Having acquired some fame, there is a mixture of good and bad in terms of invitations that come your way, and whenever one accepts an invitation to some sort of function it is a question of keeping the fingers crossed that all will be well. The good news is that more often than not people are very pleased to see me, and are accordingly very generous and helpful. There are some especially attractive invitations along the way, including film premieres and the like, but it would be wrong to suggest that we all live in a constant social whirl. And often it is the smaller local functions with Rotary Clubs and the like that are the most enjoyable and satisfying.
You have to balance out the number of requests with the time available, and one of my bigger chores is getting through the mail. Our postman does not quite qualify for the lead role in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but the paperknife does get a little warm most mornings. On the other hand, during the occasional crises in my career, the tone of the letters has mostly been very supportive, and I do feel I owe it to these people to reply as often as I can. I try and meet requests for autographs and photographs, and there is a never-ending stream of mail asking for items for charity auctions. So many, in fact, that you could end up with an empty house if you’re not very careful. Not everyone gets what they want, of course, but then few do.
When the clerical bit gets a mite wearing and I need a bit of a blow out, I tend to head for the tennis court. I also play a bit of golf, and the interesting thing for me is that my temperament for both games tends to be a lot more fragile than it is for cricket. My brain wants me to be an Edberg or a Ballesteros, but the body tends to be irritatingly disobedient. I’ve done a bit of McEnroe-ing with the racket, and I have to say that he’s always been one of my favourites. I can sympathize with the mental pain he appears to go through. Like his, my language on the tennis court (and the golf course) does have scope for improvement.
I also play a bit of squash now and then, but my most passionate off-duty pursuit has always been for Africa and wildlife. Having spent my early life in Tanganyika, there has always been a lingering affinity for that part of the world, and the umbilical cord became unbreakable after a private safari to Kenya. We went with a guy called Tor Allan, on a recommendation from Tim Rice’s wife, Jane, and his knowledge of where to find the wildlife – the game, the birds, and all the rest of it – made it a fabulous nine days. To be almost on your own in the middle of these unspoiled places, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the wild, is an unbelievable feeling. But I have to say that what suited my nature just as well was not rubbing two sticks of wood together, and trying to catch supper with a primitive rod and line. Tor’s African boys all donned waistcoats and bowties to serve us four-course dinners, and we kept the Bollinger chilled in an old kerosene fridge. Sitting out there at night in the middle of nowhere was paradise.
Southern Africa is just as rich a venue for wildlife, and on Allan Lamb’s recommendation I went one year to a place called Londolozi, a private game reserve on the western Kruger in Eastern Transvaal, run by two brothers, John and Dave Varty. John, who had played a little bit of first-class cricket for Transvaal before falling out with the management (so we had something in common) makes docu-dramas about wildlife all over the world. He specializes in leopards, and one of the first films he made – Silent Hunter – was devoted exclusively to these particular cats. I also have a wonderful book at home entitled The Leopards of Londolozi. The brothers inherited the park, and turned it round from nothing into one of the best in the Transvaal. They try to leave the habitat to nature as much as they possibly can, although a certain amount of management is required for the animals’ own welfare. It is a wonderful spot. The basic form there is to go out in an open topped Landrover with six to eight people, although I have got to know the brothers well enough now for them to entrust me with a warden or a tracker and allow me to take a landrover out myself. It is so much more exhilarating, because you are not tied to the routine of the organized outing. If you want to stay in one particular spot for hours then you can. I have been back four or five times since that first visit, and will continue to do so just as long as I can continue to find the air fare.
Complementing my general love of wildlife is a keen interest in the art side of it. Several years ago, I was in Lincoln to watch another mate, Robin Askwith, in pantomime, and was walking back to the hotel when I passed a shop displaying a framed print of cheetahs by the wildlife artist David Shepherd. I liked it so much that I forked out £250 on the spot, and that was the start of my collection of wildlife prints, paintings and artifacts. I have also got to know the artist himself, who lives in a fabulous renovated farmhouse near Godalming. David is one of the world’s great enthusiasts, not only about wildlife, which has made his reputation as an artist, but also about trains – he even has his own steam railway line in Somerset.
He is passionate about the preservation of the world’s heritage, and several years ago he started the David Shepherd Conservation Foundation – my own involvement extending to a seat on the Board of Trustees. There are the obvious species generating concern for conservationists, such as elephants and rhinos, but David also raises money for any number of different projects worldwide. He is a lovely man, very kind hearted, and if I thought I was busy at times, I didn’t really know what busy meant until I met David. I got myself sponsored for so much a run in the summer of 1991 on behalf of the foundation, and as my form was slightly better than one of the cricket reporters made out (who dryly observed that I was on course to save half a tusk), I managed to raise around £ 16,000 for the cause. It could have been better, but the irony was that my highest score of the season – eighty-odd not out against Middlesex – came at Lord’s when David was there to watch the game as a guest of Joe Hardstaff. I saw him before going into bat, and responded accordingly. I later suggested, not surprisingly, that he come and watch me more often.
I am also involved in SAVE, a charity that raises money to buy equipment for use in places like Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its headquarters are in New York, but a friend of mine by the name of Nicholas Duncan, who I first met while playing club cricket in Perth in 1977-78, has now started an Australian branch. On England’s last tour to Australia he organized a fund raising dinner, which I spoke at, and I accompanied a party of tourists on a cash gathering mission to Zimbabwe after the tour. The major target for SAVE in Africa, and especially in Zimbabwe, is the black rhino, which is now being poached out of existence. Another integral part of my involvement with wildlife is my interest in photography, but not everyone shoots animals with a Canon. Sadly, the poacher’s rifle is more common. The only rhinos we saw in Zimbabwe on that trip were on a private farm at Imire, an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Harare, where the collection extended to seven orphans. We did not see any in the wild, and their plight is frankly desperate.
There was a mixture of English and Australians in our party out there, and, inevitably, we had a game of cricket for the ‘Ashes’. We played on an airstrip near one of the tourist camps using a tennis ball, a piece of wood, and a deckchair for the stumps. Yet again, the Australians made off with the Ashes – and guess who was out to a careless shot? Actually, it was an unplayable ball that swung and seamed both ways. That’s my story anyway. The overall story, I suppose, is that I, like the rhino, also wanted to roam a little more freely than people with metaphorical rifles cared to allow. I only hope that the modern game will continue to cater for the occasional free spirit, and that we do not end up with a clone factory for marathon runners and net addicts. Cricket is too rich a sport not to accommodate different types of character – and it would be a shame if players like myself were to become, like the black rhino, an endangered species.