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 reversed all the way back to say hello to the nice policeman.
Once he’d established that I wasn’t a local, he said: ‘Have you got your passport on you?’
I said no, even though my passport was with my kit in the boot of the car.
‘Have you got any other ID?’ he said.
I gave him my international driver’s licence.
‘What are you doing over here?’ he asked, and I told him that I was playing cricket. He thought for a moment or two, while he wrote out a speeding ticket, and then said:
‘Hey, you’re not here playing for England, are you?’
‘Yep, I sure am,’ I lied again.
The policeman paused for thought again, then started smiling. ‘Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that ticket, then. You can tear it up, on one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You give me your autograph.’
So I gave him my autograph, shook his hand and got back in the car. I just counted myself lucky that he didn’t know enough about the England team—or the Free State team, come to think of it—to realise that I was telling him a fib. I hate to think of him sitting down to watch the Test match, telling his mates he’d got one of the England players’ signatures, then discovering that he’d actually been diddled and the bloke whose autograph he had was playing a game in front of two men and a baboon down in Cape Town.
I imagine he’d have been pretty peeved, but I hope he didn’t rip the ticket up and throw it straight in the bin, because a few months later I made my Test debut. My autograph might actually have been worth having then…
†HOGFACT: There are more atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the Atlantic Ocean. I know, I’ve counted them.
†HOGFACT: In Minnesota it is illegal to cross state lines with a duck on your head. Well, why wouldn’t it be?
TOP 5 ANGRIEST
BATSMEN
I have a morbid fascination for watching an angry batsman when he gets back to the dressing-room, throwing his bat and gloves and having a paddy. I suppose it’s a bit like watching car-crash television, only very close up. At Yorkshire we used to have spread bets about how many times Michael Bevan would say ‘f***’ in his first minute back in the dressing-room. The spread was normally between 40 and 50. Here are five of the
