No Boundaries (18 page)

O
n arriving in South Africa, the England party were given a few days off in Sun City to put their feet up and play some golf before getting back down to business in the World Cup. The theory was that we’d already had a long, difficult trip and needed a break from cricket. It seemed a weird decision to me. We were just going into arguably the biggest matches of our lives and, even if they wanted us to rest physically, this seemed like the perfect time to talk tactics, watch videos and work out how we were going to play the opposition.

One of the shortcomings of England cricket is that we don’t handle defeat well. Instead of analysing things and trying to fathom out how to get better, the instinct seems to be to drop one or two players, hunker down and hope it gets better next time. My own view is that, if you have your best players together, you keep working on them until they come good. I remember all the calls before football’s Euro 96 for Alan Shearer to be dropped because he was having a lean spell in front of goal. Terry Venables stuck with him,
Shearer found his form and almost took the side to the final. It’s a cliché but it’s also true that form is temporary but class is permanent.

I decided R&R wasn’t for me. I hadn’t been away as long as the rest of them and I wanted to work on my game. I’d had a poor series in Australia and I wanted to get back in top nick before what would hopefully be a memorable World Cup and I didn’t think that playing golf would help. Some of my
team-mates
didn’t seem too pleased when I said I was going to stay in Port Elizabeth. Perhaps they thought I was trying to earn brownie points with Duncan Fletcher and the coaches but they needn’t have worried: I was also getting negative vibes from the management because it meant they had to make special arrangements. However, it was hard for them to argue against someone wanting to get into peak condition. I just thought, Bollocks to the lot of them. This is probably my only chance to play in a World Cup and I want to be ready. I can play as much golf as I want after my cricket is over.

None of the coaching staff volunteered to stay with me, so I turned to Ian Pont at Essex. He had been a bowler himself and had a brief spell as baseball pitcher in the States. Since retiring from playing, he’d been involved in the production of the first coloured cricket kits and had become a dynamic coach with new ideas. He’d already had a big effect on my bowling by applying his understanding of biomechanics. I’d watched him coaching some of the young guys at Essex – particularly Maurice Chambers and Mervyn Westfield, who could both play for England one day – and realised that, if I’d worked with Ian at their age, my bowling would have gone to a whole new level and I might not have had so many problems with injuries. I rang him, explained the situation and said, ‘Is there any chance you could come out here for a
week? I’ll pay all your bills.’ Despite all the things he had on his plate, he didn’t hesitate. He cancelled his plans and flew straight out.

Typically of South Africans, the ground staff at Port Elizabeth couldn’t have been more helpful. Nothing was too much trouble for them. The authorities also supplied us with an armed guard who came everywhere with us, a loaded revolver on his hip. He became part of the team for the week. Fortunately he never had to use his gun.

Ian and I got through a lot of work on both batting and bowling. By the time the rest of the squad came back from Sun City, I was feeling happier about my game and up for the challenge. We had a couple of warm-up matches and I took a few wickets but you didn’t need to be Russell Grant to work out that Craig White was going to be first-choice
all-rounder
, despite the fact that he was recovering from an injury. But there was something even bigger that looked like standing in the way of my childhood dream of representing England in the World Cup. Politics.

We flew down to Cape Town for the opening ceremony, which was staged at Newlands in some style, but it was overshadowed for the England lads by the row that had been brewing for some time about whether or not we should play the match scheduled for Zimbabwe. This was at the time when it was becoming generally accepted that Robert Mugabe’s regime was one of the most oppressive in the world and there were plenty of people ready to advise us what we should do. Several pressure groups in England felt it would be immoral for us to play there, claiming it would seem that we were endorsing an evil despot. The British government also made it clear they didn’t want us to go but being
mealy-mouthed
politicians they insisted it wasn’t their place to stop
us. The ECB didn’t want to pull out because they might face a hefty fine, rumoured to be $10million. The ICC, who were organising the tournament, could see nothing but the problems they would have with TV companies and sponsors if the games had to be moved, and were threatening that we would lose the points if we failed to go.

So, while everyone seemed to have a strong opinion, if anyone was going to take a stand on moral grounds, it was down to us. Cricketers would have to put principles above their desire to play in the World Cup. The turkeys would have to vote for Christmas.

I’ve never been political and have to admit that I always read a newspaper from the back. I don’t take much interest in domestic politics let alone international affairs, but I knew something of the situation in Zimbabwe from conversations I’d had in Australia with BBC correspondent Pat Murphy. He is big on human rights and felt passionately that we should not support Mugabe’s regime by playing in Zimbabwe. He’d already told the BBC he wouldn’t cover the match if it were played. He explained to me about some of the atrocities that went on there, the beatings, torture, rape and murder, and my first thought was why the hell has nothing been done about this before? Why is it being left to cricketers to bring pressure on Mugabe? What had the world leaders being doing about it?

We were staying in the Cullinan Hotel, an impressive building near Cape Town’s waterfront and within sight of Table Mountain. It had everything you could want from a hotel but it was hard to enjoy our stay because we were constantly under the cloud of the Zimbabwe controversy. It was the only topic of conversation among the players, even though the other matches were now only days away, and the
situation became even more pressurised when the ECB announced they had received a message from a group calling themselves the Sons and Daughters of Zimbabwe. The letter said that, however much we might condemn the regime, if we travelled to Harare we would still be ‘wittingly or unwittingly taking part in Mugabe’s propaganda’. It went on: ‘Our message to you is simple: COME TO ZIMBABWE AND YOU WILL GO BACK TO BRITAIN IN WOODEN COFFINS.’ The letter finished: ‘Our advice is this: DON’T COME TO ZIMBABWE OR YOUR PLAYERS WILL BE LIVING IN FEAR FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.’

That concentrated a lot of minds and was enough for several players to decide they definitely didn’t want to go. We had meeting after meeting. The World Cup security people assured us there was no danger – ‘We’ll have a jet waiting and, if we have to get you out, we’ll get you out.’ Then we were summoned to a meeting with the Australian chief executive of the ICC, Malcolm Speed, who didn’t seem to give a toss about what we thought and told us that, if we didn’t play, Zimbabwe would be awarded the match. Nasser had many fine points as a captain and he has a great record, but calm negotiation is not one of his strong suits. He ended up having a slanging match with Speed and completely lost it. He yelled, ‘I want to know where my wife and children are right now and if they’re safe! That’s what I care about at this moment, not your fucking World Cup!’

There was an extraordinary atmosphere: players were in tears, and some people you’d think would be the first to defy the odds were among the most timid.

I was totally confused and went off to my room to think out my own position. I took it as read that nothing we did should show support for Mugabe and his henchmen. But I
was very doubtful that 11 Englishmen failing to turn up for a cricket match would make an ounce of difference to a man who was willing to condone the murder of his fellow citizens. People said that the sporting boycott of South Africa helped bring apartheid to an end but it seemed to me the collapse of that oppression had been much more to do with a guy called Nelson Mandela. And I couldn’t help thinking that people like the singer Paul Simon, who had been criticised for going to sing in South Africa, had in fact done more than those who stayed away to undermine the system because he had played and recorded with black musicians and performed to mixed audiences.

I also remembered the Moscow Olympic boycott of 1980. I had been just nine years old and Carl Lewis was one of my heroes. He’d been denied what would have undoubtedly been two or three gold medals because the USA had refused to take part in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As I sat on my bed in Cape Town 23 years later, it was clear US troops were about to invade that same country. And I thought back to my England A tour of Pakistan, where we had been taken to a place near Peshawar on the Afghan border and shown what was basically an arms supermarket. You could buy anything you wanted – Cobra handguns with rounds of ammunition for $50, automatic weapons that could pierce brick walls, AK47 machine guns and a Stinger – a rocket-launcher that would set you back a couple of thousand bucks but came with two shells. Most of the weapons were clearly American and had been supplied to fight the Soviets but were now being sold to fight against US forces. If countries like America could get in such a muddle over what was the right thing to do, what chance had I to make the correct decision?

I phoned John Bird and Frank Dick, who agreed that the decision should not be ours. Graham Gooch, who had been vilified for taking a rebel tour to South Africa, sympathised with our position and was convinced his tour, like Paul Simon’s music, had helped to undermine the system from within by coaching black kids. When I asked Keith Fletcher what he thought about the threat by the Sons and Daughters of Zimbabwe, he said, ‘Don’t let them stop you. We were threatened by Black September, who were a serious crew, and we still played.’

Lorraine said, ‘Whatever you decide, I will back you. Just take care.’

I had a secret meeting with Andy Flower in a Cape Town hotel. I wanted to know how he felt as a Zimbabwean. I knew he was a good listener and would give me an honest view. He was opposed to the regime and I was prepared to give a lot of weight to what he thought. I asked him what he was doing.

‘I’m going to play,’ he said. ‘Henry Olonga and I are planning to do something on the day. I can’t tell you what it is yet. Look, I perfectly understand that most of the England guys don’t want to go. It has to be a personal choice.’

As we found out later, he and Henry wore black arm bands when they played, which I thought was incredibly powerful and brave. If I’d known that was what they had in mind, I think I would have recommended the England team did the same.

Nasser summoned us to a players-only meeting when we would all have a chance to say our piece. I realised one person in our squad was suffering more than most during all this. Duncan Fletcher was a Zimbabwean and was stuck in the middle, so the night before the meeting I went to see him
in his room. Even though he didn’t pick me very often, I had a lot of respect for Duncan as a coach and as a man. I didn’t know what he felt about the situation but, realising that each of the players was going to have to say where he stood, I wanted Duncan to understand that, if my view was different from his, it was not personal. I said to him, ‘Duncan, I’m sorry about the position you find yourself in. I just wanted you to know ahead of the meeting that I will be voting to go. Partly it is selfish – cricket is my passion and this is my chance to play in a World Cup – but I also happen to think it is the best way for us to make a protest, to demonstrate support for the oppressed people of Zimbabwe.’ He didn’t reveal his view either way but he started to well up and so did I.

Nasser had been canvassing opinion before the meeting and called me into the pool room before it was due to start. ‘You know you are in a minority of one, don’t you?’ he said. I thought he was going to tell me to button my lip for the sake of team solidarity, but instead he added, ‘What’s going on in your head?’

‘I believe we should go, Nass. I think we should play in Harare, kick their arses, put two fingers up to Mugabe, then get back here, regroup and get on with trying to win the World Cup. We are cricketers, not politicians.’

‘What about the threatening letter, the safety aspect?’

‘I don’t think there is one.’

‘And if there is?’

‘Then we’ll deal with it.’

At this point all the pressure and tension I’d been feeling welled up in me and I started to cry. Nasser cried too and said, ‘I’ll say this for you, you’re a brave bastard, Irani,’ and he walked out of the room.

The players’ meeting was one of the most emotional and
bizarre I have ever been involved in as a cricketer. Most were clearly against going, some on moral grounds, some because of the threat, and a few I thought because they were aware of opinion back in England and didn’t want to appear to be bad guys. Alec Stewart was torn – he didn’t want to be a rebel, but he is a winner in everything he does in life and he desperately wanted the chance to win the World Cup.

When it came to my turn, I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong way, but I think we should go.’ I outlined my views that boycotts made no difference and were just an easy way out for politicians who should be tackling the situation themselves. I repeated that I thought we would do more to undermine Mugabe and give heart to those under his heel by thrashing his team in front of him, and I owned up to the fact that, while I despised the ICC for putting us in this position, I was desperate not to lose the points and damage our chances of winning the World Cup.

One of the lads asked about the threatening letter and I replied, ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s real, you’ve seen it. You can’t just ignore it.’