South Africa’s bowling coach on that tour was Corrie van Zyl, who was also a coach at Free State. After I’d finished bowling, he wandered up to me and casually enquired whether I had any plans for the winter. I didn’t, as it happened, so he asked if I fancied going out to Bloemfontein to act as cover for Free State’s bowlers. Given the time I’d had out in South Africa before, this was an opportunity that I wasn’t going to pass up. A couple of months later, I was on my way back there.
I had to bide my time once I’d arrived, though, because the Free State management were reluctant to pick an overseas player ahead of the established locals, particularly in the SuperSport Series, the four-day competition. But I was bowling well in the nets, I turned in some decent figures in one-day cricket and took plenty of wickets in club cricket for the Peshwas. Above all, on those hard, flat pitches, I was learning the value of bowling maidens, boring a batsman out and making him give his wicket away.
I wasn’t given a real run in the four-day stuff until February, but in my second game, against Eastern Province in Bloem, I got five for 60 in the first innings and two for 19 from twenty-one overs in the second innings. They couldn’t really drop me after that.
I was lucky at Free State to play with some very handy cricketers and, when we were at full strength, we had a pretty powerful side. If they weren’t away on international duty, we had Gerry Liebenberg as captain, Hansie Cronje, Nicky Boje and, best of all for me, we had Allan Donald.
Just to turn up at the Free State nets and watch AD go about his work was an inspiration. At the time, there was no bigger superstar in South African cricket, but he would have as much time for a young lad at the Bloemfontein nets as he would for Hansie Cronje. A nicer, more modest and down-to-earth bloke you couldn’t ever wish to meet. Within a few weeks of me being there, AD had roped me in as a babysitter for Hannah and Oliver, his kids, while he and Tina went out for the evening. We’ve been firm friends ever since.
He was also a real help with my bowling. When I arrived in Bloem, I was having a few problems with my run-up and bowling lots of no-balls. To my amazement, AD took me to one side and took a load of time to help me get it right. He moved markers, watched my take-off and landing, and helped me to work out how I could find my rhythm. With his help, I soon got myself sorted.
He also gave me a few tips on reverse-swing, which I didn’t know much about in those days. I was playing in one game at Goodyear Park when AD was just watching, playing with his kids on the boundary and having a drink with the groundsman in the family enclosure. I was bowling at the time but, in the overs in between, I was fielding on the third-man boundary and I signalled to AD to come over for a chat. He came down and I said to him: ‘Al, I need to know something. It’s reversing out there, and I know how to reverse it in to the batsman, but how can I get it to go away?’
‘You know how you try to bowl inswingers with a normal ball, pushing it in with your fingers and your wrist?’ he said. ‘Well, just turn the ball over so the shine’s on the other side and try to do that. You watch, it’ll swing the other way.’
So halfway through my next over, after I’d bowled a couple of inswingers, I did exactly as he’d said. Would you believe it, the ball swung the other way, the batsman got a big nick and was caught behind. The first bloody ball I’d tried it! I yelled in celebration, turned round and pointed with both hands at AD in the family enclosure, where he gave me the thumbs-up back.
In one-day cricket, he used to bowl as first change while I shared the new ball with Herman Bakkes, another right-arm swing bowler. But in one particular one-day match, not long after I’d arrived there, we were playing at home against KwaZulu-Natal. They had a dangerous pinch-hitter called Keith Forde who opened the innings and Gerry Liebenberg said that we wanted our best bowlers bowling at him, which meant AD taking the new ball instead of me. Fairly understandable, I suppose, but I was still a bit pissed off at the lack of confidence shown in me.
Anyway, within the first couple of overs, Herman got Forde out, clean bowled, and Gerry said, ‘Get loose, Hoggy. You’re on at AD’s end next over.’ So I warmed up quickly and, with my third ball, I trapped their number three, Mark Bruyns, lbw plumb in front. As we celebrated the wicket, Gerry came up to me and said: ‘Hoggy, I know you’ve just taken a wicket, but they’ve got Jonty Rhodes coming in next. We want our best bowlers bowling at him, so you’re coming off at the end of this over and I’m bringing AD back on.’
Now that really did piss me off. I went back to my mark in a huff and steamed in at Jonty. His first ball was outside off stump and he left it. The next one nipped back into him and ripped out his middle stump for a duck.† I sprinted down the pitch, arms in the air, and went straight to Gerry, who was keeping wicket, and shouted: ‘JONTY F***ING WHO?’ I think Jonty heard me on his way off and, a couple of years later, I did offer a belated apology and explained why I’d reacted like a nutter. I was a teensy-weensy bit wound up at the time. I think I’d made my point to Gerry in the best possible way and I was allowed to complete my spell, so on that occasion at least AD had to wait his turn.
No doubt about it though, AD will go down as one of the real good guys of the game. The same probably can’t be said of Hansie Cronje, although I have to say I was as shocked as anyone when all the stuff about his match-fixing was revealed. I got to know him fairly well, or so I thought (as did many other people). When you share a dressing-room with someone, you tend to think that you know someone pretty well, but that certainly wasn’t true in Hansie’s case.
He was captain of South Africa while I was at Free State and you could see why everyone thought so highly of him as a skipper. He was a really positive character, building everybody up so they felt good about themselves. Funnily enough he was also big on discipline, drilling it into everyone that you should always arrive early, whether it’s for a practice or a game, to make sure that you’re in the best possible frame of mind. I liked the guy and I was absolutely flabbergasted when the news broke of his wrongdoing. I would never have guessed it of him.
I mentioned a little earlier that, off the field, my time in Bloemfontein was spent much more sensibly than those slightly wilder days in Jo’burg. That was partly because I was a couple of years older, partly because the cricket was more serious and partly because Sarah came out to stay with me in Bloem, so I had someone to keep me company in the evening.
Having said all that, our time in Bloem was not without its incidents, often involving cars rather than alcohol (and not the two mixed together this time). One such escapade occurred in my second season with Free State, in 1999-2000, at the same time as England were playing a Test series in South Africa. I was driving with Sarah down from Bloemfontein for a few days’ break in Cape Town, which is about a ten-hour drive. At least, it should be a ten-hour drive, but I got badly lost, so it mushroomed into the small matter of a thirteen-hour drive.
To try and make up for lost time, I ended up in a bit of a hurry, and whenever I got the chance to put my foot down I put it ALL THE WAY down. We had a motor that could shift, because we were in a BMW belonging to Andy Moles, the Free State coach. For most of the journey, Sarah was fast asleep alongside me because we’d been out with Molar the night before and she was suffering. Or maybe it was the quality of the conversation that was sending her to sleep. Occasionally, she’d open her eyes and say: ‘Slow down, will you, Matthew? You’ve got to keep an eye out for the speed cops.’ So I would slow down while her eyes were still open, then speed up again when she went back to sleep.
Sarah must have been dead to the world when I came to one massive straight road, like a huge wide Roman road, on which there was no other traffic whatsoever for miles and miles and miles. I put my foot down and had reached about 180 kph (about 110 mph) when a policeman stepped out from behind a bush with a cardboard sign saying: ‘Stop!’ Sounds like a cartoon, I know, but it felt real enough at the time. I slammed on the brakes and managed to come to a halt—about half a mile down the road—and