Mind Over Batter by Graeme Fowler

Author:Graeme Fowler [Fowler, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

CHAPTER 10

IF YOU’D NOT TOOK YOUR HELMET OFF . . .

I’m trying to think of the strangest place I’ve been. Bacup, possibly.

Certainly, cricket takes you to some odd and unexpected destinations, with some odd and unexpected people, sometimes in your own team. As a player you need coping methods to deal with these things. The first time I went to Pakistan, for instance, meetings of more than a few people in public were banned. Cricket matches became a perfect excuse for people, sports fans or otherwise, to get together. That was fine, but often it would mean you were playing to a backdrop of police sirens and smoke bombs. There’d be a complete riot going on in one corner of the ground and we’d just be carrying on regardless. ‘Shall we bring the third man in a bit?’

‘Yes, fine.’

It was the same in India when a temporary stand collapsed – legs and limbs sticking up all over the place and we just carried on. If we asked anyone about stopping, the attitude was always the same – ‘Oh, it happens all the time.’

In India, after Indira Gandhi had been assassinated, and then Sir Percy Norris, the Deputy High Commissioner, was shot dead, we had armed guards travelling with us to and from the grounds in a truck behind the team bus. It occurred to me I was on the wrong vehicle.

‘OK,’ I thought, ‘if anyone’s going to shoot at the bus, I know where I’m sitting.’ And so every day I sat in the truck, an open-topped troop carrier with two bench seats. At first they didn’t talk to me, but after a few days they opened up. That’s when I found out they had three bullets each because they had to buy their own. ‘Look,’ I said to the soldier next to me, ‘if anything kicks off, I’ll pay for yours.’

This went on for weeks, until one day I thought I’d go back on the team bus. The players wouldn’t let me on. ‘Get off!’ they were shouting. ‘You don’t come on here. Get on the truck!’

That truck was possibly the most peace and quiet I had on the whole tour. In Chandigarh, I was rooming with Lamby, always a nightmare. If I had any fruit, he’d chuck it in the ceiling fan and it would go everywhere. He’d been out with Beefy and Imran one night and I was in bed when he came back. There was a bodyguard outside the room, sat on a chair with a gun. It was the same bloke the whole time we were there, so I’d talk to him and ask how he was. At 5 a.m. on the last night, I was woken up by this same soldier shaking me. His head was right next to mine. ‘Wake up! Wake up!’

I sat bolt upright. ‘What? What’s happening?’ I thought we were being attacked.

Just as I was looking for the nearest window to jump out of, he explained. ‘I want your autograph.’

‘You what?’

‘I leave today and I won’t see you again.

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