Authors: Ronnie Irani
I said, ‘I’ve had lots of threats in my life and they’ve never come to anything. Even if it is real, it’s an attempt at intimidation and bullying and, if I’d let bullies win in my life, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you lot.’
There was silence for a moment. Then they all clapped me. Craig White came up and said, ‘Great effort, pal. I wish I could stand up and do that.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘I don’t think we should go.’
My powers of persuasion had been so strong that, when it came to the vote, there was only one hand that went up to go! Most of the lads came up and shook my hand and deep
down I felt they wanted to be with me from a cricketing point of view but there were too many complications.
I’d had my say: now it was time to shut up, toe the party line and put all my efforts into trying to win the bloody World Cup. It wouldn’t be easy – our opening game was supposed to be the one against Zimbabwe on 13 February and the ECB pulled out of it two days before, refusing to travel on safety grounds. After a couple of meetings the ICC awarded the points to Zimbabwe who, having beaten Namibia in their first match, were already eight points ahead of us before we’d bowled a ball.
We had a couple of comfortable wins over the Netherlands and Namibia. I was selected for the second of those matches and was England’s leading bowler with three wickets but was left out for the next game against Pakistan. However, another victory meant we still had a chance of being one of the three teams to qualify for the Super Six stage. We really needed to beat India but we came up against Ashish Nehra, the guy I’d caught out at the Oval the summer before, who gained his revenge. And how! Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh helped them to 250 but Nehra never allowed us to threaten in the run chase. I was his final victim in a spell of 6-23 that included Nasser and Stewie in consecutive balls.
Now we had to beat Australia to go through. Ironically, they and Namibia had played in Zimbabwe and there had been no safety problems for either side. The match was to be played on the pitch where I had taken three wickets two weeks before and I knew the conditions were perfect for me. All I had to do was to bowl a good line and length and the batsmen would get themselves out. Nasser agreed when I told him but he and Duncan still decided on Craig White and I had to watch from the balcony.
Nick Knight and Marcus Trescothick gave us a decent start but then Andy Bichel got to work and took seven cheap wickets to restrict us to 205. It seemed that might just be enough on that pitch and things looked good when Andrew Caddick took four early wickets with only 48 on the board. Even after a mini-revival, the best one-day side in the world were struggling on 135-8 when Brett Lee was run out. But Bichel proved as stubborn with the bat as he had been accurate with the ball and provided great back-up for Michael Bevan who was in good nick. With two overs to go, Australia needed 14 to win. Nasser had to make a big call: either bowl Andy Caddick, the experienced campaigner, or Jimmy Anderson, the hot young bowler who was a bit green but had been in superb form throughout the tournament. He went for Jimmy and Bichel hoisted him over mid-wicket for six. Bevan scored the winning runs with two balls left in the game and somehow Australia had escaped.
Nasser came to my room that evening cursing himself for not going with experience but explained he’d been swayed by the thought that Caddick had never done well for him at the death in one-day cricket. I told him not to take it to heart. He’d made the decision he felt was best for the team and he could do no more. It was easy for the armchair experts with the benefit of hindsight to say they would have gone with experience but if I’m honest I might well have made the same decision. These are the kinds of calls you have to make as captain. They don’t always work out but you have to be true to your instincts. He didn’t need the press to have a go at him: he was beating himself up enough for all of them. His brain was scrambled with the disappointment that we all shared.
Two days later, we watched on TV as Zimbabwe’s game
against Pakistan was washed out in a freak Bulawayo monsoon. The two points they picked up were enough to put them above us in the table and we were left to go home and face the music. There was no consoling Nasser and before we left South Africa he announced that he was standing down as ODI captain.
The World Cup had been a massive anti-climax. The whole sorry mess was summed up for me in a news report which read, ‘If the ECB and the ICC were batsmen, they would currently be marooned halfway down the wicket shouting, “Yes!” “No!” “Wait!” “Maybe!” in each other’s faces, oblivious to the fact that the stumps were already broken at both ends of the pitch. The entire World Cup has been overshadowed by a row that should never have been allowed to develop in the first place.’
As far as I was concerned, we weren’t knocked out because of Nasser’s decision to bowl Jimmy Anderson, we were eliminated because we hadn’t gone to Zimbabwe and I had been brought up to believe that you never give games away. I passionately believed and still believe it was a decision that should never have been left to the players. Tony Blair and his government were loud when it came to saying we shouldn’t go, but cowards when it came to making a decision that the ICC would have had to listen to. For all their moralistic talk and the pressure they were willing to put on a group of sportsmen, the politicians still haven’t done anything about Mugabe. Even though we didn’t play in Harare, the situation in Zimbabwe has got worse and worse and the poor people of that country have been increasingly trodden into the ground. It seems it is easy for politicians to have opinions about what others should do, much harder to take the actions that are in their own hands.
As for cricket’s governing bodies, I felt angry that they stubbornly refused to do the right thing and move the game in case they upset TV companies and sponsors. It is typical of the scant respect they have for those who play the game. To them television companies and sponsors are important, while cricketers are just the people who provide the side show and are obviously much less worthy of consideration.
I came back from South Africa knowing my international career was over. There would be no way back this time. I have one souvenir of the trip. Before the game in Zimbabwe was called off, we were given our complimentary tickets for friends and family. I managed to round up some from the other lads as well and asked each member of the squad to sign one. They are now mounted around a team picture with a little brass plate that reads: ‘England v Zimbabwe, February 13, 2003. The game that never was.’
W
hile I’d been away on World Cup duty, a series of events for my benefit year at Essex had been put together by my committee under the energetic chairmanship of Anthony Bright and with the indefatigable efforts of the secretary Linda Bennett. They’d pulled out all the stops. In fact, it had started in my absence with a Valentine’s Ball in Chelmsford on the day England heard we’d definitely lost the points for refusing to go to Zimbabwe. They’d left me no time to brood on what might have been. My diary was full of events from fly-fishing and golf days as far apart as Bishop’s Stortford and Dublin, to a night at Romford dogs and a
kick-boxing
championship. There was also a series of dinners, including one in the House of Commons and another at the Guildhall in London.
It was while we were discussing arrangements for this that Grant Simmons, as an official at the Guildhall, said to me, ‘Ronnie, some Essex fans have written to tell us what you’ve achieved for the county and the extensive charity work you’ve done, especially for disadvantaged children. I’d like to
put your name forward for the Freedom of the City of London. Would that be OK?’
I said it would be an honour and felt incredibly proud when on 16 April 2004 my name was added to a list of Freemen that includes Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Florence Nightingale. Not bad company. The Freedom, which dates back to 1237 – around the time Alan Brazil was playing for Ipswich – allows me to drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge while drunk and disorderly and wielding a sword. I don’t have any sheep but might well walk my Dobermans across one day. As for the alcohol, I might ask if I can pass that privilege on to Al. Not that he is ever disorderly – he’s one of those people who becomes mellow with drink, a lover not a fighter, a peacemaker not an aggressor.
Sid Dennis agreed to do a turn at a couple of my dinners and asked if I’d been doing much on the circuit. I told him I’d been too busy with the cricket but the truth was that I’d lost interest after an early date at a rugby club that I’d taken on to help out my mate Jerry Westmore. I’d prepared some new material and, taking Sid’s advice, tested it out on Lorraine while she videoed me so I could see where it needed sharpening up. Believe me, it’s not easy to make your missus laugh when she’s hearing the same routine for the tenth time. But it gave me confidence and I felt pretty good as I made my way to the club. After all, the audience would be intelligent rugby types, not hooligan footballers. Another good lesson in stereotypes for Ronnie.
They were the biggest group of piss heads I’ve ever encountered in my life. Over the years I’ve spoken in some of the roughest neighbourhoods in some hard towns, areas where even a 6ft 4in kick boxer thinks twice before venturing
out alone. But they have usually turned out to be the places where they pay you before you speak, are always friendly and are among the best gigs. The rugby club was one of the worst.
The meal turned into a food fight. Bread-roll throwing was just the warm-up. Before long all sorts of food was flying about. One guy near where I was sitting picked up a bowl of trifle and just launched it, covering about half-a-dozen people in fruit and custard. I expected a fight to break out but everyone seemed to think it was hilarious. A potato whizzed through the air, bounced off my plate and just missed me. I looked up to find out who had flung it and saw the crust end of a French loaf flying straight towards my head. I caught it like a slip fielder and instinctively threw it straight back where it had come from. It hit the guy who had originally chucked it and he was so drunk it knocked him over. No one took any notice. They just left him crumpled up on the floor.
It was bedlam. I got up to speak and no one was taking the slightest notice. I was halfway through a story when I heard a loud, slurred voice say, ‘The pack would like to take wine with the wankers in the backs who fuck up every time we win the ball.’ There were loud jeers from one section, ‘hear hears’ from another, and yet more wine went down the hatch without touching the sides. It was a nightmare. I told myself to ignore them and just remember these tossers had provided the money that was paying me. I cut my speech short, collected my fee and left. I sat in my car and phoned Lorraine. ‘Never again,’ I vowed.
But Sid had revived the idea in my head and, when I saw guys like Jack Charlton and Gladstone Small stand up and speak at my benefit dinners, I thought I really should give it another go. They seemed to enjoy it and were obviously making good money. I had a word with John Collier, an agent
for some of the guys on the circuit, and he thought he could get me work, so I set about putting together some new material. John put me in touch with Ian Richards and Mike Farrell, who are regular after-dinner comedians, and they helped me work up a script based on cricket stories with a few jokes thrown in.
‘Keep your gags relevant,’ they advised. ‘For instance, when you are talking about playing the Aussies you could say, “I landed at Melbourne airport and immigration asked me if I had a criminal record. I replied that I didn’t think I still needed one to enter Australia.”’
‘And remember,’ Mike added, ‘you’ve got to keep refreshing the material.’
I took everything on board, worked at polishing my script and I know if I’m stuck for some topical gags I can always rely on Sid or Mike to feed me a few lines to drop in. For instance, when Dwain Chambers tried to salvage his career after his drugs ban by joining Castleford Tigers rugby league club, Mike suggested, ‘Say they should change their name to Castleford Cheetahs. Also when Dwain was asked if he wanted tea at half-time, he said, “No, I’ll stick to coke.”’
Mike also gave me some good tips on dealing with hecklers, although I’ve been quite lucky and not had too much trouble. You don’t want to put them down too badly – after all they are the paying customers – and they could have mates in the room who might turn ugly. Most of the time, I try to win them over like I did the crowd in Australia, or I’ll say something like, ‘Usually I do this on my own but, if you want to join me and make two of us look like prats instead of one, feel free.’ That usually quietens them down.
One night there was a guy sitting just a few yards from me. He was a big fella with a large gold earring and he just
wouldn’t stop chipping in as I was making my speech. Eventually I decided I had to deal with him so I said, ‘Excuse me, pal, but can I help you?’ That stopped him talking just long enough for me to add, ‘You know, where I come from men who wear earrings are either poofs or pirates and I didn’t see any fucking ships in the car park when I arrived.’ That brought a big laugh from everybody, including the guy himself, and from then on it all went smoothly.
I really get a buzz out of after-dinner speaking. Just before I stand up to speak, I get the same kind of nerves that I used to feel before I went into bat but that just helps get the adrenaline going. One of my favourite nights was when I was asked to speak in Darren Gough country near Barnsley. They were a great audience and it all went well. The only slight doubt I had was one guy, around 40, solidly built,
shaven-headed
and I guessed probably an ex-miner or reformed Hell’s Angel. He sat with his arms folded all through my speech and never smiled once. At the end when most people were on their feet clapping, he never even twitched. Then he came over, thrust his menu at me and said, ‘Sign that, lad.’
As I signed he said, ‘Well done tonight. I’ve been coming here 20 years and you’re one of the best I’ve heard. In fact, you are probably the best.’
I thought he was taking the piss and replied, ‘Thank you. I hope you’ve had a good night. But I have to say from where I was standing it didn’t look like it. You never laughed at the jokes and you didn’t even applaud at the end. You don’t have to be polite – if you didn’t enjoy it, say so.’
‘Nay, lad. You heard what I said. You’re the best I’ve seen. But it’s only a job of work and, when I finish my work at night, no fucker stands up and claps me.’
Anyone who thinks that a player’s benefit year involves just
arranging some events, turning up and then counting the money should think again. It’s hard and quite embarrassing work. You spend a lot of time on the phone trying to persuade people to take a table at a dinner or put a four-ball into a golf day. As Linda pointed out to me, ‘They don’t want me calling, Ronnie, they want to hear from
you
. I might persuade one in ten to take a table but you are more likely to get seven or eight.’ It’s not a great job, but, if you want the thing to go well, you’ve got to work the phone.
One of the ways you make money at these events is to hold an auction of items that people would find hard to get anywhere else, such as a bat signed by the England cricket team or a signed David Beckham shirt. There’s quite an art to running an auction and I was recommended to bring in the former Warwickshire captain and TV pundit Dermot Reeve. He agreed to do it and said he could lower his fee if he could bring along a couple of auction items himself, one of which we’d split and one he’d have to boost his fee. I agreed and was impressed when the item he produced for us to share was an album signed by John Lennon. The one for himself was an album signed by Elvis Presley! He ended up almost making more from the auction than I did, but fair dos – he’d only done what I’d agreed to. He’d handled it so well I asked him to come back and run another auction. This time he said he’d bring one item that we would split and again he turned up trumps: a signed photo of Australian cricket legend Don Bradman.
A few days later, Linda told me it was time to get back on the phone and start selling tables at the last few dinners. I started with a call to a good friend – a successful, self-made, local businessman called Mark Anderson. He and his wife Tricia are fantastic, genuine people and had supported a lot
of my benefit events, but I sensed a little reluctance when I called him.
‘Ronnie,’ he said, ‘we’ll come to the Halloween night but I can’t support them all. I’ve got a budget for this kind of thing and the last dinner cost me quite a lot what with the table and the auction item.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure what you mean. I’ve seen the list and you didn’t buy an auction item last time.’
‘Yes I did. I bid for the Bradman photo and didn’t get it. Then afterwards Dermot Reeve came up to me and said he’d got another one in the car so I took it and paid him.’
Needless to say, I hadn’t seen a penny of that money. In fact, I haven’t seen Dermot since then. A couple of years later he resigned from Channel 4 when it came out that he had a
£
200-a-week cocaine habit. The last I heard he was in New Zealand trying to rebuild his life. I wish him well, but I’d still like to have a word.
Back on the cricket pitch, my young Essex side were struggling to cope with life in Division One again. I’m not sure some of the money men at Chelmsford minded too much, though, because we earned more from getting promotion every other year than we would have done if we’d stayed just above the relegation zone in the top flight – another crazy aspect of the two-division set up. I was struggling a bit with my knee, which kept blowing up, but despite Essex being near the bottom of the table I was reasonably happy that we were heading in the right direction. We had some exceptional young players just beginning to emerge, such as Ravi Bopara, Alastair Cook, Tim Phillips, James Foster, Mark Pettini and Ryan ten Doeschate.
There was a great spirit developing in the dressing room and I knew the young guys trusted me to do what was right
for them as well as the club. At one stage some of them were in contract discussions and, knowing there was a bit of leeway in the budget, I advised them to ask for more. It cost the county a few bob, but they could afford it and it helped cement the bond between me and the players. And I genuinely felt they were worth the money they received.
That season saw the start of the phenomenon known as twenty20. It wasn’t really new at all – most of us had played something similar at junior level where short matches were staged all the time. But introducing it to the professional arena split the cricket community, with opinions varying from it being the saviour of the game to those who believed it marked the end of civilisation as we knew it. Similar things had been said about one-day cricket when that arrived but I had never agreed with the traditionalists who thought it would wreck Test cricket. On the whole, the best one-day players can step up to Test level but there are a lot of fine
five-day
players who struggle at the shorter format. And you only have to watch coverage of matches before the introduction of one-day games to see that the standards of batting and fielding have never been higher. These days, you never see a portly old bloke standing applauding a shot from mid-wicket instead of chasing it down to the boundary.
I was all in favour of twenty20 and took to it straight away. I started to open the batting and wished I’d made the change years before. Keith Fletcher always said it was the best place to bat, especially in one-day matches when the fielding restrictions gave you the chance to put on quick runs, and he was dead right. Even though some of the counties had voted against twenty20, I noticed they quickly changed their minds when the crowds started to grow and they could make as much out of one evening game as the whole of a four-day
match. Some of the players who had been sniffy about it also began to realise they were missing out. It was the keen, fit, young players who were making an impression and enjoying the adulation of big crowds and some of the older guys needed to get their finger out. Leicestershire were one of the first counties to cotton on to the importance of the game, probably because Grace Road was usually empty and their team were pants at everything else!
There’s no doubt in my mind that there is room in the game for all kinds of cricket. There will always be a place for the subtleties of the five-day Test, but equally the Indian Premier League has shown there is a massive demand for the short format. One of the problems that county cricket has – and I’m a big fan of the four-day game – is that the counties are too dependent on the money the ECB hands out from Test matches. While I understand the desire for central contracts for England players to prevent them playing too much cricket, there is no doubt it cuts the attendance at county matches when the big names are not playing.