stirred him, but he could not quite put the matter right. He worked hard, fought hard, told the unpalatable truth, and still England did not improve; so it was that his career ended as it had begun, with heavy and unavenged defeat by the Australians. Perhaps he lacked a clarity of character needed to provoke change. He was a wanderer and not a man of action. Atherton averaged 37.69 in Test cricket and would have hoped for a little more. The England run-makers ahead of him—Graham Gooch, David Gower, Geoff Boycott and Colin Cowdrey, whom he passed in his farewell summer—all averaged more than 40. But, towards the end, his form fell away as his mind grew weary and his body made its complaints. It is the record of an accomplished cricketer whose contribution might be better judged from the stability he brought to the batting order during a long career that produced 7728 runs in 115 Tests, and sixteen centuries, none of them easily compiled. It was also his fate that his generation threw up some of the greatest bowlers of any age. There wasn’t much relief. Whereas batsmen of previous generations could hope to take advantage of humdrum attacks fielded by weaker nations, Atherton was confronted by Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram, Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. No wonder he soon lost the jauntiness sometimes seen in his early days. In Sri Lanka in 2001, he had particular difficulty with Chaminda Vaas, as a weakness against left-arm swing bowling was discovered— 215
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precisely the failing that had tormented Geoff Boycott many years earlier. Both men remained side-on till the last moment and often seemed locked in this position as the ball darted back and thudded into their pads. Boycott was the consummate technician whose game didn’t change much over the years. Atherton was more graceful and inclined to tinker, especially with the placement of his back foot, whose errant ways often brought unwanted trouble. Both were single-minded and watchful in the great tradition of opening batsmen. Better than most thoughtful men, Atherton could withdraw into a cocoon of concentration, an asset as a batsman but not necessarily as a captain. He was intelligent rather than intellectual and made his decisions easily, at the crease anyhow. A purposeful man with strong opinions, he did not allow his career to fritter away; instead, after the 2001 Oval Test, he cut it short in the belief that his battles had been lost and won, and it is for the defiant innings he played in his country’s colours that he will be remembered. His duels with Allan Donald and Glenn McGrath were cricket played at its highest pitch. These bowlers strove for his wicket because they knew it was resourcefully protected. Atherton did not give in, his wicket had to be taken from him. He had the heart for the fight regardless of conditions and obstacles. Donald sometimes prevailed, whereupon he wore a surprised and delighted look. Sometimes the batsman had the better of him, most notably in his unbeaten 185 at Johannesburg in 1995–96, an innings spanning three weeks, or so it seemed, an effort of mind and body that saved a Test match. It was the innings that secured for Atherton the respect and national affection he had not sought through any artificial means. Another Test match against South Africa took him to his lowest point as the chairman of selectors, Raymond Illingworth, fined him for not being honest with the match referee about having dirt—an ‘illegal substance’—in his pocket to dry his hands, an incident duly magnified into a cause célèbre; Atherton went to ground and considered resigning. Instead, he held firm and afterwards the Headingley crowd roared its approval. Fortune might have favoured him with a century. He was dismissed for 99. McGrath was his nemesis. Better than anyone else, the Australian 216
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understood Atherton’s game and knew how to pierce his defences. Atherton liked to wait till the ball was under his nose, choosing his stroke at the last, often playing with soft hands, absorbing the ball like a sponge. McGrath would relentlessly pitch on exactly the right length, moving his deliveries around unpredictably and bouncing the ball steeply, so that edges would carry. Repeatedly, Atherton was pushed back and, trying to adjust his stroke, often succeeded only in touching a ball others might have missed. He’d leave with a shrug and a sigh, and the Australians, respecting a fighter, were pleased to see him go. But he refused to change his game; it had been tried and tested over the years and had not let him down. He could not bring himself to chance his arm, because it would be a betrayal of everything he knew and the team he represented. Atherton was the finest English batsman of his generation, and captain in 54 Tests, a record for his country. He was an eventempered cricketer, popular with team-mates and, eventually, with distant observers, a fierce patriot and a man prepared to fight his corner. Yet he could seem aloof, even arrogant, to those who occasionally crossed his path. His retirement was well timed and he’ll be able to relax now, writing books and articles, voicing his concerns, telling amusing stories and generally confirming that he is better company than he sometimes cared to show. He made an outstanding contribution to his country’s cricket and his only regret must be that greatness did not bestow its largesse upon him.
Steve and Mark Waugh Over the next four days, the Waugh twins will make their final appearance at the SCG. Most likely, it will also be the last important contest of their careers. New South Wales could sneak into the Pura Cup Final, but it is a long shot. More likely the brothers will pack their kit on Sunday evening and put it away forever. The picket fence will close upon them, and then open for the next generation. Part of the terrible beauty of sport is that the show always moves on. It has been a long and extraordinary journey for two young men who shared a room in Picnic Point Road, Panania, throughout their boyhood. Between them the twins have played 2161 matches for 217
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various provincial and international teams, scoring 93 246 runs, striking 221 hundreds, taking 1167 wickets and holding 1293 catches. Not bad for one womb, one birth, one bedroom, one classroom, one game and sometimes one thought. As far as Australians are concerned, the twins are more famous than Romulus and Remus. Their relationship has provoked fascination and speculation, for it is no small thing to grow up alongside a legend. But which was to be the legend? From the start, the boys knew about the survival of the fittest. From the beginning, they were under pressure. It’s hard enough being a younger brother. Astonishingly, both survived. In the end, the weaker brother found the fortitude to build a career of his own. Steve was the pricklier of the Waugh boys, a cactus alongside a lily. At school he was untidy, rebellious and combative enough to break an opponent’s teeth on the soccer field. His later beatification has glossed over the fiery part of his character, the inner rage that has driven him towards incredible feats. In sport and business he has been calculating, ruthless, insecure and inspired. Always there was the need to pass the test. His softer side has been reserved for family and friends. Somewhere deep in their hearts, the twins envied each other. And so, formidable forces were unleashed from a single room. Mark was the gentler brother, a quiet, obedient schoolboy whose reserve worried his teachers. An observer of life, he did not have his brother’s craving for competition or desire to be in the thick of the action. Usually Steve was the captain and Mark was dismissed as gifted, charming, likeable and other epithets that slighted even as they praised. He saw his brother rise and become famous and a leader, and it must have hurt. Somehow he survived. Actually, he did better than survive. He has scored 26 772 runs in first-class cricket, at an average of 52, about the same as Allan Border, Greg Chappell and Stephen Rodger Waugh. And he has usually finished on the winning side, a family custom. Inevitably, Steve was the first of the twins to play for New South Wales. On 7 December 1984, he appeared at the Gabba and reached 31 before falling to Jeff Thomson. Stevie Wonder was topping the charts with ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ and Bob Hawke was installed at Kirribilli House. Waugh was a skinned rabbit of a boy, shy and watchful, so that his sudden explosions at the crease came as a 218
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surprise. Always there has been a protective ring around him. Always the world has been kept at bay. Meanwhile, Mark was languishing and soon was awarded the nickname of ‘Afghanistan—the forgotten Waugh’. Finally, on 28 October 1985, he made his debut for the Blues in Hobart, scoring 13 before falling to Winston Davis, a West Indian fast bowler long since in his grave. He did not reach 50 till his fifteenth innings. Strokeplay came easily to him, but he was prone to lapses of concentration. Afterwards, he admitted that he had lacked rigour, and it was a grievous fault. But there were compensations, notably his catching at slip and a grace expressed at the crease and in the fairness of his play. Before long, Waugh the slightly older was chosen to play for Australia. He had a hard time and eventually was dropped in favour of his boyhood room-mate. In his first match, Mark scored a lovely hundred against England. Ever since, there have been many wonderful moments for both and a few setbacks along the way. Now it ends as it began, with the pragmatist and the poet fighting in their contrasting ways to put runs on the board and another victory in the books. But this tale has been told. The Waughs have played a long and impressive innings and now it is someone else’s turn.
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15 Dealing with life It is generally a mistake to consider yourself immortal.
I
t has long been our custom to divide life into separate boxes, like parcels in a post office. Even the news is divided into sections. Usually business and sport appear last and still the intellectuals complain. Yet sport is part of our daily lives, and is different from other activities only in its ability to test our mettle and touch our imagination. Much to their eventual detriment, those blessed with exceptional sporting ability become our property and are expected to maintain standards we cannot keep in our own houses. Because they succeed in a world ordered by our enthusiasms, we feel entitled to enter their lives. Yet a sportsman is not a seal performing tricks to delight a youthful audience. He is a person trying to make his way. He has his faults, foibles, habits, preferences, opinions, immaturities, indiscretions, the humanity that we are reluctant to admit, so that we turn them into heroes and villains, cheer and chide not just their contributions but their very being. Sportsmen accept that they inhabit a special place, the land of our dreams. Now and then, a sportsman does not take himself or his game too seriously and still manages to succeed. Generally, though, it is the distortion, the desperation, the drive, that takes the player to the top. 220
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Don’t expect them to smell the roses. Perspective can be the enemy of success. As in politics, there is only the game, the winning and the losing. Eventually, though, every sportsman has to face the truth. Sometimes it is the silence of the hotel room, sometimes it is the way the phone stops ringing. Sooner or later, the thought occurs that there is another world waiting. Someone else will appear on the sporting news that night, someone else will hear the roar of the crowd, someone else will feel the satisfaction of the low round put together under pressure or the penalty punted between the posts with the score level and the whistle in the referee’s mouth. When the show is over—what then? It is easy for an actor, for he may put on his greasepaint till his dying day. The sportsman must search for answers, and can find them only within. This chapter considers the cases of a few cricketers who have, in their various ways, tried to deal with their lives. They may seem an odd collection, but the common thread was their attempt to come to terms with particular challenges for which life had not prepared them. In truth, the articles speak for themselves. Dennis Lillee appeared as a distant figure on a field and simply joined a practice. When the piece was published, Greg Chappell said how much he had enjoyed it. He, too, has known the search for life, has pursued schemes, offered his services, tried to find a way. He has dared to speak publicly about his successes and failures, thereby moving beyond the assertive veneer favoured in the region. Yet it is the vulnerability that is interesting. Impregnability is an act. Kerry O’Keeffe’s recent autobiography was appreciated because he described his hard times and his failings. It was an act of courage, not a sales pitch. Writing those sorts of books is not about self-expression but self-examination. Everything else belongs in a comic book. Matthew Cleal was, and remains, a friend of mine. Of all my Somerset colleagues, I liked and respected him the most. It may sound odd to award this accolade to a young cricketer who did not make it. But he did make it, and that is the point. During his playing days, he seemed as thick as bread sliced by a teenager. Once he said he was going to vote Labour because he liked Paddy Ashdown, the leader of another party. Two years after the article in this chapter appeared, he rang to say he had finished school and was going to university. After 221
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that came a PhD. Last time I heard from him, he was teaching at university. We used to play golf, sometimes 45 holes in a day. Nick Pringle was another of many Somerset youngsters who did not fulfil his dream. It happens all the time, and everywhere. Sport is competitive and cruel. Maybe he was too stiff in his stroke, maybe he was not given enough help, maybe he just could not work it all out in time. Whatever, he returned to civilian life and slowly came to terms with his fate. Last time I heard about him, he was in Taunton, a town he needs to leave, though it is probably too late. Basil Penrith was a wonderful boy who appeared fresh-faced and smiling at a cricket camp run on behalf of Kerry Packer during the World Series years. As it happened, he ended up in my group. He could swing the ball both ways and deserved to be called back for the extra week awarded to the best players from each age group, but he’d probably have been chosen anyhow. Decades later, I went to Tamworth to cover a match and noticed the name Penrith in the program. I had always wondered what had happened to him. Youngsters seldom keep in touch. As it turned out, he had done well, on the field and off it. Lastly came the chance to watch a match between the deaf cricketers of Australia and England. Again, a personal interest was involved because one of the England side had played under my captaincy at Devon, and had been treated just as badly as everyone else. Here was a group of young men playing good cricket in an atmosphere reminiscent of the way the game was played before the clapping and catcalling. But it was not sentiment that aroused interest, just a desire to show the many faces of the game and to give these players their due. Afterwards, the deaf community said how much they had enjoyed the article, especially the bit about how some of them had been in trouble for partying the previous evening!
Dennis Lillee joins a practice A day in the life of Australian cricket. Bowling to a local lad in a local school. The nets are up because there is a camp on, and the pitches are good, the best in town. All around, boys are packing their bags, finishing for the day. A middle-aged bloke with a lived-in stomach is running 222
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around the ground. There’s something familiar about him. He passes by and says, ‘G’day’. Dennis Lillee, running off the night before. Our practice begins. One teenager batting, and a couple of friends bowling. A few laps later, Lillee stops, walks across and says, ‘Mind if I have a bowl?’ Well, no, actually, we’d quite like it. One of the greatest bowlers since Bill O’Reilly and he’s asking to bowl to an unknown youngster on a late afternoon. He picks out a mouldy old ball, rolls over an arm and pitches a legcutter. He could bowl a bit, you know. The boy with the bat smiles. He was two when Lillee played his last Test, but he knows about him. Everyone knows about him. Something wrong with the shoulder, Lillee says, his voice as crisp as fresh lettuce. Fell down the stairs, or bumped into an iron, doing an Agassi, something like that. Can’t remember the story, but it was colourful. He starts talking about the Zimbabwean bowler, Henry Olonga. ‘Good lad, you know, good listener, good worker and at seventeen he could run as fast as Carl Lewis. But his feet and body were all wrong, feet straight and body turned, so that he was throwing the ball.’ Lillee simply straightened Olonga’s body and his arm went with it. Often he tells bowlers to forget about the side-on thing and to keep facing the batsman, like Malcolm Marshall. He says it’s impossible to turn the feet sideways if they weren’t that way in the first place. Meanwhile, Lillee mixes up his deliveries and tries to coax the youngster into going for his shots. He tries his off-cutter. Never could bowl that ball properly, he says. Now the leg-cutter, that was natural. Tried his offie towards the end, to keep the batsman guessing, might get the hang of it one day. And, yes, he liked to antagonise batsmen and paid for it sometimes, but that was part of it. Next ball was always fast and anywhere. Lillee talks about his pace camp in Madras. Brilliant set-up, he says. Players are sent from all over the world. Except for England, of course. Darren Gough had wanted to come, but he wasn’t allowed. There is one Indian, fast, bends his back in the old way, could be anything. Hard to tell, could be nothing. In his younger days, Lillee watched Wes Hall and Fred Trueman. He learnt from them, perhaps these youngsters were getting something from him. 223
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The boy is still batting. Lillee bowls a couple down the leg-side. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he says, ‘just trying something.’ He feels the lad is holding back, so he sets him a target. ‘My brother was like that at seventeen,’ he recalls. ‘No one could get him out, but he couldn’t get any runs.’ Lillee applauds every forcing stroke. ‘Six to win in six balls,’ he says. ‘And I’ve got two slips and a gully.’ Always bat with something in mind, he advises, don’t just bat. Lillee bowls a few more, but his shoulder is shouting for mercy. Doesn’t bowl much these days, he says, with his knees and whatnot. At last he departs, still thinking about his off-cutter, an ordinary bloke, an approachable bloke, a cricketer and one of the greatest bowlers to set foot on this earth. For the youngster, it was not merely a lesson in cricket, it was a lesson in fellowship, and a lesson in being Australian. You can’t get this sort of thing around the world.
Two Englishmen who did not make it Matthew Cleal had his days of glory. At eighteen, naive and rawboned, he made his debut for Somerset against the West Indies, scoring brave runs and taking four for 41, beating Richie Richardson and Jeff Dujon with his lively outswingers. Overnight, reporters and broadcasters were on the phone, one even tipping him for England. Four years later, he is on the scrap heap. Nick Pringle had his moments, too. He remembers facing Allan Donald at 11.30 one Birmingham morning, three men already out, and surviving to clout Norman Gifford far into the stands, drawing from his partner, Martin Crowe, an astonished stare and the advice to ‘get your head down’. Pringle promptly hit a second six and scored 79. Five years later, he was dumped and Crowe asked, ‘What the hell went wrong?’ It is a question Pringle often asks himself. That 79 was to be his highest score in 27 appearances for Somerset. For so many young cricketers this spring brings not joy but sorrow. Our cricket fields are littered with the corpses of broken dreams. Pringle and Cleal yearned for success, tasted it briefly and are left with the sourness of defeat. Now that ‘well-apparell’d spring’ has arrived to tread on the heels of winter, former colleagues are 224
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preparing for another season while these men are trying to rebuild their lives. Both were devastated by their decline and both are fighting back. To Pringle in particular, cricket was everything. Half hard nut, half vulnerable kid, he rebelled at school and thought only of cricket and practised it endlessly. ‘The thought of failing at cricket never entered my mind.’ He started brightly in 1987, feeling as immortal as any 20-year-old, modelling himself on Crowe. Only later did he realise he had ‘hardly learnt how to bat, hardly learnt about touch play or one-day cricket’. By 1989, he was back in the second team, learning and not losing faith. In 1991, he batted capably and captained Somerset seconds impressively, but it was too late—batsmen had been signed and promising youngsters discovered. In September he was released. ‘For a few days I was fine, down the pub and so on,’ he said. ‘After that I cracked up completely. One day I was driving along and I just burst into tears. Even now, I regularly wake up in the middle of the night thinking of what I could have done, how I could have played a ball differently. One less bad shot, one opportunity seized rather than squandered, might have swung it.’ He finds it hard being introduced as ‘Nick Pringle, who used to play for Somerset.’ ‘If they ask about it, I tell them I was sacked. They don’t ask much after that. So many questions were left unanswered, “Was I good enough? Did I give myself the best chance?” Others had bad periods, but people thought they merited chances more than I did. Some players are brilliant when they succeed, but I believe in a season I could score as many runs.’ It was different for Cleal. Injury rather than lack of form curtailed his career. ‘I just couldn’t do it. You can’t expect to be employed if you can’t do the job.’ As a boy he had not contemplated a career in cricket because the game was hardly played at his comprehensive school. He had concentrated on soccer, was offered terms by Bristol Rovers, but rejected them because ‘I wasn’t good enough’. Trying his hand at cricket, he joined Somerset on a YTS scheme and soon won respect as a strong cricketer with a sense of humour preying upon his own apparent thick-headedness. After a promising first season, he slipped in 1989 because ‘I thought I’d cracked it. I was lazy.’ He fought back in 1990, only to 225
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injure his back while bowling on an artificial net pitch. Despite umpteen scans and visits to umpteen specialists, he has not bowled properly since, skimming his deliveries off the pitch rather than hitting it, putting bite on it. In September 1991 he was also released, as had been expected. ‘It wasn’t a surprise but it hurt, it still hurts. At eighteen, I was going places: at 22, I was finished. I’ve had some bad times over the past two years, at home, sitting around, something goes wrong, a bill arrives or whatever and you take it out on your family. There have been times when I’ve cried, times when you just can’t think of anything else. Not so much now. I’m a strong character.’ What hurt Cleal most was that ‘I was talented enough, but for two years I was on 60 per cent and there was nothing I could do about it. People treated me as if I was on 100. I was never afraid of failure, I just wanted to give it my best shot and I couldn’t do it.’ Both men are determined to make something of their lives. Pringle was lucky in that everything changed so quickly afterwards. ‘Within three weeks, I was teaching at Clifton College and a month later I’d been accepted by Durham University. My next three to four years are mapped out.’ He had begun to use his brain after realising he was wasting it by playing cards in dressing-rooms on rainy days. In time, he will be a fine teacher, especially of the livelier pupils. Nor is Cleal downcast. ‘I had a good time. I was from a workingclass background and I was lucky to have a go.’ Last winter he spraypainted industrial heaters, but now he is on the dole, ‘learning how the other half lives’. Once a week, he collects his money and sees unemployed people who, he says, have no hope, especially after the last election. ‘People always want more. If they’ve got one million, they want two million.’ He believes young cricketers should go to college one day a week, as football apprentices do, and is hoping to study for a diploma at Yeovil College. In the meantime, he plans to work with deprived children.
An Aborigine who made it Basil Penrith was a bright and cheerful lad when first he appeared on the cricket scene nineteen years ago, and yet I feared for him. 226
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A beaming smile seldom left his face, he could swing the ball both ways and kept a straight bat. Nevertheless, we feared for him. Basil was the only Aborigine attending a course run by the World Series people to show their commitment to the game. He did well and made it to the last week when the stars returned. But could he survive the waiting world? Happily, the news is good. Basil has not changed. Out of the blue he appeared at England A’s match in Tamworth in 1996, standing under the plane trees on the far side of the ground, sipping beer with a little embarrassment as his four-year-old son Cale Coen (‘Thunder’ in his native language) played around him. Penrith was embarrassed by the beer because he is trying to change the lives and image of his people, especially the notion that they are all drunkards. He smiles as The Age confesses that it, too, enjoys a drink on a hot afternoon. He is still playing cricket, too, as he has done since his early days in Tumut, where he started knocking the ball around with his mates. Finding he had some talent, he pursued the game, playing grade cricket in his university days, securing a place in the Aboriginal XI and captaining Tamworth when work brought him to a country town blossoming from the recent rains but blighted by Paterson’s curse. Basil is a good cricketer. In his first year in Tamworth, he topped the bowling and batting averages—‘got a lot of not-outs, but’ he says—and even tried his hand at baseball. ‘They kept throwing full tosses.’ Now that he’s slowed down a bit—‘and I wasn’t that quick in the first place’—he plays for City United and bowls ‘mostly inswing. My belly gets in the way.’ Locals still talk about his 150-minute, matchsaving innings in a grand final a few years ago. It hasn’t only been cricket. There was always something more inside, enthusiasm for life certainly, but also discernible pride. Nowadays, Basil works as a field officer for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commission. He is delighted that his people have their own democratic process these days and adds that mistakes have been made. ‘They are teething troubles. Our system is only five or six years old. There are problems in mainstream government and they’ve been going for hundreds of years.’ Penrith’s task is to support enterprises that provide opportunities to Aborigines in the Glen Innes area. It’s an attempt to break 227
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the ‘welfare mentality’. ‘Lots of the problems begin with a lack of work. Work is important because it gives self-esteem and a purpose in life.’ He sees improvements, in his area anyhow, with more work, less crime and fewer youngsters lost to grog. ‘Good things are starting to happen,’ he thinks. He encourages his people to have a go, while acknowledging that it’s harder in the remote areas because there is nothing to do. ‘They have to leave their community if they want to get ahead in the modern way.’ Basil is also committed to restoring Aboriginal culture. An attempt is being made to revive the Wradjuri language with a dictionary of the first thousand words. ‘It hasn’t been written down before.’ He’s telling his son about the old times, about his grandma’s days when they asked the bunyip’s permission to fish. ‘If he was in a bad mood, they’d go home. If it was OK, they took the fish they needed.’ He tells Cale about his mother and her brothers hiding in the bush ‘when they came to take them away’. Penrith has been wounded rather than hurt. Cricket has helped his work. Asked if colour had been an issue in his sporting experience, he says: ‘No, not really, everyone from the bush starts a point behind whatever their colour.’ He says he wasn’t quite good enough to play representative cricket, not fast enough with the ball and not high enough in the batting order. He enjoyed his time with the Aboriginal XI, particularly a tour to New Zealand (seven wins and seven losses). They played the Maoris in Wellington, the gateway to Maoridom. ‘They treated us so well because they understood. Not that the rest treated us any worse.’ Penrith has served with distinction. As he observes, ‘It’s easy to dismiss stars like Cathy Freeman and Kyle van der Kuyp as one-offs.’ The more Aborigines playing in local comps the better. ‘The kids can see they are going to be given a chance if they are good enough.’ Basil is no saint, just an ordinary bloke who enjoys a beer, likes sport and has a young family to support. He wants to lift his people, his country. Smiling quietly, he says: ‘We’ve got to show that not all Aborigines are drunkards. We’ve got to open people’s eyes. A lot of positive things are happening out there.’ The child has been father to the man. 228
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Noiseless cricket It was the silence that attracted attention. Upon the field, England were defending doggedly as eleven green-capped Aussies pressed for victory after enforcing the follow-on. Now and then, an appeal erupted around the ground, disturbing the peace like an electric saw in a forest. Occasionally, a burst of applause greeted a stroke or a demanding delivery. Otherwise, all was quiet except for a fluttering sound as captains gave directions or spectators engaged in mute conversation. It had a strange, alluring beauty about it. Outside, the world rushed past along Sydney’s Parramatta Road. After several years of inactivity, the Australian and English Deaf cricket teams were meeting in the First Test of the 2004 series. On the opening day, the locals had slipped to 4/72 before recovering thanks to a rousing partnership of 272 between Andrew Watkins, a banana-bender whose twin brother also plays in the side, and Phillip Cox of Mildura, a captain who also took five wickets in the visitors’ first innings. Later, Luke Trudgett, a 15-yearold who plays fifth grade for Sutherland, scored 45 in 53 balls as his parents and brother (who plays for the Silent Warriors in Gladesville) watched from the sidelines. Allowed to miss school, Luke hopes to hold his place for the forthcoming Tests in Melbourne and Sydney. Hundreds of people had been present on Australia Day as the hosts reached 455. The deaf community is tightly knit and word of the match had spread by email and SMS, innovations that have transformed their lives. England had wilted under a scorching sun and ended the day exhausted, reviving just in time to enjoy celebrating someone’s birthday. Deaf people drink, dance, chat up pretty girls and play cards. They just cannot hear all that well. Most of them seem gentle and friendly, and observers say their relaxed approach to life is due to the silence in their heads. It is especially quiet on the field because hearing aids must be left in the pavilion. A loss of 55 decibels is the qualification mark. Only the umpires can hear properly, a situation widely regarded as unique in cricket. Luke’s dad watches from under one of the University of Sydney’s older trees as his younger son chases a ball. He says that Luke has been helped a lot by his grade club, Sutherland, where he 229
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has been lucky to find a great bunch of mates. His public school provides an assistant teacher versed in sign language. England’s first innings had been a disaster born from rustiness. Thunderstorms had forced the abandonment of net practices. Now it was a matter of adjusting to the heat. Not that anyone was complaining. The previous night, an official had told his dearly beloved that it was a trifle warm down under, whereupon she had informed him in no uncertain terms that it was ‘snowing hard and perishing cold’ back in Blighty. Even Mark Woodman had not been able to trouble the scorers in the first dig, a kindness he repeated in the second innings. Woodman played for Devon in the English Minor County Championship in the 1990s and his probing medium-pacers still command respect. Captaining him at Devon was interesting because he had the happy knack of hearing edges but not curses, and running between wickets demanded the sort of directions given by a traffic cop. Considering his deficiency, he could raise a mighty impressive hue and cry when a batsman was hit on the pad. Woodman had brought a couple of younger Devonians along with him: Stephen George, a teenager who plays for Painton, and Jonathon Cadaux-Hudson, a promising leg-spinner who is supposed to be doing his homework in the evenings. Doubtless, both youngsters were inspired by the example of the senior man. Officials in both countries report that communications and confidence were the main obstacles in their path. All things are possible, though. Kym Daley, Australia’s best young deaf cricketer, was that very day playing for City youth against Country youth elsewhere in the city. Forced to bat again after being routed for 105, the Englishmen put their heads down in a valiant attempt to save the match. Umesh Valjee, their captain, led the defiance and reached 50 with a sweet cover drive. Hours passed and still the visitors refused to give up. Ashes battles are fought to the last. Valjee reached 100 and then 150 and each milestone was saluted. Partners came and went and the captain was left stranded on 182 as England went down by an innings and a run. When the last wicket fell at 5.30 p.m., with storm clouds gathering, the Australians raised a hullaballoo that brought professors hurrying from their lairs. Valjee left the field to applause he could not hear.
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16 Departures Hookes played and lived in the uncharted land between legend and myth. At once he was a boy’s own hero and an underperforming player . . . And then he was gone.
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othing is sadder than the extinguishing of a young life. Besides the loss itself, and the pain that follows, the premature ending of a life serves as shock, reminds of the fragility and foolishness of our existences. When Princess Di died, her country temporarily became a better place. When David Hookes departed, the sorrow reached beyond his immediate circle and into the masses. Partly, it is the loss of a friend. Partly, it is the realisation that we have been wasting our lives upon nonsense. Not that it lasts. Still we complain about traffic wardens and shampoo bottles that will not open, and the weather, and the neighbours and taxes and noise and the rest of it. And then a child dies, or a friend is suddenly removed, or a familiar face vanishes, whereupon regret comes over us for the life unled. Do not suppose your author is any wiser in these regards than anyone else. Everything works in theory and then a drill starts in a nearby house, or someone’s car occupies two places, or a traffic jam is encountered, or a queue, whereupon reason flies out the window. Rage resumes till someone is lost, a depressed youngster or an acquaintance amid a screeching of brakes, whereupon calm returns, for then the truth must be faced. We are, indeed, shadows passing across the mouth of a cave. 231
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It is absurd that we take ourselves and our lives seriously when it all hangs by a thread. Yet it is likewise foolish to waste gifts, for they carry with them a certain responsibility. Without intensity, much less can be achieved. A man cannot spend his entire life with a gaga grin upon his face. Blood, sweat and tears are part of the human expression, part of our growth, and there is no need to regret their place in our lives. Mozart and Tendulkar have provided myriad delights because they dared to pursue their talents. Often it is the striving that provided satisfaction and then follows the laughter and the strength. If perspective insists that our daily lives are not important, then it is a fool. Nevertheless, much can be missed along the way and it can take an untimely passing to remind us that we are, in so many ways, behaving like fools. Wherever it occurs, death has a profound impact. Some people seem to set a life almost at naught and then perform long incantations to mark its ending. Encounters with death are an everyday occurrence in India as a body is put unadorned upon a cart and pushed through busy streets accompanied by priests, relations and mourners. Yet the lamentations to mark the occasion can last for weeks. Of course, it is the death of a young man or woman that causes the deepest sorrow. Until his sudden passing, Corey Doyle was a name heard around the cricket clubs of Somerset. He was mentioned as a typical Australian: brash, uncomplicated, uncompromising. But insofar as Australians are the same at all, it is only on the surface as they seek acceptance in a culture forged in harshness and developed upon an inhospitable continent. As it emerged Corey was much less confident than he seemed, and much more in need of love. By the time his friends understood, it was too late. No one was to blame. In some respects, Ben Hollioake’s passing was the most painful of them. There was a grace about him that affected those close at hand, even as his debonair approach attracted girls and his dashing strokes impressed cricketers. Everyone wanted Ben to prosper because he was without malice, besides which he had a doomed quality that provoked anxiety. He was beautiful in many ways, yet one sensed that such things did not matter to him nearly as much as succeeding at cricket. I talked to him a couple of times and felt his frustration at the downturn in his cricketing fortunes and a desperate desire to find a better way. And 232
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the worst of it was that, just before he was taken, he seemed to be coming to terms with himself and his talents. Walter Masimula was a simpler case, for his death was unintended and his manner till the end was cheerful. Still, it came as a shock to hear that he had gone. As it happened, I had, a year earlier, taken a group of young cricketers to play in the Isle of Wight and Walter appeared hail and hearty and performing as the local professional. Ten months later, he died in his sleep, the victim of some mystery ailment that cut short an apparently healthy and boisterous life. Malcolm Marshall was the greatest fast bowler I saw and seemed the least likely to be taken at an early age. He was the most impressive of the West Indians of his era because his character contained some of the luminous qualities detected in great predecessors. Too many contemporaries lost themselves in vanity and ego, but Marshall remained humble and purposeful. He had much to contribute and was prematurely removed. Inevitably, Colin Cowdrey’s death did not provoke as much sorrow as the departures of younger men. Moreover, there was a sense in which he was more loved as an idea than as a man. His career was a reminder that it is possible to be both kindly and calculating and confirmed that even those raised in comfort may be assailed by uncertainty. He was not a bad chap at all and history will remember him fondly. Having started with the early days of Garfield Sobers, it seems appropriate to finish with the passing of The Don. News of Bradman’s long-anticipated death arrived when the Australians were in India. As far as could be told from such a distance, the reaction to his loss went far beyond even the highest expectation. He was a great cricketer whose manner and deeds meant a lot to millions of people around the world, and especially Australians struggling to survive the hardships of the Depression years.
Corey Doyle Corey Doyle took his own life last week. On Friday night, he went into the garage of his home in the English town of Bridgwater, put a rope over a rail and hanged himself. Next morning, his fiancée’s 233
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father broke down the garage door and found him. In a faraway land and in the dead of winter, the life of a promising young Australian cricketer had ended. No one had seen it coming. On Thursday night, Doyle and his friends from the cricket club had been practising in the indoor nets. He had even bowled to one of the Somerset players. It was a cold evening with snow settling and a bitter easterly blowing. Nonetheless, the boys were bouncy and, as usual, Doyle was in the thick of it. Next season did not seem far away. One night later, he went out for a few drinks with his friends, an ordinary Friday night with his chums, talking about this and that, laughing and maybe singing. Then he went home to see his girlfriend, had a row and put an end to it all. Apparently, he was thinking of going back to Australia for a while, to see his parents and so forth. The couple had just announced their engagement. He left a note saying he couldn’t take it any more. He had arrived in Bridgwater a few seasons previously, to play the game and to lead the life and had taken to it so much that he had stayed. The feeling was mutual. Bridgwater is a semi-industrial town located in the northern part of Somerset and built upon a canal and a ton of pride. It’s not an obvious place to settle. Yet it offers a certain warmth and Doyle wasn’t the first Australian to appreciate it, for this is also the town of Sammy Woods, a hulking figure, a remarkable sportsman and a notable Australian who arrived as a boy and stayed until his dying day. Doyle was a good cricketer. Six years ago, he toured New Zealand with the Australian under-19s, of whom some have risen and others have faded. Already he had fought his way through the ranks. Raised in humble circumstances in the western reaches of Sydney, he joined Fairfield, where he impressed as a combative and competent cricketer. He could bowl at a lively pace and give the ball a rare crack. He seemed an uncomplicated sort, too. He might have stayed at home and tried his luck. But something called him away, something took him to Bridgwater to play in a local league whose standards are modest but whose conviviality is considerable. Maybe he didn’t want the pressure of taking his talent to its outermost limits. Perhaps he found warmth and knew its value. Cricket meant a lot to him, but it wasn’t his entire world. 234
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And the locals liked him. A typical Australian, they said, although the west country had added its softening touches. Pretty soon, Doyle was taking wickets and scoring runs. He was the dominant player in the league and Bridgwater rose on his back. He seemed at home. Perhaps he had found the belonging for which he yearned, a companionship and combativeness without which life can feel empty. His parents had separated in his younger days. Perhaps he had realised, earlier than most, a truth about our sporting lives. Beneath the driven man, behind the fractured surface, can be a yearning for camaraderie, an overwhelming desire to be part of a team, to hear the voices in the rooms. Perhaps he had swapped his own achievements for this. What is life except a search for warmth? And he had discovered that man has an emotional self, that sport can fulfil only part of our needs and woe betide the fellow who imagines otherwise. Corey Doyle will be missed. He was a friendly and powerfully built fellow with a competitive streak and a ready smile. He will be cremated on Monday. His mother and stepfather live in a caravan on the NSW south coast, but Cabramatta Leagues Club, the Salvation Army and lots of cricketers in Sydney and across the waters are chipping in so that his mother can attend his passing. His ashes will be flown back from England and spread across the pitch at Rosedale Oval in Fairfield. Cricket and the world will say a proper goodbye to a friend.
Ben Hollioake Ben Hollioake’s young life has been extinguished in a meeting of metal and stone. He had always relied upon his judgement, a single scrambled, a low catch taken, nerves jangling and the crowd roaring. Danger was part of his life as daring was part of his game. He had never driven in the middle lane nor yet pushed back tempting deliveries. Rather, he struck the ball with a free swing, sent down optimistic deliveries and lived as generously and spontaneously as he passed away. On and off the field, it was the same. He never did pin down his life or his abilities, for they were butterflies that belonged in the air and not in a scrapbook. 235
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Mere death does not bestow nobility, let alone sanctity. Hollioake was not given time to ripen and reliance must be placed upon the deeds of those early days of bonhomie when an artistry was displayed that did not quite find its form, for the bud was prematurely plucked. Ben was a likeable young man searching for his way. He gave the impression that the world did not touch him, for he moved as gracefully as antelope through veldt. Yet he cared about his cricket and was frustrated by his inability to turn early promise into lasting fulfilment. Despite his style and a hint of nights spent high on the hog, he wanted to be a sportsman, a cricketer, to be recognised and respected. It had seemed to be within his grasp, for he made his name with performances produced on great occasions. He could sweep Shane Warne into the stands at Nottingham or bat sweetly on a Lord’s pitch whose torpor brought all others down. He could take wickets or graze around the fields ready to pounce upon the unwary. He seemed ready to join the immortals. But all things hang by a thread. After this brilliant beginning, cricket toyed with Hollioake, forcing him into a time of struggle and reflection. He did not score enough runs or take sufficient wickets to prompt advancement. His game lacked the solidity needed to bear the weight of expectation in a country looking for a saviour or, anyhow, another Botham. Especially in Test cricket, his shortcomings became apparent. Both his cricket and his life lacked the rigour needed to survive scrutiny. Adam, his older brother, had a game that could be reproduced with the turn of a key, a competent construction calculated to provide a regular supply of runs and wickets. But Adam is a different case, a proud, rugged competitor raised in Australia. A man who enjoys boxing and has achieved beyond his apparent ability, Adam has always been at ease with himself, for he knows his limitations. He preyed on the nerves of his opponents. His younger brother played on his own. Ben’s life was an exploration and, sometimes, a frustration and a torment. Ben was educated mostly in England, where his manner provoked resentment and his escapades prompted rejection. He was better suited to the straightforwardness and structures of Australia, where he completed his schooling. His parents lived in Perth and he returned every northern winter, to relax and train and return to the life he valued. 236
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Still, he was an English cricketer playing for Surrey alongside his brother and mostly under his captaincy. Perhaps the doggedness of the county game affected him, for he was a player of inspiration rather than routine. His batting relied on touch, for his feet did not always move into the required position. Sometimes they did not move at all. His game lacked planning and regimentation and his failures were often as spectacular as his triumphs. As so often with those who rise swiftly, Hollioake was forced into self-examination. He found himself playing for the reserve team, an inconvenience he regarded more with puzzlement than dismay, for he was a man without meanness. In recent times, Hollioake had restored himself and was pushing for a place in the World Cup squad. Doubtless, he was encouraged by fresh leadership and a coach capable of seeing beyond his faults. Perhaps, too, he had realised that his task was to find his own voice and that he could not succeed as an echo. Perhaps he had simply come to terms with his abilities. As a cricketer, he was a breeze that sometimes blew. As a man, he was a delight.
Malcolm Marshall Malcolm Marshall was the greatest fast bowler of his time. Alone among his contemporaries, he took wickets in every country and in all sorts of conditions. Neither the cold winds of Dunedin nor the heat of Ahmadabad could stop him. He’d simply mop his brow and run in again with an idea in his head and the ball in his hand. His combination of athleticism and artistry could not easily be stifled. He had, too, a probing intelligence, an understanding of the game and a spirit that remained unbowed even as the foul disease invaded his body. Cricket has lost a competitor, a sportsman and a master of his craft. Wherever and whenever he played the game, Marshall was respected. He gave great service to all his teams, mighty or meek, was too proud a competitor and too faithful a servant ever to give second best. Parading was not for him, nor the posturing often associated with fast bowlers. To him cricket was a battle of wits as well as an expression of excellence. He could not settle for the mundane, had a mind that reached beyond the ordinary, wanted to explore the limits 237
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of his calling. Nor could he stoop to violence. His eyebrow-singeing bumper was merely a means to an end. Wickets, not blood, sustained him. He wanted to be master of the cricket ball. At times, he seemed almost unaware of his prowess. Asked how he’d bowl to Sanath Jayasuriya, he replied, ‘I bowl to he once. I started with two inswingers and he dispatch dem, so I bowl straight and moved the ball across him. After that, I held him tight.’ He was puzzled that ‘the other fellows’ did not pursue the same strategy and seemed surprised to hear few people can send down fast inswingers and that even fewer could promptly change direction without losing accuracy, and none could unravel batsmen with such alacrity. Marshall knew no defeat. He was at his best in the most demanding conditions. Often, he measured himself against the great batsmen of the age and raised his game when they arrived at the crease. His contests with Sunil Gavaskar were uncompromising as the fast bowler and the master technician met upon the field. Often, Marshall took the spoils. Nor could pitches break his spirit. Much could be gleaned from his performance against Australia in Sydney in 1989. West Indies had already won the series and might have relaxed. None of the other bowlers could find any life in the pitch and Australia scored 401. Even Marshall could not find much to please him, whereupon he gave a memorable display of clever and controlled pace bowling. Reducing his speed and setting a circle field, he kept a full length and waited for mistakes. No two deliveries were the same. Varying the angle of his wrist, his position at the crease, his pace, grip, swing, length and anything else that might unsettle his opponents, he took 5/29 in 31 overs. Marshall stood out even among the champions of a well-endowed era. Ironically, he was also superbly fit. Although he did not spare himself, he hardly missed a match through injury. Indeed, he once bowled England out with a broken arm. Admittedly, it was his left arm that was broken. His sense of fun remained intact and his spirit did not waver even as his body began to give its first warning signs. On the field, Marshall was a glorious sight. Off it, he was a magnificent competitor, a thoughtful colleague and a likeable man. His contribution was immense. 238
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Walter Masimula Walter Masimula was a friend of mine. Actually, he was everyone’s friend, a cheerful young man who enjoyed hurling cricket balls down the pitch and approached life with the same gusto. He was a black South African raised in poverty and unmarked by its deprivations, for he did not dwell on them but, rather, seized such opportunities as came his way. As usual, Walter had been sent to England to play club cricket, in the home counties this time. On Friday night, he went to sleep and did not wake up, a young life cut short by a mystery ailment, a strong body broken by a hidden menace. Walter first appeared on the cricketing scene towards the end of the 1980s, as his country poured money into the black townships in search of champions and legitimacy. Several promising boys were found and pushed along, the brothers Peace and Justice, Gift Pedi from Free State and others from Soweto and the other hellholes of the era. Most of these youngsters fell away because cricket is a hard game, besides which there were often mouths to feed. Some ended up in trouble; few lads can survive pampering. Among them, Walter stood out: he was tall and powerfully built and had been blessed with athletic ability. Accordingly, he was soon the apple of Ali Bacher’s eye. Word spread about him. Cricket has its ways, and Walter filled many of the contemporary requirements. Not that this fame was restricted to the townships or offices where the future had been decided. In 1991 he played for a development side against a white school located in one of the city’s plusher suburbs. His arrival was awaited with the tension detected in courts as the jury returns. Until he appeared, the visitors were downcast and their hosts hopeful. Once he strode in, beaming and only a little late, the mood entirely changed. Now the locals were fearful. Of course, Walter could not carry the burden of transformation. Surprisingly, it did not break him, for he remained the same engaging character in triumph and sorrow—indeed, seemed not to notice those swings of fortune or expectations that provoke dismay elsewhere. Tracksuits, tours, teams and opportunities were thrown at him and he kept trying, but wickets came in a trickle. He had reached his peak early in his life and soon the rest caught up and presently passed 239
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by. Walter lacked the techniques needed to remove skilful batsmen. He was fit and willing, but that is not enough. Happily, Walter was given some days in the sun, playing for Gauteng and taking a couple of wickets and remaining until the end in the squad, playing regularly for the reserves and bowling his heart out in the nets. Indeed, he practised with the Australians at the Wanderers before the First Test of their 2002 tour, sending down his inswingers and occasionally troubling the batsmen. But he was not a top-class bowler, just a first-class fellow and a reminder that cricketers cannot be microwaved and that a man may rise as his career fades. As it happens, I played against Walter on the Isle of Wight last year, catching a ferry from Southampton, accompanied by the young cricketers in my charge and enjoying a match played on a ground shaped like a soup bowl. There was Walter, larger than life and a good deal more amusing. He scored a few runs and then lost his wicket to some indiscretion. Batting was not his strong point. He had the big man’s impatience with fiddling around. Watching him defend was like seeing a weightlifter tying a shoelace. Although the match was a friendly, he roared cheerfully down the hill, bowled as fast as he could and periodically explored the middle of the pitch. Afterwards, he pronounced that it had all been great fun and headed straight for the bar. Walter was not a failure; he was a roaring success. He played some good cricket, brightened a lot of lives and ought to have lived longer.
David Hookes David Hookes’s untimely death in 2004 cast a pall over Australian cricket. More than might be expected, his departure had a profound effect upon a small community in which he had become a familiar figure. The sense of loss was as palpable as it was painful. Even those not by instinct drawn to this abrasive and latterly mellowing South Australian felt their lives had been cheapened by his absence. Hookes was full of life, and that is the awful irony of it. Nothing seemed to hurt him, or slow him down. And yet it took a mere punch to stop him, a blow that left him unconscious on a road on that dark and dismal Victorian night. Throughout his life, he had remained 240
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resolutely optimistic and unapologetically forthright. He was the sunblessed product of a sunscorched country whose strengths and weaknesses he epitomised. He was young and outgoing in the Australian way, and might have been catching a wave even as he played a cover drive. If Steve Waugh was the uncomplaining digger, Hookes was the unafraid larrikin. Hookes was not a saint and did not pretend to be. He was not especially enlightened and did not suppose otherwise. But he was straightforward and without malice and he cared about the young cricketers around him and that counts for a lot. Always he seemed young, a beer in hand, an opinion in his mouth and a laugh upon his face. He loved the banter of the game almost as much as he had loved playing, loved the dressing-room with its myths and secrets. It was no surprise that he stayed in the game after his playing days were over, no surprise that he was still drinking and talking at midnight on the night his life ended. It had been his life and had become his career. Always Hookes appeared fearless, for the setbacks of the world did not seem to affect him any more than arguments disproving his favoured theories. Although his social activities might suggest otherwise, he was also somehow an innocent. From the outset, he had been confident to the point of confrontation. In his youth, he was handsome, loud and entertaining. Girls flittered around him, appreciating his brown, open face, blond locks and sense of fun. They could tell he was slightly dangerous company, and they were right. Men also enjoyed his company, the noise around the bar, the talk of sport, opinions exchanged, jokes told, the endless debates that play such a part in Australian life. Always Hookes was in the thick of it. He was not a man for reflection. Time was too short. Life was to be lived. And anyhow a man looking within is embarking upon a perilous journey. Of course, the same applied at the crease. Hookes did not bother much with such niceties as footwork or taking a look at the bowling. From the start, he understood that the ways of respectability were not for him. He could not work that way, yearned for the wide open spaces and the brutal simplicities. He burst into Sheffield Shield cricket as an audacious, abrasive batsman and the exemplar of his times, for Australia was casting aside the conservatism of the Menzies era and plunging headlong—some might think, headstrong—in 241
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search of an identity of its own as a democratic, young and purposeful nation. At first, cricket bowed to the will of the forthright young man from Adelaide. Only the news that he had come to cricket by way of training as an accountant hinted that he might have more to offer than a thumping drive and a rude hook. Before long, his repeated destructions of state attacks were noticed and Hookes was chosen to play in the Centenary Test in Melbourne. Somehow it seemed appropriate that he should take part in this historic and dramatic occasion as the forces of tradition and challenge met upon the field. Hookes contributed manfully and memorably, hit five successive boundaries in an over bowled by Tony Greig, by way of response to his adversary asking whether the prodigy’s testicles had dropped. Supporters cheered the daring of the newcomer as they roared for Dennis Lillee and Dungog Doug. A brilliant career beckoned, but it was never as simple as that with Hookes. Hitherto he had resembled an imperial soldier fighting nobly upon field and afterwards enjoying the fruits of victory. Now, suddenly, he encountered mortality as a bumper from Andy Roberts beat his hook shot and broke his jaw. Hookes was never quite the same again. He still hooked and drove vigorously, but the game had smelt him out. Suddenly, he was not so much the rising champion as the flawed hero whose talents allowed him to fly now and again but not soar in the expected way. Hookes became a force only in South Australia. He needed a bigger stage and, colleagues sometimes felt, built it in his mind. Although Hookes played 23 Test matches and batted excitingly and productively for his state, his career did not fulfil its apparent potential. Simply, he was not quite good enough to prosper in Test cricket. Prevented by disposition from playing the supporting role, it was perhaps appropriate that Hookes did not hover around the fringes of the Australian team but was, instead, an outsider attending to his own affairs. Retirement brought fresh challenges met with a bravado that gave no ground to the disquiet a lesser man might have felt. Before long, Hookes was a regular on radio and television, informing and entertaining viewers by releasing opinions others reserve for the back room. Gradually, the cricket community warmed to him. Patently he 242
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had been underestimated. It was easy to dismiss Hookes as a mere controversialist craving attention. Perhaps, too, he softened as he aged, becoming less judgemental. Never a man to duck a challenge, Hookes accepted an offer to coach Victoria, an arrangement that left him with strong interests on both sides of the boundary fence. Of course, he set about the task with his usual forcefulness. His players responded to his leadership and a bare week ago Victoria consolidated its position at the top of the table with a spirited and remarkable run chase against its oldest adversaries. Naturally, Hookes lapped it up and enjoyed sending messages to his muckers in the opposing camp. Meanwhile, he continued to arrange outside help for his players, asking Kerry O’Keeffe to take a look at his leg-spinner and so forth. He had become a much broader man. Hookes’s last years were his best. Of course, he had always been popular in his circle. At the last, he commanded a wider respect all the more significant because it had been hard-earned. Even more importantly, the cricket community had learned to love him. He was cut down in the prime of his life.
Colin Cowdrey Australians will remember Colin Cowdrey with a mixture of respect and affection. He was the portly gentleman who put aside his slippers in the northern winter of 1974–75 to answer his country’s call to face the wrath of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. He stood steadfast as thunderbolts went by, and spectators liked him for it. He was also the slight young fellow who introduced himself hereabouts with a dashing and decisive century made against Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller in the Melbourne Test of 1954–55. Between times, the Australians saw a lot of him, more than sometimes seemed appropriate. Cowdrey was the gentlest and least certain of English batsmen. In his later years, he had about him a Falstaffian figure that seemed to indicate merriment. In fact, Cowdrey was a reticent man with a mind that seemed to skirt around issues without ever quite reaching a conclusion. He did not want to offend, could not quite decide. 243
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Much the same hesitancy could be detected in his batting. At his best, he could dominate any attack, for he had nimble footwork and a wide range of strokes. He seemed to stroke the ball as if it were a friend, as if the bowler, too, were a chum. His batting had a kindness about it, and a hint of reluctant ruthlessness. He’d tap the ball into a gap with fieldsmen in hot and unavailing pursuit. Cowdrey was a cautious man in every way; his strokes and comments were tempered by tact. He could not bring himself to aggression. Patience, determination and concentration could be counted among his qualities. He was inclined to potter along with a sense of ease that sometimes provoked frustration. He might have been riding a bicycle. In short, he was a gifted batsman who wanted to last as long as he could, a craftsman blessed with exceptional talent and burdened by inner doubt. Perhaps he might have used those abilities more often to tame an attack. But it was not his way. He could not bring himself to do it. Instead, he served his country reliably and productively. Cowdrey did indeed last much longer than his contemporaries. Peter May, a sharp man with a ruthless streak, retired early to enjoy a quieter life in the world of finance. Ted Dexter, a vague chap with a powerful game, left as soon as he could. Cowdrey survived, kept the runs ticking along and eventually became his country’s leading scorer. As captain of England, he conveyed kindness rather than conviction. But he did manage to beat the Australians in 1968, after spectators and players alike helped to dry the ground after a storm. Derek Underwood did the rest, and even Cowdrey managed to look pleased. In some respects, those last appearances were his finest hour, as a cricketer anyhow. Cowdrey stood his ground against Thommo and the boys and made a few runs with his tried and tested technique. Afterwards, and inevitably, Cowdrey joined the ranks of cricket administrators. In office he was inclined to look somewhat baffled. He could see the other fellow’s point of view and wanted to reconcile the irreconcilable. Conceivably, too, he was craftier than he let on. Cowdrey will be remembered as a superb slip-catcher and as a batsman who scored his runs without flamboyance. He defied the Australians in 1954 and a generation later was defying them again. Beneath a benign exterior could be found a courageous cricketer. He survived the ravages of time. Cowdrey was a man of his period, slightly troubled, seeking peace and striving for his place in a changed world. 244
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Don Bradman Sir Donald Bradman has gone to meet his maker. The sorrow is palpable. Upon the cricket field, he was the most efficient collector of runs the game has known. At the crease, he made a finely balanced struggle, the duel between bat and ball, appear hopelessly unfair. A new way of bowling was devised in an attempt to stop him, or restrict him, an approach so close to the line between legitimate tactic and outright assault that a break between nations almost resulted. In the nick of time, the game realised it ought not to lower itself merely to compromise a phenomenon, accepted that Bradman was beyond containment and that his abilities ought to be appreciated, for his like might not come again. Bradman took batting to its highest pitch. He was the definitive expression of batsmanship, a player in control of himself, quick of judgement, alert of foot and eye, precise of execution, strong of mind and limb. He had a ruthlessness about him that was confident and chuckling rather than chilling. He was an artist who disdained flourish, a scientist who went beyond calculation. The game in its most effective form flowed through him. Others might struggle, with themselves, with the conditions, with the bowling. Bradman saw only the ball and the inviting gap. He moved along in a bird-like way, almost skipping between the wickets, delighting as he carved through cover or pulled past the bowler. Some batsmen can keep their wickets intact for hours upon end. Others can cart the bowling around. Bradman did both at the same time; that was the devil of it. Perhaps the finest tributes to Bradman’s powers came from those who suffered most at his hands, the turners of sods and hewers of wood as that fiery Catholic and contemporary Bill O’Reilly called the members of the bowling fraternity. After the war, Bradman reappeared and for a time faltered. Against England he edged into the slips and, in the Australian way, stood his ground. Astonishingly, the appeal was rejected. Decades later, the bowler said that this had been a good thing because otherwise the Don might have retired. Bradman was above his game and his times and yet also a product of them. In some respects, it was a limiting factor. It is not to be 245
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expected that a young man born and raised in a practical family in the country towns of the 1920s should be the epitome of enlightenment. It was a Protestant and self-denying upbringing that explained his inability to join the rush of the sporting crowd and especially its boisterous Catholic element. Bradman’s failure to leave the boat in Bombay or even to wave to the 20 000 Indians gathered on the dock provoked dismay, as did his refusal to meet Vijay Merchant, among the finest of Indian opening batsmen. It cannot have been easy to be Bradman. Perhaps he was happiest and safest at the crease, in the public eye and yet removed from it, an untouched figure in his element. Even so, the pressures were intense and might have broken a lesser man. As it was, his health failed him regularly during his career, and his life was despaired of in the 1930s. And yet, the same apparently frail man lived to a ripe old age. These setbacks were almost the only hint of vulnerability in a man who conveyed competence from the uncertain days of the Depression until the aftermath of devastating war. Bradman will be remembered wherever the game is played, not least in India with its emotions and fondness for figures and mystique. His sporting achievements were extraordinary, and undimmed by the years. Nor did he stop serving the game after declaring his innings closed. Always he protected its reputation, standing firm against throwing and other corruptions. During his career some said he played and lived by his own lights. No such charges could later be laid at his door, as he made his contribution still yearning for the silence his abilities had denied him. He had a cryptic way about him, and a wry humour that conveyed keen intelligence. Cricket has known great men and fine players, but there has been, and can be, only one Bradman.
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Afterword After the Indian Ocean tsunami One memory remains of the year past, an experience that seemed unimportant and is now etched in the memory, an encounter that had slipped from mind within a few days as the show moved from Galle to Kandy and then to Colombo, and then somewhere else, only to be revived as pictures appeared on our television screens and reports were published in our newspapers. It was not a cricketing recollection, but they can wait for another day. At these times, sport hardly seems to matter, though it must not stop, for that is to admit defeat. If cricketing memories are wanted, then Steve Waugh’s last Test match, Michael Clarke’s first innings, his breathtaking assault in Nagpur and the bedlam as Australian wickets began to fall in Mumbai top the list. But these are minor concerns of bat and ball and human inspiration. They don’t matter, not really. They simply reflect man’s ancient lust for sport with its twists and turns and debates about ‘who’s in and who’s out’. No, the abiding memory of 2004 is altogether more personal. Last autumn, the Australian cricket team visited Sri Lanka. Of course, reporters went along, and found their own places to stay. In my case, the trip was organised by a young Englishman called Charlie, Cricinfo’s man on this spot. In his spare time, Charlie runs a travel agency. Happily, he survived the recent devastation, but 35 of his party are missing. In any event, he found suitable accommodation for Fairfax’s columnist. Since the first match was to be played in Galle, our first task was to head south along the coastal road, beside the track from which a train was plucked by the torrent as if it were a plaything. Our hotel was run by a splendid old lady and was situated beside a small patch of sand that wound back towards the metropolis. Every morning, a group of ragged boys ran along that beach. Every morning, we’d awake to find them sprinting up and down the 247
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strip of sand, through the dying water of the last wave, uninhibited in their delight, joyous in their athleticism. Back and forth they went with the cheerful intensity of youth, laughing and sometimes scrapping but serious once the running resumed. One of them was the leader, a dashing youth who supervised the stretches and led the races. He could run, too, flying across the sand, arms punching through the air, head high, feet skimming the surface. After training, they’d cast aside their clothes and plunge into the timid waves, splashing about cheerfully, not going too deep, for, though many in the region live by the water, few spend much time in its embrace. As far as locals are concerned, swimming is for fish. The sea is not to be trusted. Of course, the youngsters had no money. They lived in tin shacks located in a shanty town just across the road, twenty yards from the beach, thirty from the calm waters of the ocean. As it turned out, Chaminda was the leader’s name. He was sixteen and had been forced to leave school because his family relied on the pittance he could earn as a waiter. He said that he loved running and had tried his luck at meetings, where his performances had been praised. His times had been good and he thought he could go faster, but he could not afford running shoes and did not think he had much chance of making the grade. Every youngster deserves a chance, so the newspaper took him into town on a tuc-tuc and bought some spikes in a store run by an obliging opportunist. Chaminda smiled and next morning was with his pals once more, charging up and down the beach with fresh intent. A few days later, the time came to part company. The athletes came to say goodbye. Chaminda wrote his name and address on the back of a scrap of paper marked ‘Cocktail Sauce’. And then faded from memory. Then came the news of the terrible events of 26 December 2004. Not far down the road, the house owned by Murali’s manager was destroyed. Tin shacks could hardly hope to withstand the bombardment. And they lived cheek by jowl with those very waters that betrayed them. Suddenly, the faces of the youngsters sprang back to mind. Death is not a number. It is the optimistic beam of the young athlete or the grey visage of the waiting parent. Some things cannot be outrun. Let’s hope they made it. 248
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Postscript Chaminda survived the tsunami. A month after the disaster a letter arrived from him. He wrote: At that time I’m in Galle town so that I faced this accident. Most of our relatives have lost their houses. We are also very unlucky because I have some physical damages and we’ve lost our boats. There wasn’t any big damage to the house, but our whole things are destroyed. My father has lost his fishing boats. That is a big problem to our family. I couldn’t continue my running these days because of the disaster. But he was alive.
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INDEX Aboriginal cricketers 226–8 Acfield, David 212 Achrekar, Ramakant 11, 12 Adams, Jimmy 27, 35 Adams, Paul 139 Akhtar, Shoaib 33, 60–1, 94, 98–100 Akram, Wasim 33, 93, 94–6, 173, 215 Alderman, Terry 128, 193, 213 Ambrose, Curtly 27, 80, 89, 97, 112, 113, 154, 215 Amiss, Dennis 48 Armstrong, Warwick 159 Astle, Nathan 63 Atherton, Michael 34, 87, 88, 89, 124, 197, 199–200, 208, 214–17 Azharuddin, Mohammad 47–9, 183, 193–4 Bacher, Ali 148, 186, 239 Baddeley, Robert 192 Banks, Omari 106 Baptiste, Eldine 113 Barrington, Ken 76, 105, 183, 199, 212 Bedi, Bishen 47, 70 Benaud, John 161–2 Benaud, Richie 192, 207 Benjamin, Kenny 113 Benjamin, Winston 113
Best, Tino 106 Bichel, Andrew 30, 91, 105, 170 Bishop, Ian 125 Blackwell, Ian 173 Blewett, Greg 50, 175 Blizzard, Aiden 121 Boon, David 44, 151, 152–4, 196, 211 Border, Allan 42, 48, 63, 70, 88, 150, 152, 193, 196, 197–8, 208–9, 211, 218 Botham, Ian 20, 28, 70, 75, 85, 213, 236 Boucher, Mark 142, 144–5 Boycott, Geoffrey 73, 76–8, 105, 130, 137, 199, 215, 216 Bradman, Sir Donald 9, 25, 38, 62, 63, 64, 159, 170, 199, 233, 245–6 Brant, Scott 9 Buchanan, John 170 Butcher, Basil 103, 104, 110–13 Cadaux-Hudson, Jonathon 230 Caddick, Andrew 74, 81–3, 97 Cairns, Chris 43 Campbell, Sherwin 26, 34 captaincy 4, 28–30, 47, 75, 86, 87–8, 111, 140–2, 165–7, 177, 183, 189, 192, 194, 213, 214, 244 Carew, George 108 250
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Chaminda 248, 249 Chanderpaul, Kemraj 5–6 Chanderpaul, Shivnarine 2, 5–7, 89, 111 Chappell, Greg 41, 218, 221 Chappell, Ian 9 Chopra, Akash 55–6 Christiani, Robert 111 Clarke, Michael 161, 163–5, 247 Clarke, Nolan 104, 115–17 Cleal, Matthew 221–2, 224–6 coaches 11–12, 66, 207, 212, 223, 243 Compton, Denis 126 Constantine, Learie 109 Coward, Mike 208 Cowdrey, Colin 183, 215, 233, 243–5 Cox, Phillip 229 Craig, Ian 192 Croft, Colin 5 Cronje, Ewie 18–19 Cronje, Frans 18 Cronje, Hansie 2, 14, 18–19, 133, 142, 144, 183–7 Crowe, Martin 224 Daley, Kym 230 Davis, Winston 219 De Silva, Aravinda 100, 130 De Villiers, Fanie 133, 176 deaf cricketers 222, 229–30 death 231–2, 248 Dev, Kapil 47, 48, 69–71, 101 Dexter, Ted 244 Donald, Allan 14, 133, 176, 215, 216, 224 Doug, Dungog 163, 165, 242
Doyle, Corey 232, 233–5 Dravid, Rahul 38, 42, 52, 56–8, 88 Dujon, Jeff 224 Edrich, John 199 fame 195–7 Fernando, Sunil 69 Fleming, Matthew 74, 78–80 Fleming, Stephen 184 Fletcher, Duncan 87 Fletcher, Keith 212 Flower, Andy 134–5, 136–8, 161, 178 Flower, Grant 134, 136–8 Ford, Graeme 139, 146 Foster, Maurice 103 Fraser, Angus 48, 83, 126, 151, 154–5 Galle 247, 249 Ganga, Daren 106 Ganguly, Sourav 38, 184, 187–8, 204 Ganteaume, Andy 104, 106–10 Garner, Joel 163, 209 Gatting, Mike 75, 121, 201, 202–3, 213 Gavaskar, Sunil 6, 11, 38, 47, 63, 69, 71, 190, 238 George, Stephen 230 Gibbs, Herschelle 144–5 Gifford, Norman 224 Gilchrist, Adam 119–20, 129–32, 161, 164, 171–3, 175 Gilchrist, Roy 103 Gillespie, Jason 52, 161, 169, 173 251
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Goddard, John 109 Gomez, Gerry 107, 109 Gooch, Graham 47, 75, 88, 201, 208, 211–14, 215 Goodwin, Murray 9 Gough, Darren 97, 223 Gover, Alf 114 Gower, David 59, 73, 74–6, 119, 127, 137, 213, 215 Grace, WG 130 Gray, Malcolm 44 Greene, Graham 162 Greenidge, Gordon 106 Gregory, Jack 48 Greig, Tony 45, 242 Gripper, Trevor 64 Gurusinha, Asanka 151, 156–7 Hadlee, Sir Richard 43, 70, 153 Hall, Wes 92, 223 Harper, Laurie 175 Harris, Chris 140 Harvey, Neil 104 Hauritz, Nathan 121 Hayden, Matthew 30, 64–5, 130, 161 Haynes, Desmond 210 Headley, George 103, 108 Healy, Ian 27, 210–11 Hick, Graeme 43, 148 Higgs, Mark 203 Hirwani, Narendra 47 Hogg, Brad 161, 178–9 Hohns, Trevor 165 Hollioake, Adam 236 Hollioake, Ben 232–3, 235–7 Hookes, David 231, 240–3 Houghton, David 137
Hughes, Merv 200–1 Hussain, Nasser 74, 86–8, 90, 148, 173 Hutton, Sir Leonard 64, 78, 192 Illington, Raymond 216 Innis, David 11–12 Inzamam-Ul-Haq 42, 49–51 Jacobs, Ridley 26, 113 Jadeja, Ajay 188 James, CLR 102, 109 Jardine, Douglas 86 Jayasuriya, Sanath 238 Jessop, Gilbert 79 Jewell, Nick 121 Jones, Dean 198 Joseland, Brendon 121 Joseph, Dave 113 Kallicharran, Alvin 6, 110–11, 112 Kallis, Jacques 142, 144 Kambli, Vinod 11, 12 Kanhai, Rohan 110, 112, 116 Kasprowicz, Michael 53, 161 Khan, Imran 101, 190 Kirsten, Gary 140, 142 Kloppenburg, Jan 151, 157–8 Klusener, Lance 135, 142, 145–6, 203 Knight, Nick 170 Koertzen, Rudi 130 Krezda, Jason 179–81 Kumble, Anil 45–7, 89, 165, 188 Laker, Jim 62, 63, 108 Lamb, Allan 75, 95 252
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Langer, Justin 30, 91, 96, 161, 174–6 Lara, Brian 22, 23–7, 34–5, 64, 103, 106, 131 Larwood, Harold 92, 207 Lathwell, Mark 74, 83–6 Lawry, Bill 199, 207 Lawson, Geoff 207 Lawson, Jermaine 106 Laxman, Venkati 38, 41, 51–3 Lee, Brett 54, 105, 161, 167–71, 174 Lehmann, Darren 161, 173–4 Leslie, CFH 80 Lewis, Carl 223 Lewis, Chris 48 Lillee, Dennis 33, 82, 93, 98, 139, 207–8, 221, 222–4, 242, 243 Lilley, Alan 212 Lindwall, Ray 243 Lubber, Stephen 17 McDermott, Craig 33, 202 McGrath, Glenn 22–3, 32–6, 41, 52–3, 88, 90, 93, 101, 178, 199–200, 215, 216–17 McGuire, Anthony 7 Magoffin, Steve 122 Malcolm, Devon 48 Malik, Salim 49 Mangongo, Steve 15 Manjrekar, Sanjay 11, 48 Mankad, Vinoo 69 manners 160–1 Marks, Neil 22 Marks, Vic 78 Marsh, Geoff 196, 208, 211 Marsh, Rod 9, 116, 211
Marshall, Malcolm 33, 70, 85, 93, 139, 215, 223, 233, 237–8 Martyn, Damien 46, 161, 175, 176–7 Masakadza, Hamilton 16 Masimula, Walter 233, 239–40 Matsikenyeri, Stuart 14–16 Matthews, Greg 147 May, Peter 48, 244 Merchant, Vijay 69, 246 Miandad, Javed 167 Miller, Keith 32, 104, 243 Mohammad, Hanif 48 Moody, Tom 139 Muralitharan, Muttiah 67–9, 100, 248 Mushtaq, Saqlain 50 Mwayenga, Allan 9, 10 Mwayenga, Waddington 2, 9–10 Nayudu, CK 69 Nkala, Luke 19 Nkala, Muleleki 19–21 Norrie, David 212 Ntini, Makhaya 142 Nurse, Seymour 110 Nye, Aaron 122–3, 124 O’Keeffe, Kerry 2, 221, 243 Oldfield, Bert 211 Olonga, Henry 135, 223 O’Reilly, Bill 119, 223, 245 Page, Colin 80 Paton, Alan 147 Pedi, Gift 239 Penrith, Basil 222, 226–8 Pieterson, Kevin 136, 146–9 253
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Pollock, Graeme 24 Pollock, Shaun 101, 141, 145, 184, 215 Ponting, Ricky 2, 7–9, 38, 130, 131, 132, 161, 165–7, 169 Potter, Jack 175 Prabhakar, Manoj 47 Pretorius, Dewald 2, 13–14 Price, Ray 64, 135, 142–3 Pringle, Nick 222, 224–6 Proctor, Mike 115 professionalism 150–1 Rae, Allan 109 Ramprakash, Mark 128 Ramsey, Fred 192 Ranatunga, Arjuna 59, 100, 184, 189–91, 210 Reid, Bruce 128 Reiffel, Paul 121, 124, 157, 201 reputation 182–3, 246 retirement 195–7, 206–8, 221 Rhodes, Jonty 146, 147 Rhodes, Wilfred 48 Rice, Clive 147, 148 Richards, Sir Vivian 38, 48, 103, 105, 106, 113, 114, 115, 128 Richardson, Dave 144 Richardson, Richie 113, 115, 224 Roach, Clifford 107 Roach, Peter 122 Roberts, Anderson 104, 113–15, 116, 242 Robinson, Peter 84 role models, sportsmen as 118–19 Samuels, Marlon 105 Sangakkara, Kumar 43, 58–60
Sarwan, Ramnaresh 105 Sehwag, Virender 38, 42, 53–6 Shastri, Ravi 47, 48 Shivaji Park, Bombay 11–12 Shivalkar, Das 11–12 Sidhu, Navjot 48 Simpson, Bob 66, 184, 191–3, 207 Simpson, Chris 122, 123 Singh, Harbhajan 89 Slater, Michael 175 Smith, Collie 104–5 Smith Graeme 135, 140–2 Smith, Robin 119, 124–9 Sobers, Sir Garfield 2, 3–5, 24, 64, 110, 153, 233 Sobers, Thelma 3–5 Sohail, Aamir 49–50 Solomon, Joe 110–11, 112 Spearman, Craig 43 sportsmanship 160–3 statistics, problems with 62–3 Stewart, Alec 87 Stewart, Mickey 212 Stollmeyer, Jeff 107, 108, 109 Streak, Heath 20, 135 suicide 207, 232, 233–5 Sullivan, Grant 121 Sutcliffe, Herbert 78 Symcox, Pat 138–40, 146 Symonds, Andrew 132, 178 Taibu, Tatenda 2, 14–16 talent 22–3, 151, 244, 245 Tallon, Don 211 Taylor, Mark 42, 51, 63, 153, 193 Tendulkar, Sachin 2, 8, 10–12, 19, 22–3, 36–40, 52, 56, 60–1, 88, 131, 205, 232 254
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Thomson, Jeff 33, 93, 218, 243, 244 Thorpe, Graham 97 Trescothick, Marcus 72, 89, 90, 170 Trime, John 111 Trudgett, Luke 229 Trueman, Fred 98, 223 tsunami (Boxing Day 2004) 247–9 Turner, Glenn 116 Tyson, Frank 92 upbringing, role of 1–2 Vaas, Chaminda 94, 100–1, 215 Valjee, Umesh 230 van Noortwijk, Klaas-Jan 151, 157–8 van Randt, Oos 185 Van Troost, Andre 213 van Zyl, Corrie 14 Vaughan, Michael 34, 35, 74, 88–91 Vengsarkar, Dilip 48
Walters, Doug 22 Wardle, John 192 Warne, Shane 33, 35, 40, 41, 46, 49–50, 53, 65–7, 70, 91, 96, 118, 119, 120–4, 166, 168, 169, 175, 189, 202, 209, 210, 215, 236 Watkins, Andrew 229 Watson, Shane 165 Waugh, Mark 96, 139, 173, 198, 208, 217–19 Waugh, Steve 23, 26, 27–32, 35, 82, 143, 150, 161, 166, 169, 171, 196, 197, 203–5, 208, 217–19, 241, 247 Weekes, Everton 110, 116 White, Cameron 165 Woodman, Mark 230 Woods, Sammy 234 Woolmer, Bob 99 Worrell, Sir Frank 4, 102, 103–4, 110, 112 Wright, John 46 Younis, Waqar 215
Wadekar, Ajit 11 Walcott, Clyde 111–12 walking 120, 129–31, 161 Walsh, Courtney 27, 78, 80, 89, 93, 96–8, 112, 215
Zondeli, Monde 140, 142 Zuiderent, Bas 2, 16–18, 158
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