by David Lloyd
His argument was a bit old school: even when it took him time to get going, once set he was a good bet for a big hundred. I countered that if he took that time but got out, we were missing the chance to make merry in that important 15-over period when the fielding restrictions were in place. Just three years earlier, before I had become coach, Sri Lanka had shown the merits of an aggressive attitude during the first part of an innings and their momentum took them all the way to the trophy. In the end Hick came round, but he took some persuading in private and even then I’m not sure he fully agreed with the scheme.
It was in Hick’s native Zimbabwe that the episode for which my England tenure will best be remembered took place. I wasn’t long into the job; only a few days of 1997 had passed in fact when I became the focus of some sensational headlines and an official reprimand from my bosses for my behaviour. Not for an abject defeat, nor an horrendous performance but for allegedly being graceless in reaction to a drawn Test match with Zimbabwe, the newest of the Test-playing nations at that time.
In my defence, I felt they had pushed the spirit of the game to its limits with their tactics; we had played all the cricket and they had done no more than play the role of spoilers by pushing the interpretations of fairness to the nth degree. Others in my situation might have kept tight-lipped but I refused to, and my suggestion that ‘we flippin’ murdered them’ will stick with me forever.
We flew into Harare on that tour and were to stay at the Monomotapa hotel, one known to me as it had been a base on an Under-19 tour in the not so distant past. I did not favour it and made that known to my superiors, suggesting that Meikles or the Sheraton, two higher-class establishments in the city, were decent alternatives. In the build up to the tour Medha Laud, one of the best sports administration staff you could wish to have working for you, went out on a recce and reported misgivings about the place but Tim Lamb, the then chief executive of the ECB, dismissed them and argued it was a suitable establishment.
Interestingly, though, when he arrived later in the tour he ventured to the Sheraton. We were due to stay here for quite some time, and while not expecting silk robes and plunge baths I considered the comfort of the team to be a priority. Ian MacLaurin, the board chairman, later revealed his horror at the standard of accommodation we were being asked to stay in while serving our country. He could not believe that ‘pokey’ rooms, lacking air conditioning in 100-degree heat and with barely space to house one grown man let alone two, were suitable at all. Comfortable it was not. South Africa checked in that winter and immediately checked out. It didn’t improve spirits when a member of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union warned us that Harare had its problems with crime – warning against wearing jewellery in public and of predatory prostitutes in a country where sexual diseases, particularly AIDS, were rampant. It didn’t give off the best impression of Zimbabwe as a country.
Our feelings of being unwelcome only increased when the Harare Sports Club, the capital’s Test venue, prohibited us from even conducting fielding practice at the ground. It meant that what practice we did have took place at the adjacent rugby ground, goalposts and all. On the mornings of match days, rubbish from the home dressing room had found its way into ours and no effort had been made overnight to clear it. General debris and remnants of the previous day’s lunch littered the floor and my daily routine on that tour began with a sweeping-up mission. Despite the soaring temperatures, there were no showers to freshen the players up after hot, sweaty days and that meant dashing back to the hotel immediately after stumps.
If I made a mistake it was keeping all this detail to myself, something I did to avoid looking as though we were ungrateful, grumbling guests. Only later did I realise that putting up and shutting up was the wrong course of action. I even came to view the uncomfortable environment created for us as a tactical ploy from the Zimbabweans, who were coached by Dave Houghton. It may have been. Equally, it could have been mere coincidence. Houghton, a man known to the English media through his time with Worcestershire and someone who has worked in the English game with Derbyshire, Somerset and Middlesex since, has become a good friend and someone whose knowledge of the game I respect.
At the time, it felt like our travelling press corps was only too willing to seize on any negativity that we might exhibit and cast us as aloof and superior. Meanwhile, wherever we went, there were mutterings about how England had not supported Zimbabwe’s case for Test status. But that was a decision taken by the suits at Lord’s, and nothing to do with me or the players out there representing their country. If we became insular on that trip, it was with good reason. Some suggestions were that we had spurned Zimbabwean hospitality on more than one occasion, but other than an invite to Heath Streak’s family farm, which the entire squad attended, I cannot recall another event to which we were asked along.
Our entertainment was therefore of our own making, with cards, chess and Balderdash, a board game for bluffers, all played in the team room at the Monomotapa. Amid all the criticism appearing in the newspapers back home and faxed over to us daily, suggesting that the players had become reclusive and uninterested, I took the decision on behalf of the team to turn down an invitation to spend some of Christmas Day with the British press pack. I was told that there was some tradition in sharing a drink or two and for the scribes to put on their version of a pantomime. But I just felt that to share in festivities with those who had been overly critical of us on a daily basis would have been hypocritical. This was not supposed to be a jolly.
Harare has few delights. In terms of the Test circuit, it’s a city among the most dingy and depressing, and also smacked of the worst excesses of the old colonial days. During play, from our vantage point in the away changing room, we could see members of the Colonial Club adjacent, sat in the stand drinking beer from bottles served to them by black waiters. Every time one was emptied, it found its way onto the grass between the stand and the boundary rope, where one of the waiters was expected to venture to collect it. It became a demeaning game, taking on the image of some racist ceremony, as more and more bottles made their way into this area, the majority of which were thrown while one of the waiters was in the vicinity picking up. At one point, I made my way out to pick one up myself and return it to the hulking neanderthal who had thrown it. The whole booze-fuelled group went berserk, and although I was a little nervous because of my actions, I was pleased I had made my point. Some of my dearest friends in cricket are black and to sit in silence was to do them a disservice.
This was an unseemly and disturbing backdrop to the cricket, and although I wouldn’t use this as an excuse for our poor performances, I would argue that it puts into some context our state of mind. To be frank, although we didn’t do ourselves justice with the white ball, our Test cricket was not as bad as it was portrayed.
Rustiness undoubtedly contributed to us losing a warm-up match, the first of the tour, to Mashonaland, and our lethargy extended into a one-day defeat to a President’s XI. Despite beating Matabeleland, we then proved woeful in losing the first ODI by two wickets despite reducing Zimbabwe to 106 for seven in their chase for 153.
To add to the discontent, we were then given early morning notice by the match referee Hanumant Singh that we were being fined for sporting oversized logos on our bats, a threat averted following contact with his boss, the ICC chief executive David Richards. Hanumant was fastidious by nature and a little bit of an oddball. Some of our players thought he had been given his comeuppance one day when, having entered our dressing room, it was noted that he had bird shit all over one shoulder of his ICC blazer. The giggles were cut short, however, after the ex-Indian international referred to his new fashion accessory by claiming it must stay there all day in order to bring him good luck.
It had not been an ideal build-up, but then there rarely was one when it came to touring at that time. You travelled with limited resources, and we were thin on the ground from a playing perspective with just fourteen to select from, with Dominic Cork absent on compas
sionate leave and Ronnie Irani having injections in his back.
Still, we headed into that fourth-innings chase in Bulawayo on 22 December 1996 with every chance of winning. Nick Knight had played absolutely brilliantly to get us to within striking distance of our 205-run target. But after Zimbabwe resorted to bowling balls you wouldn’t have reached with a yard brush – artfully varied with one outside leg followed by the next outside off – the equation became five runs required from three deliveries, and then three from the final one.
With the one television monitor in our viewing area on the blink, I had made my way to the boundary edge near the sightscreen to assess the Zimbabweans’ liberal interpretation of what constituted a fair delivery. Arms folded, lips pursed, anyone who knew the real me would have recognised I was ticking.
Heath Streak sent down a low full toss that Knight drove out to deep cover. Unfortunately, Darren Gough was at the non-striker’s end. Had it been Linford Christie, my infamous ‘flippin’ murdered ’em’ outburst would not have made it into English cricket’s pantheon. As it was, our whole-hearted fast bowler from Barnsley was left short of his ground as Andy Flower collected the throw from the deep and whipped off the bails. Result: match drawn with the scores level.
‘England finish tantalisingly one run short,’ Bob Willis was telling the live television audience. ‘Controversial tactics from Zimbabwe as they fired the ball wide either side of the wickets. We have seen one-day finishes all over the world, but we have never seen a Test match end like this.’
Nick sloped off disconsolate. The rest of our lads were perched just outside the tented area in front of our dressing rooms. I was seething. I’ve always been passionate about winning. But I felt we had been on the end of some sharp practice. It was not the way I thought the game should be played.
My emotional response was a reflection of my personality – passionate and patriotic. The players were emotional too, and they were my players. As a coach, my primary responsibility was to them. Contracts can say whatever you want them to say, but the one constant in any that you sign is that you are the custodian of that group. They had been denied a special moment – Test wins are to be treasured and it was an era in which we didn’t claim too many. I knew how much they wanted to win, and it was my belief that their quest for success had been stymied by gamesmanship.
In my view, only one of the two teams had been trying to play the game properly, and I stormed into the umpires’ room to take up the issue of wides with them. Steve Dunne dismissed me in a flash and so I marched off to see Hanumant to discuss what constituted ‘the spirit of the game’. He had referred to this in the build-up to the series, but now he only suggested that was something for the umpires to interpret.
Upon the conclusion of the presentation ceremony, I was involved in an exchange with a few locals, including the parents of Alistair Campbell, the Zimbabwean captain. Starting with taunts like ‘you couldn’t even beat us’, their tone and language became increasingly inflammatory and loud. It was later said that in losing my cool I gave them a two-finger response. For clarity, the salute I gave consisted of a single finger but it should not have been raised.
Back in the dressing room, Ian Botham, our temporary bowling coach, tried to calm me down before I went to the press conference. It gave me time to think about what I was going to say, but even then, with a few minutes to cool off, I could not hide my true feelings.
I was certainly good copy for the travelling press pack that evening. ‘We couldn’t reach half the deliveries but that’s the way it goes,’ I told Charles Colvile in an interview with Sky Sports later. With me in that mood, however, pseudo diplomacy was never going to last long: ‘We’ve absolutely hammered them and they know it.’
I was not one to bite my tongue and so when Colvile playfully commented ‘terrific game of Test cricket there’ it slackened my jaw. ‘It would be, to be a draw in the end, and everyone to be on the edge of their seats. That’s a moral victory for us. When you have got nine people on the boundary at the end of the game, you are not in the match.’
‘England would have done the same in that position?’ Colvile wondered.
‘Probably would have done. Probably would. If you want to play that way, carry on.’
Then, I gave a slight variation on the views I provided in the written press’s post-match conference: ‘I am sure it would have been compulsive viewing. It looked marvellous, getting so close. But we have murdered ’em, hammered ’em. We know it and they know it.’
This, along with the more roundly quoted ‘we’ve flippin’ murdered ’em’ comment, was a figure of speech. The kind of language you might use to your mates down the pub. Colloquial, earthy, no more than a sound bite. But crikey, did it cause a reaction.
Of course, those resident in Zimbabwe saw this quite differently, with one newspaper suggesting it was ‘distasteful’ that I should have made such ‘loutish and unsporting remarks’. Another writer suggested I had mistaken myself for the head of the Barmy Army, which at least made me chuckle.
Those in authority had contrasting views: Hanumant Singh, in his capacity as match referee, dismissed it, but Tim Lamb, the ECB’s chief executive, did not. On a visit to my hotel room, Lamb reeled off a charge sheet of complaints that he said had been formed after consultation with journalists he respected and members of the crowd. It was a surreal experience, listening to my direct boss relay observations and accusations about my behaviour, jotting down what he said on the back of an envelope. That face-to-face meeting was the equivalent of a yellow card. It was followed by an official letter a fortnight later, after we had moved on to New Zealand, reiterating that some of my conduct had not only tarnished my own reputation but that of the team. Before signing off, he added, rather insincerely it seemed to me: ‘This particular episode apart, let me assure you that you have the absolute support of the Board.’
We travelled to New Zealand after wet weather washed away our chances of pushing for victory in the second Test. We had started poorly but were well on the way to completing a turnaround. But we were underwhelming in the 3-0 defeat in the one-day series, and our habit of taking time to get into our stride in matches, often starting poorly as a result, threatened to limit our prospects against the Kiwis. We probably should have won all three Tests but settled for victory by a slightly narrower margin and could have even have been pegged back to 1-1, which would have been a massive injustice in my book, on the final day of the third Test.
But for Danny Morrison, a batsman notorious as the worst on the international stage and a holder of a record twenty-four Test ducks, holding us up for three hours alongside Nathan Astle as a nailed-on win in the first Test was transformed into a draw, that series finale would have been a dead rubber. That was another tear-your-hair-out moment for me but we got through it, and at the end of a chastening winter, to borrow the captain Michael Atherton’s much-used phrase, winning is all that matters.
People said I had eccentric methods as England coach, but I wouldn’t concur with that at all. I wanted us to be proud representing our country on the world stage. A ‘we will fight them on the beaches’ spirit. That refusal to surrender represented the kind of attitude I wanted to instil. On the team ghettoblaster I played anthems such as ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ in a bid for patriotism and commitment to the cause.
Never was commitment to the cause better demonstrated during my three years than in the 1998 series win over South Africa. The microcosm of that summer was provided at Trent Bridge, the scene of one of the great fast-bowling/opening batsmen duels cricket has witnessed. To set the scene, we headed into the fourth innings needing 247 to win. Allan Donald was bowling around the wicket to Michael Atherton, who was our rock in these run-chase situations, when a short ball appeared to hit the glove on its way through. Atherton – as was the trend of that era and incidentally remains so, even with the introduction of the technology-driven review system – stood his ground and Steve Dunne, the neutral umpire, cl
early doubtful contact had been made, turned down the caught-behind appeal. It was a decision that clearly incensed Donald.
A flurry of verbals followed as Donald stood and glared at his opponent. Atherton, often stirred into his best innings by confrontation, remained outwardly impassive but did make eye contact with the South African. Here were two unbelievably proud blokes standing their ground. It was gladiatorial, raw, tense. It was theatre.
This had echoes of a seismic scrap from my playing days between another South African, Mike Procter, and my dear pal Clive Lloyd in a second-round Gillette Cup match between Lancashire and Gloucestershire at Old Trafford in July 1978. Due to a rain intervention the match spilled over into a second day, and having resumed on 7 for one, we were soon 33 for three, in pursuit of a 267-run target. We were struggling and in need of a big partnership for the fourth wicket.
That’s exactly what we got thanks to Procter flicking Clive’s switch. The Gloucestershire man was bouncing back to his mark, full of beans, in the belief that they were going to get a rare one over on us. Despite being a very good side we were their bogey team and used to nail them, usually securing victory after an epic contest swung this way and that. Almost invariably, our meetings with them were the best matches of the season.
He walked past and said to the pair of us: ‘You ain’t f***ing winning this one.’ That certainly got Clive’s competitive juices flowing. Procter, bowling from the Stretford End with the wind at his back, bounced Clive, who got in an almighty tangle but managed to get just enough bat on ball to spiral a top edge over fine leg for six. While it sent Procter into a rage, I soon discovered the incident had altered Clive’s mood too as we met in the middle of the pitch.