No Boundaries (17 page)

Lorraine, her mum and the girls finally arrived on Christmas Day. I went to the airport at eight o’clock in the morning to meet them. I was feeling very emotional, partly because of the miscarriage and the fact that I had expected to have three children by then, but also at missing out on the kids waking up on Christmas morning and unwrapping their parcels. Bizarrely, my wait was cheered up by a group of the Barmy Army, slightly the worse for wear, who wanted to chat and have photos taken. I don’t know why they were there and none of them asked me what the hell I was doing sitting round an airport lounge on Christmas Day. They probably
thought I was a secret plane spotter. It was so great to see the family but of course they were completely knackered after the flight and they slept the whole of Christmas. But it was a relief to be together again at last and we enjoyed some fantastic times over the next few weeks. We must have been to every beach in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney and it was just so satisfying to be a family once more.

As well as the Aussie players, I was getting on well with the local fans, or most of them. It was during the Sydney ODI that the famous stretching incident took place, which now has more than 35,000 viewings on YouTube, far more than any shot I’ve made or ball I’ve bowled! We were getting hammered and Nasser had shouted down to me to take the next over at the far end, so I started to warm up. I’d already had a bit of banter with the crowd and, as I started to stretch, I became aware of a lot of laughter behind me. I thought it was one of their usual pranks like punching a beach ball around and shouting out each time it soars into the air, or their other favourite, putting hundreds of plastic pint glasses inside each other and then hoisting them aloft like a giant snake. I glanced behind me and realised that the whole section were on their feet and copying my warm-up. They were loving it so I played to the gallery for a bit and even Nasser and the rest of the lads were laughing.

What is missing from the video and is usually forgotten is that, a couple of minutes later, a rather well-endowed young lady came out of the crowd wearing nothing but a smile and asked me to autograph her breasts. Like most sports people, I’ve managed to perfect a signature that I can repeat very quickly as I make my way through a crowd outside the dressing room. However, I didn’t want to damage this particular autograph book so I took my time, making sure I
dotted all the ‘i’s. And the grin on my usual smiley face was so large it was almost a leer!

It was amazing how quickly the stretching incident caught the imagination. A few days later, when I was on the beach with the family, three hefty lads came towards us. I was a bit nervous in case they were looking for bother. Instead, they took photos out of their wallets and pointed themselves out among the crowd stretching behind me and asked me to sign them. Of course I obliged, although now my signature was back to its usual speed. A few days later, I was in Canberra captaining an England XI against a Don Bradman XI led by Mark Waugh. He and I had a night out and were in a taxi waiting to go to a restaurant when a guy banged on the window and said, ‘Irani, you’re a legend. You’re a champion, dude!’ I was a bit embarrassed because I happened to be sitting next to a real Aussie legend and it was a while before the guy recognised him and said, ‘Shit, Waughy! You’re a champion too!’

Of course, you can’t please all the people all the time and there were a few Australians who didn’t think I was the coolest thing since Fosters straight from the fridge. It especially didn’t go down well when I dismissed Shane Warne in his last ODI on his home ground in Melbourne. It was a sweltering hot day and Nasser had insisted on bowling me for ten straight overs. I was knackered. Shane came in and received a standing ovation all the way to the wicket. They loved him. That got my adrenaline pumping again and I steamed in and got one to zip back. Normally, Shane would have fended it off but he wanted to please his fans and went for a big drive. Instead, he got an inside edge that came back to me and I caught it. I threw the ball in the air in triumph and realised there was total silence around the ground. It
only lasted a few seconds before the Victoria crowd went berserk and, as Paul Simon said, I heard words I never heard in the Bible.

I went back to fielding in front of the MCG members. A guy who had been gradually getting more and more drunk as the day went on had already been giving me some abuse but now he was really wound up. ‘Irani, you’re a shit cricketer. Look at you, you’re a tosser.’ It went on and on, ball after ball.

At first I thought the stewards were bound to intervene but they did nothing and, as much as I tried to ignore him, it was starting to annoy me. Finally, I’d had enough and decided to have a word. I felt like thumping him to be honest but I knew I had to be careful and not let it go too far. I also knew that anyone who goes on the pitch at the MCG automatically gets a $5,000 fine and reckoned I might be able to hit him in the pocket if not the mouth. I picked up my drink bottle and headed towards the stand. He’d gone quiet suddenly and I wasn’t really sure which of the sea of faces was his. I picked one guy out and said, ‘I’m sick and tired of you abusing me.’

He looked perplexed and a doubt crept into my mind. I was about to turn on my heel and walk away when I heard the familiar dulcet tones: ‘Irani, you’re a wanker.’

He’d come right to the fence to abuse me again and, as he launched into his tirade, I said, ‘You need to cool off, pal.’

‘Oh yeah? What you gonna do about it?’

I took the water bottle and threw the lot over him. He was soaked.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You’re a big guy. Come here and have your say.’

Any minute now, his abuse would cost him five grand but just as he was about to climb over the fence the stewards finally intervened and dragged him away.

Crowds in England have a drink but they seldom get abusive. Up in Yorkshire they like to give you a verbal volley but it’s all banter and, if you give them a smile, they are fine. Even though the MCG lot are usually hostile – I’ve had a golf ball and a barbecue chicken thrown at me – most of them are OK underneath it all. At one stage they started a chant: ‘Ronnie Irani’ clap, clap, clap, ‘you are a wanker’ clap, clap, clap. I gave them a wave and did a forward roll. They loved it and started cheering me.

At least these moments took my mind off the hammering we were getting and the effect that would have on my chances of making the World Cup squad. When it was finally announced, I was both delighted and relieved to see my name in the 15. There were a few surprise omissions. As I’ve said, Dominic Cork would have been a useful guy to have along, as would Robert Key. Rob was on the Australian trip but somehow his face didn’t fit. I thought he was not just a fine bowler, but also a very clever cricketer and a canny captain. He steered Kent to twenty20 success as much on his nous as anything else and he was the only player in my time leading Essex who beat me in a match just by his captaincy. It was a one-day game at Chelmsford and Rob completely outwitted me with his tactics. If it had been my decision, he would have been the England captain when Michael Vaughan stepped down.

But the cut-off point had to fall somewhere and Rob was just on the other side of it. But before I tell you about South Africa, this might be a good place for Lorraine to explain something of what it is like to be a cricketer’s wife.

R
onnie and I have been together since we were little more than kids. In many ways we have grown up together and we've been fortunate because we haven't moved in opposite directions. Not that it's been all chocolates and roses – there have been plenty of times when I've been ready to pack his bag or mine – but, on the whole, we have been very lucky. I still occasionally look at the wonderful house we have, our two special daughters and the lifestyle we are able to enjoy and wonder how it all happened to kids from Bolton who started off with just a few bob they had scraped together.

We were still teenagers when we uprooted to Essex. It was scary but I'd been brought up to believe that you should follow your dream, and the only way Ronnie could do that was to switch counties and he chose Essex. I moved first and went to Buckinghamshire. He'd encouraged me to study in my spare time and become a qualified nursery nurse and I got a job in Aylesbury to be near him. Well, they looked close on the map!

I'm quite glad I did it that way because it meant I had a short time living on my own, so I've never had that nagging feeling at the back of my mind, wondering what it would have been like to be completely independent. It wasn't really my cup of tea. I'm a bit of an old-fashioned, home-loving girl and I was happy to move into a flat with him at first in Colchester and then Writtle. The move south was made much easier by the fact that Essex is a friendly, family club. I'd never really felt at home at Old Trafford when Ronnie was with Lancashire but they made us very welcome at Chelmsford and some of the people there have become close friends and watched us and our family grow up together.

After a couple of years renting, we decided to buy our first place – a dream cottage in Great Waltham that cost us
£
132,500. I couldn't get my head round that kind of money – back in Bolton you could buy a whole street for that, and I still find the north-south price differences startling. We stretched ourselves to the max for a mortgage and could only afford the bare basics in furniture. I know both families were anxious about the size of the mortgage we were hanging round our necks.

The financial burden was helped by Ronnie being selected for his first England tour. It was a relief to get the extra money but was something of a turning point in my life. He'd been away before, of course, but I'd always been at home with my mum. This was different. I was alone in a strange house, with no alarm system and no friends or family anywhere near. I remember thinking that I could die and it would be a long time before anyone found me. I didn't want to worry Mum and I'd learned already that, when your husband is working away, it's not a good time to burden him with your problems, especially when you know that things
are not working out so well for him and he is anxious about his career. You just put on a brave front and do your crying alone when you go to bed. Luckily I found I had two wonderful neighbours, Jack and Kit, who took me under their wing and became like my granny and grandpa. But there were still many, many lonely and scary hours in the house on my own.

I had two choices: get used to it or get out, and I didn't want to get out. But it meant I needed to become good at things I'd never had to think about before, be self-sufficient and independent. And that meant that, by the time Ronnie came back from tour, I had changed. As you can imagine, the first few days you are back together fly by in wonderful fashion, almost like a new love affair. But then Ronnie started to notice little things that had changed in me. I was used to making the decisions and getting things done and I still wanted to do that. As I didn't always do things the way he would, I began to understand why cricket has one of the highest divorce rates of any sport.

Eventually, we had to sit down and thrash it out. I said, ‘You can't expect me to change back to the person I was just because you have come home. I've sat here at nights and cried because I was scared. I came to terms with that and learned to cope. I had to become a different person, stronger and more self-reliant. I need to be like that because you will be going away again.' To my relief, Ronnie accepted it.

As Ronnie has told you, it took him ten years to get round to proposing but I really didn't mind because I didn't feel either of us needed a ring to feel committed to each other. I became pregnant shortly after we got married and we were both very excited because we wanted children. We were due to go to South Africa but then I miscarried. It was traumatic.
I didn't really know what was happening and again didn't want to phone Mum and worry her. It is hard to describe the sense of loss you have when you lose a baby, a life that you have become aware is growing inside you. I felt grief, anger and guilt, sometimes all at the same time. It put a doubt in my mind that we would ever be able to have children and I wondered how that would change our hopes and our relationship. It changed my whole perspective on life.

The second time it happened was in the middle of the cricket season, just after Ronnie took over as captain of Essex. I knew he was having problems with some of the members of the squad and needed to be at the ground sorting things out. I almost had to force him out the door, telling him there was nothing he could do at home, but it was always good when he came back and we could just hold each other. By this time, I'd become quite good at keeping things back so as not to distract Ronnie, to wait until the end of a match before raising something that needed sorting out. He's a very positive, larger-than-life man most of the time and great fun to be around, but, if he's got a problem, he can't leave it alone and I could always tell from his face when the game was not going as well as it might. In fact, he was harder on himself than that – he expected so much of himself that he could be dissatisfied even when others thought he'd had a great day.

I suffered from panic attacks after losing the second baby and that's when we got Eric the Doberman. He was my rock, a gem who was great company when Ronnie was away. Shortly after that I fell pregnant with Simone. As Ronnie has told you, we had bought the old house in Felsted and it wasn't nearly as comfortable as the one we'd left, but we were willing to put up with that because we had a dream of what could be. Ronnie was in Germany getting treatment
when I discovered I was pregnant and my first instinct was to phone him and tell him. But I knew he'd fly home and I told myself, ‘In the past, you've done everything by the book, put your feet up and taken care, and you've lost both babies. Just behave normally and let whatever is going to happen happen.' So I just got on with packing the house away and told him when he returned home at the weekend. We were both nervous but didn't say so. Fortunately it all went smoothly and Simone was born, quickly followed by Maria. Life had changed again, but in a very positive way.

We had hoped to have a big family but that was obviously not going to be when I had a third miscarriage. It was the worst of the lot because Ronnie was on the other side of the world. With the World Cup coming up, I didn't want him to fly home, although I was longing to be with him. I was lucky to have the support of my mum and eventually we all flew out together on Christmas Day. It was the strangest Christmas I've ever known. The girls were only two and one and, with Ronnie having been away for some time, they weren't really sure who he was and just wanted to cling to their mum and granny. I'm sure it hurt Ronnie at first but he soon won them round and we had a really wonderful holiday.

As the girls grew up, we again had to make adjustments in our marriage. At times it was like being a single parent. Even in England, cricketers work long hours during the season and, when he became captain, Ronnie would often not get home until after the girls had gone to bed. He missed much of their childhood and so would want to spoil them whenever he was with them. Finally, I had to point out that I couldn't always be the ‘bad cop' who disciplined them and said no, while he was the ‘good cop' who always brought them presents and agreed to what they wanted. And everything
would go awry if I'd made a decision while he was away and they were able to change it on appeal when he returned. We gradually sorted out the rules. We've been very lucky and have two girls we are both incredibly proud of.

I guess being married to a cricketer is not the kind of life that I had planned when my school friends and I used to discuss our dreams for the future. It's silly things that you notice, like being the only one not in a couple when friends invite you to a barbecue in the summer and Ronnie is away playing in Durham or Glamorgan. It was also strange not being able to take summer holidays together when the children were off school. The nearest we got was when Essex played at South Church Park in Southend. We would stay in a bed and breakfast nearby, park the car and forget about it for the week. We'd walk to and from the ground, pop to the Adventure Island or take the girls out on their bikes. After play, we'd have fish and chips in the café in the park. It will probably seem strange to some people when I say that we've been to some wonderful places with Ronnie, like Australia, but those days in Southend were among the most enjoyable just because they were so normal.

I've always tried to stay in the background of Ronnie's career and think some of the WAGS give the rest of us a bad name. I've never understood why they think there should be any attention on them. If their husband was a greengrocer, they wouldn't hang around the shop looking for the limelight, so why do it when your husband plays cricket or football?

As I've said, we were very lucky that Essex is such a friendly place. Simone and Maria wanted to see as much of their dad as possible so we spent a lot of time at Chelmsford when he had a home match. There was a room set aside where we could go with the kids so we became friendly with
the other players' families – though some of the younger guys changed girlfriends so often I found it hard to remember all the names! But, as well as the players and the staff, we got to know a lot of the supporters and they would play with the girls and give them sweets. It became an extended family.

I didn't realise how much I would miss it all when Ronnie was forced to quit. It was so abrupt. I got depressed and kept bursting into tears for a while. Essex County Cricket Club had become such a big part of our lives and suddenly it was no longer there. The girls found it hard to understand at first. It was also a slightly worrying time because Ronnie had to carve out a whole new career at an age when most people are well established. The job at talkSPORT has been tremendous for him and works out wonderfully for the family because we see a lot more of him, though he's often a bit yawny by the early evening.

As I say, it's not the kind of marriage I had envisaged but I wouldn't change it. It's made me a stronger person and I've enjoyed being the hub of our family, the one who is always there. I'm fortunate in that I work in the family business Ronnie and I are developing and that allows me to be at home when the girls are there. I'm lucky to have Mum living with us and helping me, which gives me the opportunity to pursue interests like running our local Brownie pack. And it's very satisfying watching the girls growing into very nice people, with all their dad's determination to succeed but also his love of life.

Being a cricketer's wife is not something I would recommend to everyone and a lot of women have found it impossible. I've been one of the fortunate ones for whom it has worked out all right.