...........a very very interesting interview of Rowe. Gives a lot of insight into apartheid South Africa nd his experiences there...........besides other things.'Yagga' Rowe: Misunderstood (Part 1)Thu, Jun 3, '04
by MICHELLE MCDONALDWhen stories are told about the most elegant batsmen in the history of cricket, Lawrence George Rowe's name is always at the top of the list. A natural born strokeplayer, Rowe exploded onto the scene in 1972, scoring a double and single on debut and averaging 113.40 in his first Test series.
He was destined for great things when a series of freak injuries -- and an allergy to grass -- interrupted his career and hastened the controversial decision to lead a 'rebel' West Indies side to apartheid South Africa. In this exclusive sit-down with CaribbeanCricket.com's Michelle McDonald, Rowe talks candidly about his career and the reasons for his decisions along the way...Lawrence, you grew up around the Waltham Park Road in the 1950s and 1960s. Describe your life back then? How did you come to play cricket? As a young boy, I think at about age 9, my bigger brother who is now deceased, he was my influence, with his friends, and that's the way I got started. I used to play a lot of back yard cricket and bush cricket with them. You know in those days you cut out a bat and knit up a ball and you go in the back fields and you play there and you throw up stones and you hit it and you do some commentary on yourself, and you call yourself Sobers, or Kanhai or Worrell, so that's how I really got started.
Which school were you going to?I was going to Greenwich Primary. I actually never played a lot of cricket at school itself, but was playing with my brothers as I said, and they were bigger guys. This particular afternoon, I was at school and they used to play what they called 'bowl for bat' or 'catchy-shubby' in those days and I was passing with my sno-cone in one hand and the guy hit the ball in the air and I caught it and these big guys were saying 'little guy, little boy let me bat for you' and I said 'no, I want to bat for myself' and I went and I took the bat and I batted the rest of the lunch period. The bigger guys then decided they had to introduce me to the sports master of the school and that is how I first played for Greenwich Primary as a youngster, and in my first match for them, I made 57.
Who first taught you the rudiments of the game?Nobody in the early years did that, it was basically natural. That is one of the things that is the hallmark of my career later on, that most experts and former players and people who I played with describe me as probably one of the most technically gifted players the Caribbean had seen, probably in the 20th century, so I suppose most of it was a gift.
At what point in your life did you realize that you had this immense talent?I didn't really realize that until I started playing Jamaica schoolboy cricket. I went to the youth clubs and through that we were selected to enter into the BAT series, that is really the youth cricket of the West Indies now. I got in through the youth clubs into that. They had experimented with about four youth club guys along with the all-Sunlight guys. They selected us and got us into camp at Jamaica Defence Force and then from that we went on tour to Barbados.
How old were you then?I was 19 or 20 at the time. At that time, it was just the love of the game. It was one of the two sports that most guys played in those days - cricket or football. Actually I was known as a better soccer player when I was about 15 years old and my brother was known as the cricketer. So a lot of people, later on down when they heard the name Lawrence Rowe go out there, they thought it was my brother. I had given up soccer probably at about 16. I used to go and play just for fun, and to keep fit with the guys, but after cricket became my career the guys used to play soccer so rough it seemed like they probably would hurt you so I stopped playing and concentrated on cricket.
Tell us more about your schooling.I went to Greenwich until I was 15, then I had taken the technical exam to go to St Andrew Technical High School, passed it and was supposed to go there and my brother decided at that time that he would not send me there, he's going to pay for me to go to Excelsior High School. I didn't get to go there, he said he was going to do it, but it didn't happen. So then I had to go to a private secondary school. I went to a school call Matts Hall for Boys, which is no longer in existence, and then later on I went to Jamaica Commercial Institute to do Accounting. When I was supposed to do my final exams in Accounts, I went off on the schoolboy tour. At the time I was about 19.
How did you do on the schoolboy tour to Barbados?Did very well. Got a hundred against Guyana at a place called Carlton, Black Rock. First time I met up with Sir Everton Weekes. He tipped me to play for the West Indies after that hundred. He thought that I was good enough and I would have probably gone on to play for the West Indies. He came and spoke with me. I don't even know if Sir Everton remembered that. I was trying to remind him the other night at the function but I didn't get a chance.
The following year, they upped the age limit to under 21, so I got to play again. Did very well the second year as well and by this I think I was regarded as one of the best schoolboy players in the region. I was called to Jamaica trials that year, it was now 1969 and I did very well in the trials, I think I got a couple of hundreds in the trials and was named to the Jamaica team in 1969.
How was that season for you?Started out miserably and then ended up reasonable for me that I held my place and a lot of the Caribbean people and journalists started to look at me. I think at this time I was probably ranked as the best schoolboy player so everybody was more or less rooting for me to do well.
At this time now, are you thinking that cricket is what you are going to do or are you going to concentrate on accounting? What were you thinking to do for your future at that time?At that time, my mother and brother had migrated and gone to New York and my mother was about to file for me to come to the States and the Vietnam War was in process at the time and I told them not to file for me, I am going to try to see if I can play for the West Indies, so that was put on hold and I made a decision and it seemed to work out ok for me because I actually did play. At the time you didn't know how things would have gone so it worked out for me and then I played for the West Indies in 1972.
So this is late 60s, early 70s, you've decided you want to stay, you don't want to go to New York. What kind of preparation did you do to get yourself ready for selection?We won the Shell Shield in 1969. I think it was Rothman's who sponsored the winning Shell Shield team to go to England in 1970 and I went with the Jamaica team and I was one of the most successful Jamaican batsmen on that tour so by the time I got back I was sort of getting in line now for the West Indies and this is where I think my focus started to look at the West Indies. We then had an international Cavaliers team come, in 1970 I think. They had players like Sir Gary, Colin Cowdrey, Brian Luckhurst, Ted Dexter, John Snow, Mushtaq Mohammad, just to name a few of the great players on that team, and I made 109 against them at Sabina Park. I think that was my first First Class century. Then was the first time that the opening was there that the public started to talk about me playing for the West Indies. I was convinced now that I probably could play for the West Indies in truth.
There must have been some competition to get into the team with people like Maurice Foster and other players who were considered class players at the time.Oh yes, Sir Gary at the time was the captain of the West Indies team and then you had Maurice Foster who had already played for the West Indies and was looking to enhance his career as well and then I was the young 'kid on the block' who was kicking up a storm. India toured here in 1971, and I think I opened up the Shell Shield season that year with a hundred against Trinidad at Sabina, and I played against India for Jamaica, and I didn't do very well, and they played me in the President's XI and I didn't do very well in that either.
Why?I suppose you know, you're now stepping up in class of cricket and a lot of expectations were there of me at that time but I didn't come through at that time. Actually that was the first time I met the former Prime Minister Michael Manley when I was coming up from Jarrett Park where the match was held. I saw this tall figure of a man coming down to the back of the plane when I was coming across on the 20 minute flight and he came and sat beside me and introduced himself and said to me that he's been watching my career as a schoolboy coming up. He wished me all the best, cheered me up a bit because I was down after the failure. That was nice of him to do.
I got back out of it, was made 12th man for the West Indies here against India in 1971 and never got a look in, because in those days you had to make some runs to get in there. Competition was tough and if you didn't make runs, they wouldn't pick you, so I was left out the whole of 1971. A lot of disappointment because there were people who thought I would have gotten in, and I remember saying it to Easton McMorris who was my captain at the time and he said to me "You don't want to play for the West Indies". They thought that I was so talented that I should have made the runs to get in there. I said to him "Skip, nothing happens before the time".
I went back to the drawing board after that, and I worked my tail off.
What kind of work did you do?Running, batting for hours, two hours, hour and a half. Running early morning before I went to work, I used to get up at 5:00am.
Where were you working at the time?Carrier, the air conditioning company. At the time it was the Matalon Group of Companies. I wasn't in Accounts. I used to be the clerk who controlled all their stock. My boss was a man called Vic Higgs, who died here a couple years ago. He was a golf man. He was very receptive to the fact that I was a young and upcoming cricketer, so I got a lot of time off to go practise and things like that. From there I played against Guyana in a Shell Shield match of the following season - 1972, and I made either 204 or 147 against them. I don't remember which one it was. But that was the starting of the 1972 year for me.
When New Zealand came I got 227 against them for Jamaica in the tour match and then my first Test, I got the record making 214 and 100 on debut.
How did you hear you were selected?Funny enough, I don't remember who told me that I was selected for the West Indies I must be honest with you. It was more or less automatic that I would have been selected, I must be honest with you because I was knocking on the door as a young player. Here I am, I made that century against Guyana and then in the first match against the tourists I made 227, so it was like a given now that I was going to play. What I didn't know was in what position I was going to bat. I was batting number three for Jamaica. Now that I was stepping in with the big boys, I didn't know where I was going to bat. Sir Garfield Sobers was the captain at the time.
Reminisce about your debut test match at Sabina Park.I can recall the morning of the Test match when I came out to knock up outside and all the well wishers were there and saying 'good luck' and somebody bowled a ball to me, and I was so nervous when I hit the ball the bat fell out of my hand and I just went right back inside the pavilion. I didn't knock up. I can remember that Sir Gary came in and he said to me 'we've won the toss and you're number 3, put the pads on'. I put the pads on and went around the front.
In those days, the players pavilion was the bottom of the Kingston Club. I was out there sitting down getting ready to bat because I was number 3. The well wishers were all there wanting to talk to me and I remember Sir Gary going to them and saying 'no he has to bat, so you have to leave him, he has to concentrate from now'. The rest is history. I went out there and got a record breaking first Test and then all of a sudden I was ranked with the greatest of the game. I was ranked alongside Headley and Bradman and those people.
Did that put any pressure on you?Oh enormous amount of pressure but I was young and I was good at what I did and I was confident, I was making a lot of runs. The magnitude of it didn't hit me then. I just loved the game and just wanted to play and make runs. You started at number three for the first six test matches, then you opened the batting for five matches before being put to bat again at number three. They felt that I was technically equipped and then we had the other young player in the West Indies at the time who was Alvin Kallicharan from Guyana and they felt that for balance of the team and to get the best team together, I would open the innings, and Kallicharan would come in at number three. They spoke to me on that and I said it was no problem, I would do it.
Which position did you prefer batting in and why?I was always at number three from a schoolboy, and in the Jamaica team I was at number three so I fell in love with batting at number three. So although they upgraded me to opening if I was to choose one, I would rather bat at number three.
Do you know at which position your batting was better?I'm not sure. I had my best series opening, the 1974 series against England. When I went to play county cricket at Derbyshire I opened up there too because I was doing so well as an opener for the West Indies when I got up there they just pushed me into the opening spot.
You only played one seasons for them because of the allergy to grass?No, it wasn't because of the allergy why I played one season. It was because of the eye problems.
Tell me about the eye problems? I had thought I had eye problems early in my career because I could not see far. Even before I played my test match I couldn?t see far. Reading the scoreboard from the pavilion was a problem for me. But seeing like 50, 60 yards was never a problem, I would see that well and I had practised hard so I didn?t have a problem in picking up the ball. I used to read close up so they say I was near sighted. So after having this fabulous tour against England in 1974, we are now going on to India after my Derbyshire stint and we stopped over in London. The manager was Gerry Alexander, a Jamaican, and Arthur Barrett was the other Jamaican who was selected at the time.
The Manager decided to take us to dinner that evening, so at dinner I was reading the menu and it was in my face. The Manager said ?but Lawrence, something wrong with your eyes man? and I said to him ?that?s how I read? and he said ?no, something is wrong?, so I told him I probably needed a reading glasses, that?s about it and we left it at that. We went to India and the first First Class game I played in India, I was batting in these shoes that had spikes but the spikes were very low and a sheen was on the wicket and I hooked the bowler for six and I slipped and knocked my wicket over. It was like a joke in the pavilion all the guys started laughing how this guy, Ghavri, nearly lick you over, you step on you wicket. Then the manager said he was going to take me to the doctor the next morning to get my eyes tested.
That was the beginning of that. They took me to the doctors, and when he did the test, I wasn?t seeing much out of the left eye and it was surprising to me. When he did the test I read everything from the right eye well and then when he blocked out the right eye, I could only see I think the top two lines from the left eye. At that time they said I had to get glasses and I got them. The problem I was having, there was absolutely no way I could have corrected it with glasses. I wasn?t seeing well through the glasses. The ball seemed egg shaped, the pitch was very long and I?m trying to explain to them that I?m not seeing well out of these glasses. The doctor?s instruction to the manager at the time was ?let him keep the glasses on?. So I kept the glasses on, I think I played two games in India and then the manager got a letter from a Professor there who said I would never be adjusted to glasses on that tour. It would take too long. His recommendation was that contact lenses were the answer.
They sent me off to England to get the hard contact lenses done so when I went to England they checked me out and everything and they saw that my left eye was funny shaped, I had astigmatism so at this time they said it was not going to be an easy job. Then I had a thing called a pterygium at the same time so the lens wouldn?t fit properly. I did a minor operation in Jamaica with a Dr Lockhart to remove the pterygium . For the rest of that year, I didn?t do anything but just try to recuperate, get the eyes going and the very next tour was to Australia 1975/6.
Were you fully better by then, and also during the treatment, how did it affect you mentally?Mentally, I was ok. My mother was very worried. She felt that with an eye operation, I might get blind. You know how mothers are. So I got through that and then they recommended that I use one contact in my left eye. Then I went to Australia with that and we ran into probably the most hostile attack ever assembled in Test cricket. I had not a great series, a mediocre series I would say, but managed to get 107 at Brisbane and 68 [the scorecards have 67] in the 4th Test in Sydney which I regard as one of my finest innings and then I came home after that and played against India and I think that series was also a mediocre one. It wasn?t a particularly good series.
But then when I was getting myself back into things, I broke my hand in 1977.
How?I was playing a Shell Shield match in Montego Bay, Jamaica versus Trinidad and I was running backwards to take a catch and by going backwards, I lost my footing and in falling backwards, I put my hand back to break the fall and I fell back on my hand. Right there and then, I knew something was wrong. It was the left hand, right in the wrist. When I went back, Lindel Wright was the person who was fielding in the slip with me and I said to him ?Muddy, you know I think something is wrong? and he said ?you better go and get it checked?.
They carried me to Cornwall Regional and they did an X-ray. They said they saw a line but they couldn?t confirm if it was broken or not but that I should take no further part in the game until I get back to Kingston to get a thorough check. I was ridiculed down there by a lot of top officials that nothing was wrong with me, you shirking, you didn?t want to play, you didn?t want to fail, you didn?t want to this. They turned the public against me. It was really a mess.
When you came back to Kingston did it confirm that your hand was broken?Yes, and I went to a cocktail party in Kingston and when I walked in with the cast on my hand everybody saying ?What happened Lawrence?? I said ?nothing is wrong with me, I just wanted to put a cast on my hand!? That took me through the 1977 series. Pakistan was here and I didn?t get an opportunity to play against them. By the time I got past that, it was now Kerry Packer and I was a member of the West Indies team that was selected. I joined with them and came out as one of the top batsmen in the Kerry Packer series. Myself and Viv Richards I think did best as batsmen in the two years we played for Kerry Packer. One of the famous innings which is talked about was the 175 I made there and I made 135 in Antigua when they came to the West Indies after I was hit in the face by Lillee at Sabina Park.
So that means the eye problem had sorted itself out?No, not really. I will go back a little bit and tell you how the eye problem got somewhere decent for me. When I joined the Packer series, I was walking downtown Sydney after making 88 against the World team and I happened to stop in an optician?s shop to get some contact lens fluid and the doctor came up and said to me ?are you one of the West Indian players?? and I said ?yes?. He said ?I?d like to meet Lawrence Rowe? and I laughed and said ?I?m Lawrence Rowe? and he said ?Are you?? and he shook my hand and we spoke for a while. He said he had followed my career and always wanted to meet me because he wanted to correct me.
He was the first man to explain my eye problem to me in layman?s terms, point A, point B, point C. He took me to the university, did some tests, showed me some pictures, he showed me what my eye was like in a picture. He was the first man who made a hard lens for me that felt anywhere near decent that I could use. That was the first time I started to get some sort of confidence in using the contact lens.
So I had gone through from 1975 to 1979 with just, a lot of people didn?t know this, mediocre stuff. In and out, I didn?t know where I was going, I was feeling my way. Sometimes you go out to bat and you weren?t even picking up the ball very well in the first couple of overs and you fight through that, you fight through that. Nobody knows this, I couldn?t tell anybody that. If they had known this, they probably would have dropped me from the West Indies team so I had to fight my way through that. I got through that then this guy set me up and then did fairly well in the Packer series and then came back and was selected for the West Indies to go to Australia in the 1979/80 tour of New Zealand and Australia and it was a three match series, the first time we beat Australia there.
And you made a century against New Zealand.I got 100 in the 2nd Test in Christchurch, and 50 in the 3rd Test and was run out. Imagine I would have been an immortal again because I had scored a century in the previous match and had made 50 and was batting very well. I was batting with Kallicharran. I was very upset about that. I came home to the West Indies and played two Shell Shield matches. I got a hundred I think against Guyana at Jarrett Park, and then went to England. That was my last tour for the West Indies, I think, 1980, yes.
But you didn?t play.I didn?t play because I was injured again. A dislocated shoulder. And funny enough I must tell you this. We were practising on the opening day of the tour at Lords, we had two practice wickets going and the practice was going for some time and Lloydie said ?ok let?s get the third net involved?. That net apparently had been banned because it wasn?t good...
The third net was started and he said ?Lawrence pad up and go in the third net?. He sent Mikey (Holding) and somebody else to bowl at me over there and the third ball that Mickey bowled to me, it flew off a good length and hit me on my hand. I thought my hand was broken. So I didn?t play the tour opener because of that, saw the doctors and it was just badly bruised. I had it strapped up for a couple of days and in the second game that I played, I think at Northamptonshire, I dived for a catch and fell on my shoulder. That was 1980/81 I think it was.
So you were out for the tour?I wasn?t out for the tour, they said I would be out for six weeks, and some of the weirdest things happened then after the end of the six weeks when I was supposed to play my first game back. I think it was Gloucestershire that we went to, and the bus driver invited us to his house for dinner and I said no I wouldn?t go, because I was playing tomorrow I wanted to get an early rest. I called my wife, and spoke to her on the phone, and got the bath filled to relax. As I stepped in the bath, I slipped and fell and rammed my shoulder, the same shoulder, right in the edge of the bath. How do I tell these guys that I am hurt and the way that I had got hurt?
I called the physio at the time who was Denis Waight who had worked for the West Indies for a long time and I spoke to him on it and he said to me he would have to tell the team management that I could not play tomorrow because of what happened. The manager at the time was Sir Clyde Walcott who I didn?t think liked me very much. So after laying out six weeks and then supposed to come into the team something like this happening to me it?s not the kind of message I wanted to carry to Walcott, or anybody taking to him. And then the buzzing start ?you didn?t want to play, you this that that".
So that wasn?t the case at all?It was never. It was never. I was ready to play, the eye thing had sorted itself out, the allergy was there, that started in 1975 I was taking injection for that, so that was how my career ended.
Was that weighing heavily on your mind, that people didn?t believe that all of these things were happening to you?Oh yes, and they just didn?t understand. I had said that if I were to write a book, I would have named it "Misunderstood".
We're going to talk about South Africa now. Did all of these things that happened to you influence your decision to go to South Africa? Not totally. In the beginning stages of the South Africa situation, I was not sure if I was going to go because of my family at home as it was such a touchy subject. I was married at the time, I had my family here, I had children going to school here, my parents were living here, my mother had come back home.
The person who approached me came to Jamaica and visited with me about playing. It was Gregory Armstrong the Barbadian. He spoke to me about the Jamaicans of interest who were Everton Mattis, Richard Austin and I. I contacted them and set up the meeting with them, and I remember after the meeting with Gregory, Everton Mattis said to me "Skip if you're not going, I'm not going". (I was the Jamaica captain at the time). I said to him "No, this is a choice you have to make for yourself. It is not something I can advise you on. You have to look at your situation and make a decision if you want to go".
How did Gregory Armstrong sell it to you? What was the reason he gave as to the purpose of the tour, because of course, it would have been a touchy situation.Prior to the tour coming up, I always wanted to go to South Africa.
Even with Apartheid?Even with Apartheid going on I wanted to see what South Africa was like with Apartheid, that was just me. I wanted to go. Ironically when we played in Barbados in 1981 I think it was, in the Shell Shield which we lost, we actually joked about going to South Africa - Johannesburg and Durban and those places - in the Barbados dressing room after the game. There was nothing in the air at that time about South Africa. We were just joking at the time and to see that one year later we were faced with the situation of going to South Africa.
So, when I was called by Gregory Armstrong, he told me that they were approached about getting a West Indies team there. A match was set up in one of the Virgin Islands for all the people who were more or less to be selected, to attend a cricket match there that was put on and then the South Africa situation would be discussed in full there. I could not have made it because I was the Jamaica captain and we were in trials at the time so I didn't go. My instructions were to be briefed about what happened after the meeting. I was briefed about what happened, and who were going, when Gregory Armstrong came to Jamaica to see me and I told him I don't think I was interested in going because of quite a few implications.
I was in business with Mikey Holding and Basil Williams at the time, my family structure, the whole situation of what is going to happen after the South Africa situation. So with all of that, I said no. And then I was called by Dr Ali Bacher at my house. I was living in Forest Hills at the time. He said to me that I am the person who they wanted to captain the team - one. Two - if I was not coming, the package wouldn't be worth their while because we didn't have enough star players in it, so if I wasn't coming it would be more or less a no-go and he wanted a decision from me within the next two days and I said I would think about it and get back to him. Now I was not only made to be aware that I was a player but I was made aware that I was going to be captain. So it was now more pressure.
It is reported that Michael Manley asked you not to go. Is that true?No, he didn't. I know that he didn't want me to go but he didn't ask me not to go. He had wanted to see me before I went and I did not see him.
He wanted to see you before you made the decision?Before I actually went. He heard that I was on the list to go to South Africa; it was now published with who and who were going. I was at a particular person's house the night when I made my decision to go, I don't want to call his name. I told him and he actually gave me a message and said Michael Manley wanted to see me. I knew what he was going to tell me. I did not want to change my mind at that time, so I didn't go to see the Prime Minister.
Why didn't you want to change your mind at that time?I'm a person like this. When I vet things totally and I decide my mind that I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do it.
What was the vetting process like? Did you talk with your wife?I spoke to my wife and I spoke to my mother.
Did they give you any advice not to go?They didn't give me any advice not to go. I just spoke with them in terms of what the implications might be.
Because it was stated that you would have been banned?Yes, I would have been banned, but also probably physical harm, because it was such a violent subject at the time. Remember my family was going to be here, I had kids going to school. You never know what people would do so it was a tough decision from all these points of view.
While you were making your decision, were you aware of the atrocities that were being committed against non-white South Africans, under Apartheid?Yes. This was my thought process at the time. By going I didn't believe we could have made it any worse for the [non-white] South Africans. The second thing was by going, there was just a possibility that we might have a little opening and especially if I went and we won, it would have been a victory for the black people. Number three, money was involved.
Was the money that attractive?The money was attractive at the time, it was an attractive package.
Put it into context for me in terms of what West Indies players were being paid if anything. How did it compare?You couldn't compare it.
Like a hundred times more than what you were getting paid? Fifty times more?Yes, it was like sixty times more than what you were getting paid. And most of the guys were pissed off with the West Indies Board.
Why were the guys pissed off?A lot of guys were pissed off with the way they were treated. Some guys were treated badly by the West Indies Board.
Treated badly how?Not selected when they should have been clearly selected.
Well, who determines that you should be selected?Well, your performance determines that. Your performance and your behaviour determine that. You see people with less performance than you getting in, if they didn't like you, if you were a person who spoke your mind they would get rid of you, so things like that, and forget you. You were the forgotten one.
Case in point Sylvester Clarke. He was the man who was in front of Malcolm Marshall as a bowler for the West Indies. On their first tour to India, when we went to Packer in I think 1979/80, they went on the tour to India. Sylvester Clarke I think got 24 wickets in the Test series, I think Malcolm got about five, but in the next series he got selected over Sylvester. So you had people who were disillusioned by West Indies Board.
Were you one of the disillusioned?Yes too, because I thought I should have been selected after I made 116 here against England in 1980/81, I thought I should have gone to Australia with the West Indies team and they dropped me. They threw me through the window and I don't think I would have played for the West Indies again, to be honest with you. I didn't think so. They had thrown Kallicharran through the door too. At age 31, they dropped both of us. We were still young enough and they threw us out of West Indies cricket.
So here is an offer monetary wise, 60 times more, you have your family and for some people, like Everton Mattis these people didn't own a car, had four or five children, didn't have a house, didn't have anything the people of influence would have passed them on the road. If they were leaving a Jamaica match you had to go get the bus with your bag. How do you tell a man in a position like that not to accept US$100,000 at the time to go play five months of cricket over the two tours?
But your situation wasn't that desperate?No, that's why I named this particular person to you. In terms of finance I wasn't that bad off here.
So the question that people will ask is why blacklist yourself, you're not financially bad off, why risk the whole political backlash being banned etc. to go. Was it because you never thought you would never play for West Indies again? Was that the main thing?That wasn't the main thing but that was a part of it, but my beliefs that I told you about earlier on. I didn't think we would have hurt black people in any way by going on the tour. I didn't think so. If I thought for a moment that it would put on more pain on the black people of South Africa I would not have gone. I didn't think it would. I thought that it might just help somewhat if we went there and we won, it could be a motivational factor for black people.
And the other part of it was that the whole thing would be thrown back on me now wherein if my decision was not to go, people like Mattis would be denied. My decision was a decision that was made from a lot of different standpoints at the time.
Ok, you got to South Africa. What was the welcome like?I must give you first the run down when we were going everybody said we left like a thief in the night. It didn't work like that. We actually got out separately. People thought that I had left out of Montego Bay. I left right out of Manley airport and no press was there when I left. I went on to Miami and then New York and picked up a flight from New York to South Africa.
On the flight from New York to South Africa, everybody is on the flight now we are going, we are laughing, people have having drinks and we are talking. The last five minutes of that flight, I can remember it vividly. There was total silence. I think everybody was more or less thinking the same thing now. We are now getting ready to land in South Africa. Whoever was thinking about a career for the West Indies again, it is now gone, regardless of how you were thinking. It hit everybody now that hey, this is it. This is the moment of truth now. We are here, we're coming down, what are we to expect when we get down there? What would the black people be feeling when we walk off the plane and we might see a black person here or there. What would be going through a black person in South Africa when we get down? This was the thinking of most of the guys.
When we got off the plane and we started walking towards immigration and customs, we saw some black people working around the airport. They were looking, curious you know. Then we were met by the South African officials. I hear everybody tell me that we had to sign things to get 'Honorary White' status to enter. If I got 'Honorary White' status, I was not aware of it. They didn't stamp my passport. They protected our passports because of what was happening in South Africa. We were told that they were going to try and protect our passports by not stamping our passports because we might have problems after the tour is finished and we might go to other countries.
People might want to create a problem for you, so for these reasons our passports were protected from South African stamp. But we had an immigration form that was filled out and that form was stamped, just like anywhere else.
So this 'Honorary White' thing, you didn't know about it?I didn't know about it. I didn't sign anything, I didn't write up any form which states that I was an 'Honorary White'. If you land in South Africa as a black man, and you were automatically an 'Honorary White' then I was probably was from that point of view. But there is nothing that I knew about.
So we landed and I didn't know there would have been so much press there. But when I got off the plane there was, I mean a million press people and Jo Piminsky he was the president of the South African Cricket Union and he came across and said to me you have to address the world press. Right away, I jumped in front of a mike and I remembered saying something like "we are professionals and we are here to do a job". I didn't want to get in any political thing, then a few questions were thrown and I answered them, but I stayed away from the political side of things.
What was life like for that first year? Where did you live and so on?We were there for six weeks. We lived in hotels. We stayed in top class hotels. We were treated very well.
The people who looked after you were blacks?Mainly blacks. Most of the hotels we went to were manned by blacks. I was actually very surprised.
What was their reaction to the team?They were a little withdrawn. I remember one particular morning I was talking to Dr Bacher in the lobby of the hotel and we were talking one-on-one and a few black people in the hotel were looking on in amazement, you know for a black person to be interacting with somebody like this in this way.
I was trying to ask some questions here and there as to, we didn't know that black people held such jobs like front desk and things like that in South Africa. We were made to believe that black people wouldn't even be inside the same hotel with white people before we left. That's the impression we got. When we got there, they were manning the front desk they were porters, everything. What we found out later on was that they got lesser salaries to do the job, so they were discriminated against in terms of their salary. They were never paid the same amount of money to do the same job as whites and as we go by, probably you in South Africa at the time would have had more privilege than I would have had because you are little bit lighter than I am, and the Indians would have had more privileges than you have.
So if you talk to the Indian person about South Africa, he would have a different concept of South Africa, you would have a different concept and I would have had a different concept of South Africa. These are things we didn't know until I got there and you start to ask a few questions and you start to find out a little bit more.
Conditions were made on the tour where we questioned the South African Cricket Union before I went there; would black people be allowed to be at the ground where we played? Yes. Where would they not be allowed to go? Members pavilion, they would be allowed to go anywhere on the ground apart from the members pavilion. I was satisfied with that because that's what happened in the world everywhere. We had got to the stage where if the black people were not allowed anywhere we were playing, we would have had a problem with that.
And they stuck to that?Oh, yes, they stuck to that and everywhere we played, black people came. They were allowed to be around the ground. I still have a picture when I was signing some autographs in an airport and it was all black people there.
What would you say were the positive effects of the tour on Black South Africans?I tend to believe that by going...I want to say something before we even get to that. We were not under the umbrella of the West Indies Cricket Board when we went there. We were a bunch of guys, West Indian players who were together. We were self managed but we knew we had one common goal and the money didn't make a difference now, it was like we were playing for nothing, it's like we weren't paid. Everybody put the money aside and we decided in our minds that we had to win at all costs, we had to win. For this tour to be a success for us, we had to win. We worked our butts off to beat them. The discipline that we put into our preparation for the two tours was unreal.
More than you did for the West Indies?I wouldn't say more, but when you are there and you have no board to control you, you have no board management to control you, we are individuals now playing as a West Indies team you would tend to think that people would believe, and you're being paid fairly well, that people can go off and do what they want to do and it doesn't matter what kind of cricket you play, you understand. But we didn't do that. We got together as a unit and knit together, we installed curfew on ourselves and people adhered to it and we worked well to win. So there was a common purpose for I think all the guys who went there, that we had to win.
You had started to answer the question about the positive effects of the tour on Black South Africans.Yes. I tend to believe that by winning and the kind of phone calls I got there when we were playing a best of five One Day international series and we had won the first three and we lost the fourth one and the amount of calls I get from people, black people calling me saying "what happen, you guys lost". So I said "well we won the series and probably we got a little." and they said "no, no, no you have to beat them every time for us."
o they were probably using you as an outlet?That's what I'm saying. I don't know, I mean most things in history, as I always say, the politicians always feel like that they are right. I was always one who believed that you can never correct anything unless you actually go into it. I believe the worst thing that happened to us is that influential black people didn't get an opportunity to go to South Africa earlier. Influential blacks. I believe the barriers of Apartheid probably would have broken down earlier if that had been done. But I believe the South Africans, the racist South Africans conned the rest of the world in not getting these people in.
I'm just giving you a little politics now, because there is nobody of influence, any sports personality of influence who could have gone to South Africa in those days and get away with it. You were banned or you were blacklisted. They wanted Frank Worrell to lead a team here, they didn't want us to come to South Africa, they would have played us in the West Indies but they didn't want us to come to South Africa and one can read through that. My reading through it is that it would have been detrimental if we had gone there and beaten them at that time. Here is a bunch of black guys playing white South Africa in South Africa because one of the things we found out when we got there is that Black South Africans never played cricket, they played soccer. They had it as the white man's sport.
A comment was made when we beat them in South Africa. "Why did you pick such a powerful team to come here to South Africa and beat us?" They wanted to beat us to demonstrate to the rest of the world that they were superior. The other comment that came out of it was that they had to go into Soweto and find a Sylvester Clarke. You have this big burly black fast bowler destroying South Africa. We destroyed them, so they now were going into the black township to go find a black man who can bowl as fast, I mean today...
His name is Ntini! (
.....I think, Walter Masemola...)
He's probably one of the best fast bowlers in the world right now. I'm prepared to say that most things in history were a negative before it became a positive.
Do you think the tour had any negative effects on Black South Africans?I couldn't see how it could. I don't know of it, but I couldn't see how it could because what was happening to black people in South Africa was happening there before we went there and whether or not we had gone there, it would still have been going on. By us going there, it's a possibility in my opinion that it probably could have motivated them in another light, wherein they see now that black people can do as good, or better, than the whites.
Or on the opposite side, do you think they could have been saying but "look at our 'brothers' they know what these white people are doing to us, but yet still they come here and take their money"?That could be a part of it too, and I have no doubt that probably a section of them was probably saying that. But it wasn't shown to me and I have no doubt that you would probably have had Black South Africans, especially Black South Africans in top positions, they would have felt miserable that we were there. They would have felt that we were pirates, and taking the White South Africans money to come there under the circumstances that the Black South Africans were faced with.
Have you ever spoken to anybody who was under the Apartheid regime there, a black person, and seen how they felt?No, never got to do that.
Is that something that you might be interested in doing?Oh yes, most definitely, I would have been open to that. What happen is we drove the South African streets, I drove by myself. I had gone into stores by myself, chatted with blacks in the street, chatted with whites in the street and didn't have a problem. Nobody stated anything and I didn't go in there trying to make people believe that I was Lawrence Rowe, a member of the West Indies cricket team. I was just a normal person. My wife and myself...
Oh, she went with you?Yes, she went with me the second tour, my daughter was with me at the time too. We went shopping we walked around South Africa we went places. We saw one of our players, Colin Croft, run into a serious part of Apartheid on a train. But we were looking for things like those. We wanted to feel Apartheid. It's not that we were running away from it or believed that Apartheid didn't exist in South Africa, by no means. He was ordered to the back of the train because he was sitting in the front of the train.
So he didn't say "No, I'm Colin Croft"?No, not at all. We wanted to see Apartheid. There were a lot of the rules, the apartheid laws that were on the books which were very relaxed by the time we got to South Africa. I went with Kallicharran into the townships and we saw some very wealthy Indians and these people had a totally different concept of South Africa when you spoke with them.
Your figures on both tours were modest, apart from a century in the 1st 'Test' in December 1983. Was the pressure of captaincy, of knowing what uproar was being created at home; was it all weighing heavily on your batting?Oh most definitely. And I remember making a pair in a match, round about the time that Michael Holding and I had a disagreement about him coming to South Africa. That's water under the bridge now.
What is your relationship now with Michael Holding? We have a good relationship.
Have you talked about that period of time?Never did talk about it, I never spoke to him about it. We have remained friends. I spoke to him about some quotes that he had in his book and I told him what I felt about some of the quotes, I didn't like some of them, they were unreasonable I thought, some of them, and I did express to him that if I was writing a book about West Indies and especially mentioned about him it would be the positive side of his career and not the negative side.
Now he wasn't there on Tuesday night [at the Scotiabank Jubilee], and the suggestion might be that he stayed away because you were there.
Not at all. We are friends. I have nothing against him; he has nothing against me per se. I'm the type of person like this that when I saw the quotes in the book, I confronted Mikey about it at Melbourne when I came to one of their festivals a couple of years ago. I told him and I said I can't believe this and I expressed it to him and he told me what he was thinking at the time, and he didn't know certain things at the time and it's there but that's it.
So between you two you've made your peace?By all means. We have not spoken about the South African quotations but he knows how I feel about it.
You played with him in that England match at the Oval in England where Holding took 14 wickets in the match. What was the mood and atmosphere in the camp like after that performance?
Fabulous! One part that I have you tell you about is that the wicket was a very good wicket and when we were batting the second innings I think we were like 200 and something without loss or one hundred and eighty something without loss, we had lead them by I think two hundred plus. Lloydie decided that he had to declare the innings and a lot of the bowlers were saying, "Skip, we can't afford to declare. Don't declare skip because we can't get these people out on this wicket".
We had Gordon Greenidge and Roy Fredericks batting and he said he had to declare. The bowlers were raising cane that no, you can't declare. And Lloydie said "Well I have to declare, I can't kill the cricket. If we bat out the day we just going to kill the cricket we have to declare". Lloydie just declared.
We went out on the field and the bowlers went out upset because they didn't want the captain to declare. I think they took out their frustration on the batsmen. They start to run in like no man's business. And before you know it, one gone, two gone, three gone. So when it was like three or four guys quickly gone down the men start to look around and said "We can win this thing you know". The rest is history. We went through and we won the test match and he won the best bowling performance the other night for that performance and I am hoping he is selected in the top five West Indians of all time.
I believe that he had what a lot of people described in me as a batsman, I thought he had grace, more grace than any other fast bowler that we had produced. I thought he had control and mastered the front foot rule so well he didn't bowl very many no-balls, if you check the figures it is probably under 10, what I'll call none.
So he was equal in bowling as you were in batting...I would think so. He was so graceful, and then he had performance to back it up. It's not just that he was graceful, speed, control, as I say no other fast bowler has controlled the front foot rule as well as he did and then the amount of wickets he took for the amount of test matches he played. I thought he was the cream of the crop.
Before you made the decision to go to South Africa, who were your closest friends, apart from Holding, on the West Indies team?I was very close to Gordon Greenidge, Roy Fredericks, Viv Richards, Alvin Kallicharran, most of the guys were my friends, but I'd say that Gordon and Roy were probably the closest two (apart from Mikey), and Lloydie in the early days of my test career, was like a big brother to me.
When you came back from South Africa, what was their reaction to you like? Did the friendship change at all?No, not at all. Not at all. I had no problems with any of the guys who I was friendly with before I went to South Africa. They remained friends, there was no hint of anything, and they treated me the same way.
We spoke earlier about the celebration after that test match at the Oval. This present day West Indies team has very little to celebrate. You see that we just barely won the first ODI match against Bangladesh by one wicket. What do you think is leading to such poor results?I think it comes from way back. I think even our decision to go to South Africa; I think it's something that came down the years. I believe that when we went to South Africa, people didn't see the impact that it would have had. We had lost the next 16 best players in the West Indies when we went to South Africa, and then the Board had put on a life time ban on us from playing at all levels of cricket. We couldn't even come and play Senior Cup cricket, we couldn't even play Business House cricket.
I heard you say on radio that if Richard Austin had been allowed to play Business House, he could have gotten a job...Definitely, because you have firms who would have given him a job and his contribution would have been there for the other youngsters, so I use the old time term that 'you cut off your nose to spite your face'. They decided in their minds that they were going to destroy us totally and I think they took it too far. We knew that we would have been banned.
So you are saying that you going to South Africa and the decision by the West Indies Cricket Board of Control, as it was at that time, to ban you from all levels of cricket, that has filtered down today?Of course. Of course it did, because you learn. You have to remember when I played I played with people with the likes of Allan Rae at the end of his career, Gerry Alexander, Jackie Hendricks, Easton McMorris was my first captain, Lester King, just to name a few of the West Indian players who were around at the time. JK Holt Jr was here, Alf Valentine and you learn the craft from these people. Allan Rae used to carry us to the country to play cricket in the early days, and then you used to hear about West Indies cricket. Cricket is not just on the field play, the off the field play is also important.
These guys used to tell you about when they went to Australia in 1961 and what it was like and you would make a picture in your mind as a youngster as to what Australia was like and things like these, these test players could have helped you with in the younger days. So people like Wavell Hinds, Chris Gayle, people like these probably would have had an opportunity, even if they didn't play with me but to have heard me a long time around. I would have been around, probably as a coach or something to help them with their career.
Let me be devil's advocate and say but there were several other West Indian players of your age who didn't go to South Africa, who were here to rub shoulders with them and so on, but still we have these poor results. So what other reasons do you think there are for what we're seeing today in West Indies cricket?I believe we have always had the mentality, I mentioned something here in 1983 after I was banned and I came back to Kensington one day and I was asked what do I think we could do to help our cricket and I happened to mention to them that we have to get our Senior Cup cricket at a semi professional level and we have to start paying the 12 people who play Senior Cup, regardless of how little it is and my reasoning behind it was, when I was a youngster, I didn't have a kid at 19 or 20 years old but in the modern time, a lot of guys leave high school and have responsibilities when you leave high school.
They might be reasonably good cricketers when they leave high school and they got a job, it might be a bank or wherever it is, and they might be playing Senior Cup for Kensington for arguments sake and their results might be 0,5,6. The boss at the bank says to him John Brown, next week I am going to give you some overtime, I want you to come in on Saturday and work and you going to make $150 on the overtime. John Brown is now starting to think that 'I have responsibility, I need some money', to hell with the cricket. I'm gone; I'm going to work some overtime.
Now my position was that if you were offering John Brown the $150 to play the Senior Cup match, what does he love? He loves cricket, so he would choose that, and that was the simple way in which I saw that they could have moved it. And they will tell you that they don't have money, but we have to find the money to do it, whether through sponsorship, we have to find it. Our mid level cricket has stayed that way for too long and when I say mid level cricket, I mean the step between test level cricket and first class cricket in the West Indies.
We have to get first class cricket in the West Indies on a professional level. If we don't, we are not going to be able to compete in the world level. We have to make the transition. We have to pay the guys here. A guy must be able to say, "I'm a first class cricketer...I might not play for the West Indies, but I'm going to play for Jamaica for 20 years", and at the end of it he must be able to buy a house and drive a car and organize himself in life. At the rate at how we are going, we can't do that, so I believe that's one place.
The other thing I find is that when you give people a job to do, you have to give them the power behind it and make players accountable. So if you have a coach or a manager, they must be able to make certain decisions when you put them in the position. If they have to send home a player, the buck should stop with them. They don't have to call John Brown or Tom Strokes up the chain to find out if I can fire this guy, if I can send him home. You are supposed to vet your manager or coach properly and give them the power to make these decisions.
I believe we have to put responsible enough people in those positions that they can make the decisions. I saw Sir Gary say that in an article that we should have one coach and get him from abroad and give him the power to do the job and I agree with some of the things he had said, but I believe we first must try somebody at home and give them the tools that are required and let us see if we can do the job first at home before we look to abroad.
I know people will say there can only ever be one Lawrence Rowe, but do you see any new Lawrence Rowes around the region today? Who do you like to watch?
I like young Sarwan. From early when I saw him I thought he was good little young player. I'm not so impressed with the results he has been getting recently. I think our Marlon Samuels is also a nice person to look at, I believe that when he had made the West Indies team, I was not an advocate at the time that he should have gone in to the West Indies team.
Why not?I believe you don't pick a person based on just talent. You have to have some result to get there, especially when you are going to make the next step. Remember the next step is Test cricket so you are supposed to send a positive message to a young player that it needs performance to get to that level.
So you would think the same thing about Fidel Edwards, Dwayne Smith and so on?Oh most definitely. I think it's a lot of garbage going on with that, wherein you picking people who haven't played for their country to play for the West Indies. You don't play enough First Class cricket and then you just going to step into a West Indies team. No.
What is the advantage of having a lot of First Class experience before going on to International level?Because every level that you go up, it becomes tougher, mentally and everything else is becomes tougher, so you have to prepare a person to get up to that level I think but I think the First Class level we have, I am not so keen on what I am seeing. I think the cricket is watered down, wherein you pick a Jamaica team and to make up a U-23 team, you pick the rejects from Jamaica, the rejects from Trinidad, the rejects from Barbados and you form another team and put them into the competition. I don't think that is giving you quality stuff.
I think a better route to go is to play return matches, if you want more games, and more cricket, you play home and away, but the cricket is quality stuff because you getting the best people playing against each other. You don't pick the Jamaica trial squad and when you pick the Jamaica team, you go back and get the rejects and we want to pick another Jamaica team. No, that won't work. You pick the best of Jamaica at the time. To the guys who don't make it, you say "work a little harder".
When you were playing for the West Indies, what did you see your future to be?Hmmm, that's a tough one. Well I had cut schooling short, and after I played in my second series when I got my ankle injury in Trinidad I thought my career, I really started to glance around and look at myself as a young man, look in the mirror and say "Damn, this could all be finished, right here" and I started to look at what else I could have done if it was all done then, because I had given up the schooling thing now for the cricket, totally. I remember remarking to my wife at the time I think I better go back to school and get something done because it could have been all gone and at that time I was focusing that it was a pity that I didn't get in the rest of the schooling, because you don't know where this career is going to go. I think that is why I fought so hard after the eye problem and all the injuries.
I think I made the West Indies team on probably four or five different occasions which is not easy to do. I had to make back the team, I was out there, stop and start, stop and start and it's difficult because when you are out, a guy takes your place and to get back, you have to perform at the First Class level and then they look at you and you get back into the Test team and when you get into the Test team, you have one more lick to do it, is one lick you have, if you don't perform when you get the one lick, they kick you back out again.
Fortunately enough for me, in the early series you would get a pass here and there because of the past performances that you had, but as your life went along and you get past 25 and you start to get to 28 you're turning an old man in terms of West Indies cricket now, there was no more pass. You had to perform to make it and if you didn't make it, they kick you out so there was only one shot you had.
I remember in 1976, because I went on 3 tours to England and only played 2 test matches, and I remember playing in my first test match in Leeds, we were doing very well, the openers had batted well, Viv was at number 3, he was batting well and Clive Lloyd and myself were padded up to go into bat. I was next, he was after me and he said to me, "Yags, you know when the team bats like this and everybody makes runs, somebody in the middle always fails you know" and I turn to him and said "Skip, it better be you, because you are the captain" because I was just coming back. I think I clip them a 50 at Headingley. And I made 70 in the Oval test. Those were my two test innings in England.
Why do they call you Yagga?It was a name I got from boyhood days. We were going to a place to play some cricket, me and some friends of mine, I was about 12 or 13 and I was going to this woman's yard where we always congregate to go play cricket, and all of a sudden I start coming out with this song [Rowe starts singing] "Me a Yagga Yaw, going a Yagga Yaw". I just start to sing that tune, and from then everybody just call me Yagga.
Talking about singing, I hear that you used to whistle while batting.Yes, that is true and I was not aware of it. Anything I do, and I am deep in concentration it comes out. I play tennis now for recreation and I was playing at the hotel recently and the guy said to me "why you whistle?" and I said "I was whistling?" I do it unconsciously.
So you stopped playing cricket, because when you came back, you were banned, you couldn't play Senior Cup, what did you do then?I went to Florida. Never did any more studying, got into a business, got divorced, got remarried, have a young daughter, got myself involved in a vacuum sales service parts business with some partners and that didn't work out well and I got on my own, and I am still on my own today.
You have some grandchildren. How many and do you spoil them?I have four; each of my sons has two each. I don't get to see much of them, but I don't spoil them. I don't spoil my daughter either. I'm the person who disciplines them; I'm a tough person when it comes to that. I don't like spoilt children.
I want you to reflect now. If you had to do anything differently in your life so far, what would you do differently, if anything?Marry a little bit older, I was about 22 when I first got married. I think looking back now I don't think I was experienced enough to get married and I think it helped to distract you a little too, as a young player in your career. And I would have made 366 when I made the 302, I would have made the world record. Deryck Murray was batting with me at the time, and he said now you've reached 300, let's look at the 365, and I said to him boy that's going to be tough. And the Bajan people I think they would have wrecked the cricket if that would have happened there, and after that, a few Bajans said that to me, that we would not have allowed you to break his record here. And it would have been tough, if I had batted and say got to 340 or so, I would have put the captain in a tough position because a declaration would have been in order pretty soon and then he would have to make a decision if he was going to allow me to try to get the 365 or declare.
You followed that last test in Antigua against England. Do you think Lara was right to bat on?I think so. I think so. It's easy for people to criticize after the fact because we can see the full picture. I believe at the time he probably was looking at it, we were 0-3 down he didn't want to get 0-4 so he decided to bat them out of the game. There was no way he could have lost the game and he was getting close to the record of 380, and if you get there, why not make the 400 and just put it out of sight. I believe though that at the rate of how things are going, somebody might get 400 again in Test cricket.
You haven't written a book. You say if you had, it would have been called 'Misunderstood'. Is there anything else that you would like the public to know about you, that you think they've misunderstood about you, anything that you want to clarify?Well it's only one thing I would like to say. There is a myth out there that I was a soft person, that I couldn't take the pressure, and at one stage I look at the internet and see where I believe in obeah. I don't know where these things come from because those things are just so far from the truth, and it's painful sometimes. My present wife, I think it was her daughter who pulled it off the internet and came to me with it and they said "You believe in obeah?", and it was very embarrassing.
These things are not true and I hope this interview will clear a few minds.
http://caribbeancricket.com/news/0000/00/00/1414
AuthorTopic: For Blwe, CLR and other old farts: Interview with Lawrence Rowe (Read 1297 times)
January 23, 2006, 09:46:25 AM