The best job I had in Jo’burg was being a barman at the Wanderers’ ground for the big games there. The Pirates had a box and, naturally, they asked me to man the bar. I can’t say it was the most taxing of jobs. I didn’t even have to take cash because there was always some sort of raffle ticket system in operation. I just had to open a few bottles of beer, pour the occasional glass of wine and watch a lot of cricket. And it just so happened that England were touring South Africa that year, so I got to spend a full five days at the second Test when Mike Atherton and Jack Russell staged their famous rearguard action. They certainly worked a lot harder out there than I did up in the bar.
But the important thing about my jobs was that they gave me enough beer money to take advantage of the opportunities for socialising provided by my thoughtful Pirates team-mates. There were plenty of them. Sometimes, I would go out the night before a game with the Smith brothers, Paul and Bruce, and we would put our cricket kit in the car before we went out. That way, we could stay out until the early hours, then drive to wherever we were playing, get a few hours’ kip in the car and wait for our team-mates to wake us up when they arrived. One important part of the procedure was that, before you went to sleep, you had to make sure that your car was under a tree and facing west, so you wouldn’t get burned by the sun when it came up in the morning.
Drink-driving was just not an issue in South Africa in those days. There would be times when we would go on a night out and, while we were driving from one bar to another, everyone would jump out of the car at a red traffic light, run around the car until the lights turned to green, then the one standing nearest the driver’s door had to jump back in and start driving. Everyone else had to squeeze in as well if they could and, if they didn’t, they were left behind. There would be people jumping through windows, hanging onto the roof. We obviously thought it was funny at the time, but it seems like absolute bloody madness now.
Another time when I was out with Bruce Smith, we’d ended up in the Cat’s Pyjamas (nice name), a 24-hour drinking place. For some reason, Bruce suggested we go to the Emmarentia Dam, which was a short drive away. He dared me to swim the 30 metres or so across it, run round a lamppost at the other side, and swim back again. In the clear-sighted wisdom created by God-knows-how-many bottles of Castle lager, I said I’d do it, as long as he did it with me.
We parked up by the dam on an empty side street, took our clothes off in the car and walked to the dam, stark bollock naked. We started swimming across the dam and I was going fairly well, thinking: ‘Yep, this isn’t so bad, I’ll manage it no problem.’ Then it suddenly started thundering and lightning, which made me think we ought to get a move on. We swam across to the other side of the dam, ran round the lamppost and had swum halfway back across the other way when lightning struck the dam. I’ll never forget that feeling when the shock got through to me, sending tingles throughout my body. Even in my less-than-sober state, I was more than a bit worried. ‘Do you feel all right?’ Bruce asked me. ‘Erm, yes, I think so,’ I lied back.
We were even more worried when we approached the shore and saw a police van parked up near our car. The policemen were wandering around, shining a light into the car and checking the surrounding areas. We stayed in the water† and hid in the reeds at the edge of the dam. ‘If I get caught here, stark bollock naked,’ I thought, ‘I really am in trouble.’ The police seemed to be there for ages and we ducked down every time they shone their torches towards the water. Thankfully they went eventually without spotting us and we scuttled off home to bed, feeling a lot more sober than we had done an hour or two before.
I suppose that these days were my first real taste of freedom, the slightly wild days that everyone needs to get out of their systems. No real responsibilities, no ties, just a fantastic opportunity to make the most of. Some people get that when they go travelling or to university; I was being educated in a rather different sense, concentrating my studies on taking wickets and downing beer.
I even ended up smoking cannabis once or twice, something I’d never even encountered back in Pudsey. And I’ll never forget the first time I tried it, with a bloke called Dean who I played indoor cricket with. We’d been out drinking and playing pool, and Dean then drove us in his VW Beetle to the top of a multi-storey car park that had amazing views over the whole of Jo’burg. He then took his weed out and rolled us a joint. In South Africa, the cannabis is so cheap that they don’t tend to mix it with tobacco, they just smoke the stuff on its own, which makes it pretty powerful, especially if you’ve never touched the stuff before. Dean had certainly touched the stuff before; I hadn’t.
Unsurprisingly, it hit me in a big way. To start with, I got the giggles, uncontrollably. Whatever Dean said, it made me double up with laughter. We then went on to a 24-hour kebab and burger joint to satisfy our munchies. I remember ordering my kebab, sitting down for a while and then walking up to collect my food. All of a sudden, I started to feel really ill. I was going to pass out and I started to panic, thinking of all the stories you see on the news of people who die the first time that they take drugs. And I distinctly remember thinking:
‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die! I don’t want to die, I’m too young to die! What will my mum and dad say if I die like this, slumped in a kebab shop after taking drugs?’
As far as I know, I didn’t die on that occasion. I was woken up shortly afterwards by a big fat bloke handing me my kebab. But it shows how naïve and inexperienced I was that I thought I might be killed by smoking cannabis for the first time.
And so my education continued. I’d better say at this point that, while all these shenanigans were going on away from the cricket field, I was still doing my stuff for the Pirates on a weekend. Both seasons that I was there I ended up as the club’s bowler of the season, something that still makes me proud when I think of it. If you’re turning up to a place where nobody knows you from Adam, the best possible way to make yourself popular is to prove you’re worth your salt as a cricketer.
But more importantly, I really did learn a lot more than just how to live the high life in Jo’burg. Those stories are just the silly bits that stick in my memory the best. But my eyes were opened in a much broader sense by having to make friends in a foreign country, by learning the culture, working out what makes different people tick and how to fit in with them yourself. And I was doing this all on my own. I might not have had much in the way of responsibilities in Jo’burg, but the experience made me much more capable of standing on my own two feet in the future. It’s an experience that gave me a lot of confidence and one for which I shall always be extremely grateful. So thanks again, Ferg, another masterstroke.
If those two years in Jo’burg helped to broaden my views of the world in general, it was during the two seasons I spent playing for Free State in Bloemfontein that I learnt some of my most enduring cricketing lessons. I was much more sensible there. The focus was well and truly on the cricket.
Apart from the fact that I was playing in the first-class game rather than club cricket, the pitches were much more challenging for a seam bowler. Whereas in Jo’burg I’d been bowling at altitude, swinging the ball around on pitches that were often green mambas, in Free State there was no altitude and the tracks resembled the Ml. They were flat, flat, flat, so you had to do a bit more than run in and turn your arm over if you were going to get a decent batsman out.
Ironically, it was bowling on a seam-friendly wicket at Headingley that had got me an invitation to Bloem in the first place, which was a complete and utter fluke. In August 1998, seventeen months or so after I’d finished my second season with the Pirates, South Africa had just lost a Test series in England and were having nets at Headingley before the start of a one-day series with England and Sri Lanka. By this time I was 21 and I wasn’t quite a regular in the Yorkshire side, but I was getting there.
When the South Africans were in town, I was just coming back from injury and it was suggested that I go and bowl at them in the nets at Headingley. As they were preparing for a one-day series, I was bowling with a white ball and the practice pitches