Third Man in Havana E-Book

Tom Rodwell

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 369

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

When Tom Rodwell embarked on a cricketing tour of India, he had only ever thought of the game as great fun. But the simple joy of the local street kids when his team donated their kit to them made him realise that it could be more than that. By turns touching and amusing, and imbued with a deep love of the game, Third Man in Havana is the story of the charity cricket programmes 'Major' Tom Rodwell has helped run around the world, and of the people he has encountered along the way. From Be'er Sheva Cricket Club pavilion in Israel – a converted nuclear bomb shelter, useful in the face of Hamas' regular rocket attacks – to a game of tapeball cricket with ex-Tamil Tiger child soldiers behind barbed wire in Sri Lanka, Rodwell discovered that the heart of the game is beating fast in countries more used to conflict than cricket. Third Man in Havana is a wonderfully positive story, revealing that the spirit of cricket is alive and well.

Leseprobe

Printed edition published in the UK in 2012 by

Corinthian Books, an imprint of

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.co.uk

This electronic edition published in the UK in 2012

by Icon Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-90685-035-7 (ePub format)

ISBN: 978-1-90685-036-4 (Adobe ebook format)

Sold in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,

74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe, South Africa and Asia

by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road

Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Published in Australia in 2012

by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,

PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,

Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Text copyright © 2012 Tom Rodwell

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any

means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Bembo by Marie Doherty

CONTENTS

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Courtney Walsh

Introduction

PART ONE

1: A Passage to India

2: London – We are the World

3: Jamaica – ‘One Love’

4: Cuba – Third Man in Havana

5: Panama – A Man. A Plan. A Canal. Panama.

6: New York! New York!

7: Israel – Cross-Border Cricket

8: Sri Lanka – Where Cricket is Life

Map of Africa

PART TWO

9: Into Africa – Livingstone, Zambia, I Presume?

10: Zimbabwe – From the Bread Basket of Central Africa to a Basket Case

11: Uganda – Raid on Entebbe

12: Rwanda – From Cricket to the Commonwealth

13: Tanzania – Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?

14: Sierra Leone – Land of Iron and Diamonds

Conclusion: The Third Umpire

To

Kathleen Rodwell née Goodfellow (1906–2001)

Frank Sutliffe Rodwell (1899–1987)

Suzanne and Fred, for sharing my life and my love of cricket

And my apologies to Graham Greene (1904–91), who hated the game.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and bred in Leicester, Tom Rodwell is a lifelong advertising man whose love of cricket has led to his working with several cricket charities over the past twenty years. Married with a son, he lives in Hertfordshire, and is now a Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University’s Business School, and Chairman of the Lord’s Taverners.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

John Arlott said that above all cricket is ‘a human game’, and in the end it’s the people met on my cricketing journey that make everything worthwhile. From Shabby, my terrible wicket-keeper, to Julien Cahn, who first got me involved in a cricket charity and introduced me to Reg Scarlett at the Haringey Cricket College in London. Mikey Thompson and Tony Joseph were pupils at the college and have been with me most of the way. Huge respect – and love – to those guys, Mikey now back in Jamaica and Tony in Qatar.

Abroad the list is endless, and although it’s invidious to isolate particular individuals who’ve made a difference, the following is a small sample of people who I’m proud to have met along the way: Courtney Walsh, Brian Breese and Jimmy Adams in Jamaica; Leona Forde in Cuba; Liliana Fernandez in Panama; Clifford Hinds and Jeff Thompson in New York; George Sheader and Abu Hamed in Israel; Jayananda Warnaweera and Philippe Duamelle in Sri Lanka; Norman Nyaude in Zimbabwe; Nicholas Muramagi, Simon Ojok and John Nagenda in Uganda; Charles Haba in Rwanda; Elijawa Jacob in Tanzania; Sidney Benka-Coker and Francis Mason in Sierra Leone. All these and many others have achieved far more than I ever could, using their talents, whether cricketing or not, to help solve all sorts of different issues in the countries they love.

Finally, thanks to my editor Ian Marshall for persuading me to write the book, and for shepherding its progress, and special thanks to artist Steve Dell for his wonderful wibbly-wobbly drawings and maps.

FOREWORD

by Courtney Walsh

I consider it a great honour to be asked to pen a few words to introduce Tom’s book Third Man in Havana. It’s an opportunity to say thanks, because it was he and his charity colleagues who helped me to set up The Courtney Walsh Foundation a few years back.

Although the aims of the Foundation sound a bit serious – ‘to inspire and empower positive change in Jamaica’s disadvantaged young people in order to improve their prospects in education, training and employment’ – it’s really just about using cricket in different ways to help loads of kids, while having fun at the same time. This is just what Tom’s written about in this wonderful book.

The book is set not just in countries where cricket’s a passion, like Jamaica, but also where it’s much less well-known, such as in Israel and Cuba. Although Cuba is very different from Jamaica, it’s not far away, and I’ve been able to see for myself the interest that there is in cricket in a country that, like Jamaica, is mad about its sport.

It’s my privilege, being an ambassador-at-large for Jamaica, to be able to travel the world to help my country. One of those trips was to London, and it was there that I was introduced to tapeball cricket, a basic version of the game that was being played on a basketball court underneath a motorway. Now that’s very different from the sort of cricket I played, but I could see that the kids from the area were having a ball, under the watchful eye of their coach Mikey Thompson, who is now head coach of the foundation back in Jamaica, where he grew up.

I was lucky when I was growing up in Jamaica. Being part of a strong family kept me on the straight and narrow. But others aren’t so lucky, and if we can get them playing cricket, understanding about fair play, and enjoying themselves in a team, then there’s a better chance that they’ll become good citizens and, who knows, even play for the West Indies like I did.

Coming to England to play county cricket for all those years opened my eyes to what cricket had to offer, and being able to represent my country, Jamaica, at the same time led to my dream coming true: playing for the West Indies, alongside some of the greatest players in the history of the game. This enabled me to travel to wherever cricket was played, and I was paid for the privilege. But I always tried to remember my roots, to respect my opponents and always to give my best.

But cricket isn’t just about what goes on at the top level – it’s about having fun, and it can also be about helping make a difference to people’s lives. I have seen how cricket has changed the lives of many, whether they be prisoners, the disadvantaged or the disabled. This book tells some wonderfully uplifting stories from all around the world, about how the game has helped such people – always with fun at the heart of that help.

This book makes me feel good about the game I love, and I learned a few things too. I had to laugh about Tom’s catch off my bowling in Spanish Town jail, though. Honestly, despite what he says, it was a really easy one!

Remember, if we all help one another we can all have a good time.

One Love,

The Hon. Courtney Walsh, Order of Jamaica, Ambassador-at-large

INTRODUCTION

This book is the story of what happened when an ordinary cricketer who’d had years of fun playing the game at home and abroad was given the chance to use the game to help young people from around the world. These young people were often suffering from all sorts of disadvantages, but we were able to help them to get to know cricket, have fun playing it and maybe even improve their lives.

It’s the story of eighteen trips to twelve countries over a six-year period, from 2005 to 2011; a story of government involvement and intrigue; of cricketing authorities sometimes helping and sometimes hindering; of the struggle to get the projects off the ground; of incredible sights seen; but above all of the amazing people met along the way, people often working in very difficult and dangerous conditions.

Now this all sounds very worthy, but the essence of sport is fun, and this book describes work in some countries where cricket is hardly known, such as Israel, Rwanda and Cuba, as well as others where it’s embedded in their culture, such as Jamaica and Sri Lanka. But in all of them the cricket that is played and the young people that are encountered, victims of poverty, war or disability, bear witness to the power of the game to surprise, to entertain, and even to educate.

As all bowlers know, it’s sometimes difficult to concentrate on your line and length, but in Israel it’s doubly so when a platoon of infantry troops from the Israel Defence Forces, based at the Erez crossing into the Gaza Strip, has just demounted from an armoured personnel carrier and is on the boundary, both of the cricket pitch and of Israel, shouting and pointing rifles at you, especially when your iffy legspin is fragile at the best of times.

My bowling was under pressure in Rwanda too, having to demonstrate to aspiring young Hutu and Tutsi cricketers how to pitch the ball on middle and hit the top of the off stump, in a stadium in Kigali that only a few years previously had been at the centre of their genocidal civil war.

As an inconsistent batsman, being bowled out isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but it’s doubly disappointing when you’re representing your country against Cuba’s best, watched by a largely uncomprehending and unlikely crowd, including Ken Livingstone and Lord Moynihan. It’s also frankly frightening when the bowler’s name is Stalin, and he seems to have inherited all the eponymous Soviet leader’s hatred of anyone standing in his path to glory.

My fielding isn’t what it was, so normally taking a decent catch from a good shot by an ex-Jamaica batsman off the bowling of West Indian legend Courtney Walsh should be a cause for huge celebration. But not when the victim is a convicted murderer serving life in Jamaica’s Spanish Town jail, who’d been looking forward to his first game in years, and I’m the reason he’s got out in the first over.

In Sri Lanka its 30-year civil war had only just ended, and ex-Tamil Tiger child soldiers were still being held at the Ambepussa internment camp, despite protests from UNICEF. But the inmates were still able to enjoy their first taste of cricket, even if it was being played behind barbed wire, and despite the fact that they couldn’t celebrate sixes hit over the heavily guarded boundary fence.

Before these trips, I’d thought that cricket was just about batting, bowling, fielding and having a good time, but they have taught me that it can be about much more than that. A lot is written about how sport can break down prejudices, transcend boundaries, and bring people together, but much of this comment is so general as to sometimes be almost meaningless. However, these journeys made me appreciate the power of sport, and especially cricket, to deliver a lot more than just plain fun. It really can help make the world a better place, as I hope this book will show.

PART ONE

1

A Passage to India

Frances Edmonds, wife of the ex-England player Philippe, wasn’t that keen on cricket and wrote a very funny book about England’s unsuccessful 1986 tour of the West Indies called Another Bloody Tour. Reading the book, one can understand her feelings, but every cricketer loves touring, and while the week-in week-out roster of league or friendly games can become a bit dreary, the tour is always the highlight of the season, and for years I ran a team that did little else.

I worked for an advertising agency that was once described in the press as ‘a cricket team which does a bit of advertising’. Well, it was the 1980s when life was easier. Still, I did manage to help launch some decent ad campaigns, such as the Smash Martians, the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster and the Cresta Bear, while mainly worrying about where the next tour should be.

It started off innocently enough with trips to Kent, playing against such teams as Marshside CC, who played at the aptly named Sheep Dip Meadow. Then to Devon and Cornwall, playing against pub teams like The King of Prussia and The Pig’s Nose. The Pig’s Nose ground overlooked the sea and games were regularly abandoned because of the sea fret, which was no hardship with the pub being so close.

Our big match was always against Tideford CC, whose ground was on a concave slope so extreme that third man’s position could only be confirmed by the swirling cigarette smoke above his head, just like in the old Hamlet cigars ad (though that was in a golf bunker). A lot of village clubs are dominated by one family, but Tideford took it to extremes by once fielding an entire team of Snowdons. Funnily enough, they were all very tall too – they could well have been named after the Welsh mountain.

We then ventured over the water to Jersey, where the pitch was in the middle of an airfield and their best fielder had only one arm. Having gone that far, we reached out to those two powerful cricketing nations, Belgium and France. In Belgium, we took on the Royal Brussels Cricket Club. They played at Waterloo, so every game was, of course, ‘The Battle of Waterloo’, but, unlike in 1815, we normally lost.

France, it must never be forgotten, are the current holders of the Olympic silver medal for cricket (having lost to England at the 1900 games, though it was the only match played) so their is a proud history. In France, our initial opponents were the Standard Athletic Club in Paris, and we always played on the final day of the Tour de France, thus providing a much-needed alternative sporting spectacle to those not smitten by cycling. Then we went to Cabris, in the south of France, where goats had to be moved from the pitch before we began playing. This was often tricky to negotiate with the locals because Cabris is old French for ‘goat’, and the pesky animal’s local significance is of almost religious proportions. Cabris isn’t far from Cannes, and one year our wicket-keeper, Shabby, missed the Saturday fixture to pick up an award from the Advertising Film Festival, only to return at the start of the Sunday game still wearing his dinner jacket, which he duly played in, making his wicket-keeping even worse than usual.

Venturing across the Mediterranean to Minorca, we played on a lovely ground in the middle of the island which was infested with wild tortoises. These can easily be mistaken for old cricket balls, and when they are so mistaken it makes them even wilder.

Our confidence growing, we took in Mombasa in Kenya, where proper cricket is played on the wide hard beach, so if the fielding gets too dull you can just step back over the boundary into the cooling sea. One of our players, a large Welsh comedian called Barry Williams did just that, promptly fell asleep in the sea and was hospitalised with sunstroke. Easily his best joke.

Then came Barbados, which was a rugby tour really, but with a game of cricket played the following day. Saturday afternoon rugby injuries and Saturday evening drinking injuries had ravaged the Sunday cricket team, so I had to frantically engage the hotel manager to put a team together. The wages of two waiters were paid to enable them to play, and he then said that there was a good cricketer just coming off the golf course who might like a game. As he approached the bar, I thought he looked a bit past it, but the manager assured me he could still play a bit. It was Sir Garfield Sobers, who joined us for a drink, but said he was too tired to play. He added that if we’d asked him the day before, he would have played. If only …

But a tour of India was the catalyst that transformed my love of the game by helping me see that cricket could be much more than just fun. A London-based Indian cricketing friend of mine, Sunil Amar, an accountant who’d founded the Kensington CC, had been pestering me for years to take a team to India. So in 1985 a team comprising mainly advertising people, but also including a banker, a restaurateur, a journalist and a farmer was assembled for an assault on the subcontinent’s best.

While we travelled in cosseted comfort, wore brand new touring cricket kit and wielded the finest equipment money could buy, everywhere we went we saw hundreds of impromptu games being played by both kids and adults dressed in everyday scruffy clothes and using whatever they could find for bats, balls and wickets. The Indian teams we played against were as well equipped as we were, and were oblivious to this contrast, since it was just the norm in India, but as the days went by the nagging unfairness of the gap between rich and poor started to eat into me.

A lot of ‘proper’ cricket people had lent their support for what was then a very ambitious tour. Kapil Dev wrote the foreword to our tour brochure, saying: ‘On behalf of all cricket people in India, I would like to welcome you to our country and to wish you good luck and good fun.’ Geoffrey Boycott, having previously played for my team and scored a cautious 99 against a powerful Turville CC XI, also wished us well with a more personalised message: ‘My highest individual score in Test cricket was against India in 1967 [246 not out] and in 1981 I pushed a four past midwicket off Dilip Doshi against India to beat Sir Garfield Sobers’ Test aggregate of 8,032 runs.’ I like Geoffrey and, to be honest, if I’d scored that many runs I’d not keep quiet about it either!

With other good wishes from Phil Edmonds, John Snow and Christopher Martin-Jenkins ringing in our ears, we approached our first game against the hotel staff in Delhi – the Oberoids – with confidence and, astonishingly, won it with ease. The ground was on the site of the 1857 Indian Mutiny, which obviously held bad vibes for the locals.

This surprising win was not a good move, as word went round that maybe we weren’t as bad as we said we were, and the next game against an Indian XI was a different story. They’d picked four current Indian Test players, including Kirti Azad, who had been in India’s 1983 World Cup team, and the light blue turbanned spinner Maninder Singh. A large crowd of Indians and vultures had assembled at the Northern Railways ground and they weren’t disappointed. The Indian XI struggled to 402 for three off their 40 overs, with Kirti Azad scoring 73 in fifteen minutes before retiring, which got the crowd whooping and hollering. The vultures weren’t disappointed either as they spent the entire innings circling around Shabby, who wasn’t looking at all well and was keeping appallingly.

Luckily, I’d rested myself for the game, having scored a stylish, winning seventeen the previous day. My place had gone to a drinking mate from my village pub, the Green Dragon, a local farmer called Richard Styles who joined the touring party at two days’ notice when he realised that with winter approaching, he had very little to do for the next few months. Who’d be a farmer, eh? At 60 for five we were in trouble, but Farmer Styles took a liking to Maninder Singh’s floaty offspin and with a flurry of agricultural swipes ended his innings on 51 not out as part of our respectable total of 191.

Kirti Azad said he’d never seen anyone bat so well against Maninder, and joined us for the uproarious after party. Maninder couldn’t make it, still wondering what had gone wrong. Kirti wrote in our scorebook: ‘Grand effort and good luck. Have a nice stay. Cheers!’ He’s now an MP and TV personality. I bet he’s good at both.

The next game was in the capital of Rajasthan, the ‘Pink City’ of Jaipur, a most wonderful place where the Maharajah’s old palace, the Rambagh, was the best hotel in town, and luckily ours for the night. One of our team, Ian Sippett, was with his girlfriend and was so taken with the place that he got married there in an interminable Hindu ceremony, despite the fact that neither of them were Hindus. As I write, they’re still together, so maybe it wasn’t such a mad idea after all.

The previous Maharajah died while playing polo, but the current incumbent, a friend of Sunil’s, was more of a cricket man and had challenged us to a game. The ground was astonishingly beautiful, surrounded as it was by encastellated mountains, and certainly before the match ‘The Maharajah of Jaipur’s XI v BMP’ looked good in the scorebook. But there were shades of the Indian XI in Delhi and we were again well beaten, this time by 135 runs, although we did win the beer match, a groundbreaking concept new to our Indian friends. Perhaps it gave them the idea for the IPL. Their skipper was a charming fellow who played for East Grinstead in the summer, and was puzzled as to why we’d come so far to play such poor cricket. Harsh, but fair.

We also managed to squeeze in the sights of Udaipur and Agra in Rajasthan, thankfully avoiding having to play cricket there, before moving on to our final fixture in Bombay, which it was then still called. British colonial pomp was very evident in the Gateway to India, built to celebrate the arrival of George V in 1911 for the Delhi Durbar, and the wonderful Victoria Station, which makes ours look almost suburban. But the highlight had to be the string of cricket gymkhanas that were laid out in the 19th century behind the majestic sweep of Marine Drive. Mindful of the city’s religious diversity, clubs were formed for the local Muslims, Hindus and Parsees, as well as our own splendid Bombay Gymkhana where the locals were sadly not so welcome. These four communities played in regular quadrangular tournaments before the war, and in the late 1930s they were joined by an Anglo-Indian Judeo-Christian team called the Rest. But Gandhi, not a cricket lover, put paid to all this frivolity after the war.

Our match was against the Parsees, descendants of persecuted­ Persians who sought refuge in India in the sixth century; they had been the pioneers of Indian cricket. Apparently there are now only about 100,000 Parsees left in the world, but that was easily enough for them to generate a team sufficient to inflict another heavy defeat on our motley crew, who by then were suffering from tour fatigue.

As ever, a good crowd had watched our less than impressive performance and many of them were street kids who hung around both teams, enviously eying up the equipment and asking to play with it among themselves. We just couldn’t ignore the joy that transformed their dusty faces when they picked up a proper cricket bat and were able to hit a proper cricket ball, perhaps for the first time. We were leaving the following day and after a very quick discussion we decided to donate all of our cricket kit to the locals. Some of it we gave away to the kids who’d been watching, which created pandemonium, and the rest we left to our Parsee friends who knew where it could be distributed to best effect. The germ of the idea to do something more than just play cricket for fun was starting to grow, and a conversation that evening made it blossom.

The tour had been a great success and on our final night in Bombay I spent a lot of time with one particular member of my team, an entrepreneur with a famous cricketing name: Julien Cahn. Julien’s grandfather was Sir Julien Cahn, another entrepreneur who made a lot of money before the war in the furniture business, and spent a lot of it on sport: on hunting in the Midlands and on cricket both in the Midlands and around the world. He had been president of both Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire CCCs; indeed, my father knew him after the war in Leicester, although sadly he died soon after. His no-expense-spared cricket tours around the world were so good that apparently an invitation to join Sir Julien Cahn’s XI was often regarded as superior to one from the MCC.

Julien had enjoyed this tour, and reckoned his grandfather would have done too, with its emphasis on fun as much as good cricket. It had also given him the idea for a new business – an upmarket Indian restaurant called the Bombay Bicycle Club, inspired by a sign he’d seen above a shop as we ambled through Bombay. Only a few years later, the restaurant was doing so well that a chain was developed and sold for a few million. His grandfather would have been proud.

But what Julien really wanted to talk to me about was the possibility of my helping him with a cricket charity called the London Cricket College, of which he was chairman. His argument was persuasive. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘you’ve had too much fun playing cricket and organising tours, and you’ve seen the effect merely giving away some cricket kit has had. It’s about time you used your meagre talents to help other kids like these, who haven’t been so fortunate. Come and work with me at the London Cricket College, you won’t regret it.’ I did, and I didn’t regret it, because this was the catalyst that took me even further round the world, playing cricket, having fun, but this time, doing a bit of good as well.

After we got back to England, I dropped Geoffrey Boycott a note to thank him for his support. He replied: ‘Glad you had a super time. The best way to visit India is in short doses and then it’s great.’ Well, we’d had a short dose in India, and it certainly was great.

2

London – We are the World

The London Cricket College was a charity that had been set up a few years previously as the Haringey Cricket College. It was intended to help (mainly) young black and Asian lads achieve their potential in cricket and in life. Its mantra was, ‘to produce good cricketers and good citizens’. All charities have to have grand-sounding objectives, otherwise they don’t get any income, but this one was sincere.

The college achieved its objectives through a unique combination of adult education and cricket coaching in the unprepossessing surroundings of the Selby Centre, a rundown leisure centre in Haringey, right in the heart of one of London’s earliest immigrant West Indian communities.

The charity was run by Reg Scarlett, an imposing Jamaican who’d played a few times for the West Indies in 1960 as an off-spinning all-rounder. Reg had become a big pal of Garry Sobers, but this wasn’t enough to stop him soon losing his place to the great Lance Gibbs, so he had come to England to play in the northern leagues. Eventually he settled here happily with his English wife, and decided to share his cricketing knowledge.

There’s a good story in Sobers’ autobiography about how he scored 150 not out at Lord’s in his final Test match in England in 1973, after spending all night out on the town with his old mate Reg Scarlett. Wisden states that during this innings Sobers had to retire temporarily with a stomach upset, which shows what kind of a night it had been.

Reg was an old-fashioned disciplinarian – except when Sobers was involved – which naturally a few of his tearaway tower block charges didn’t like. However, his methods and his West Indian chutzpah produced a string of talented and successful young black cricketers who went on to play first-class cricket, such as Adrian Rollins and Frank Griffith at Derbyshire, Keith Piper at Warwickshire and Mark Alleyne, who was the youngest player ever to score a century for Gloucestershire, beating Wally Hammond’s record, and who is now the MCC head coach.

The effect that the judicious mixture of cricket and education had on some of the students was neatly summed up by Adrian Rollins who said: ‘If it hadn’t been for the London Cricket College I’d probably now be in prison rather than having a first-class cricket contract.’

Compared to the ramshackle Selby Centre, the college’s cricket team was deliberately ‘old school’, resurrecting as its name London County, the club that W.G. Grace founded as his own county team in 1899. The cricket played was mainly against the first-class counties’ second teams, who were regularly beaten, and also on tours to Reg’s beloved West Indies. But Reg had to fight hard to get his charges first-class contracts, such was the conservatism in the game at that time. He was helped in this by one of his coaches, the late great Fred Titmus, who was better connected in the upper echelons of the game.

Two of the graduates who didn’t warm to Reg’s disciplinarian approach were Mikey Thompson and Tony Joseph, neither of whom made it into first-class cricket but who were both to play a huge role in my cricketing travels round the world and in the lives of the hundreds of young people their work touched.

Mikey is a giant of a man, with the build of a heavyweight boxer and the good looks of Samuel L. Jackson, to whom he claimed to be related. He was born in London and brought up peripatetically in Jamaica and in London with his eleven brothers (a cricket team for goodness sake!). He only finally came back to London in his early twenties, so missing out on a first-class cricket career in either Jamaica or England – too young in Jamaica, too old in England – although, as he often reminded me, he was undoubtedly good enough.

Tony Joseph was younger than Mikey, under whose giant wing he was nurtured. A tall, pale-skinned handsome Antiguan, again born in London, he was still connected to his roots, particularly as his cousin was Sir Vivian Richards. While his batting wasn’t quite up to Viv’s standards, it was stylish and effective and he was also a dangerous medium-pace bowler. His apparent languidness didn’t appeal to Reg, but even Mikey had to admit that Tony was a better cricketer than he was.

Even though the first-class game seemed closed to Mikey and Tony, other opportunities opened up. Mikey spent some time playing and coaching in Ireland, where he helped nurture the very early cricket career of Ed Joyce, who went on to play for both Ireland and England, and where as ‘the only black man in Dublin’ Mikey was a much sought-after companion in the city’s uproarious nightclubs. Tony had a more eye-opening secondment, coaching in the townships of Natal in South Africa. Their experiences confirmed to both of them that cricket coaching with a purpose was what they wanted to do.

I was enjoying helping to run the charity, which in turn ran the college, and meeting the sort of people I wouldn’t normally have come across. To be honest, I was also revelling somewhat in the reflected glory of the successes of the graduates. But a series of events in 1996 and 1997 changed all that.

At the end of 1996, Reg was headhunted to set up the proposed new West Indies Cricket Academy in Antigua, a great accolade for him, but a problem for the college, which had been his baby. As it happens, the academy was never set up, which might help to explain why West Indies cricket is now so poor. But, more importantly, 1997 produced a ‘perfect storm’ for the college when the new government immediately cut sports Lottery funding, while the founding of the England and Wales Cricket Board to look after all cricket also affected funding.

So even though we managed to persuade Deryck Murray, the ex-Warwickshire and West Indies wicket-keeper, to take Reg’s place, and got some new funding in from the private sector, within a year we had to close down the college, despite it having been described by the then Sports Council as ‘the most successful sports academy in the world’.

A sad item from the last set of minutes states: ‘As from the 9 September 1997 The London Cricket College will cease trading and seek legal advice on appointing a liquidator’. Such a waste. But it wasn’t just us failing. Matthew Engel aptly summed up the situation of England cricket in the 1997 Wisden thus: ‘Amid the general global mood of cricketing expansion, England is a spectacular and potentially catastrophic exception.’

After such a disappointing experience, I was happy to go back to concentrating on an advertising career and playing cricket for fun. But I’d got the bug of helping other people enjoy the game and learn from it, albeit now in the more salubrious surroundings of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, rather than Haringey, London N22.

I kept in touch with Mikey and Tony from time to time, played the odd game of cricket, and sampled the best of Mikey’s wife Rose’s Jamaican cooking, which he used to bring in a huge hamper to Lord’s during the Test matches. My job was just to supply the booze, which was easy. While everyone else in Lord’s sacrosanct picnic area was sampling smoked salmon and pork pies, Rose’s rice and peas, curry goat and red snapper brought a touch of Sabina Park to St John’s Wood, London NW8.

Mikey and Tony had both started work at another cricket charity called the London Community Cricket Association (LCCA), which had been linked to the old London Cricket College. When we met they regaled me with the great work they were doing, but they also said that the charity was always short of money and needed re-energising if it was to survive the new millennium.

The LCCA had been founded in the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton riots to try to get some harmony back onto the streets. It is sad that more than 30 years later possibly even greater problems still exist on the streets of London’s inner city, making one wonder whether lessons have really been learned.

In the years following 1981, the LCCA had undertaken cricketing projects in the most difficult areas of London, in rundown housing estates, inner-city schools, special needs schools, prisons, and had even started to spread its wings overseas, but its constant financial problems were becoming an issue, just like at the London Cricket College in 1997.

I was asked to become chairman, which worried me a bit after my disappointing experience at the college, but I said yes because I thought it would be fun working with Mikey and Tony again and that maybe I’d learnt enough to make a success of this challenge. It was indeed fun, and led to projects around the world, but it was also harder work than advertising – although to be honest most is. Effectively I was running a small business with all the responsibilities involved, for no financial gain.

But talking of money, it must never be forgotten that 95 per cent of all cricket in the UK, and around the world, is run by thousands of selfless volunteers, also for no financial gain, so my involvement was nothing out of the ordinary. But as the years rolled by, the work did become very much out of the ordinary.

The people who run small charities, whether paid or unpaid, are generally motivated by the right reasons, but are often naive as to the realities of the world, a bit like some academics, and this can sometimes reduce the impact of the work that they do. The LCCA was no exception to this, so there was a lot of work to be done to try to stabilise the organisation. Thankfully the real work of the charity remained excellent and interesting, which made the job of securing its future much easier.

The creativity of the organisation knew no bounds, and, just like in advertising, all that was needed was to harness that creativity to business and financial reality. Even simple things like a change of name from the worthy London Community Cricket Association to the snappier Cricket for Change had an immediate effect on internal morale and external recognition.

So the work didn’t change a great deal, but more financial security and improved relationships with the cricketing establishment enabled more work to be done, as more funds were attracted from a stronger base of partners.

Thus blind cricket – where sound from within a special ball allows the game to be played by blind people – had been played for some years, but was energised when Mikey took over as head coach of the England Blind Cricket team, leading to their winning the first Blind Ashes against Australia in 2004. I watched the vital last match in the series, at Bradfield College, which England won to secure the Ashes with an unbeaten century from the totally blind Tim Guttridge. It was his final match before retirement from the game and he is now quite rightly a member of the MCC.

One of England’s opening bowlers that day was a young man who later worked for the charity, adding credibility to the disability programme as he was visually impaired himself. The match took place on the same day as a one-day international at Lord’s, and we managed to get a victory message through to Test Match Special, so Christopher Martin-Jenkins proudly announced over the airwaves that ‘England have won the Ashes’ to a somewhat bemused radio audience, before adding that it was the Blind Ashes that had been won, a year before their sighted colleagues emulated their achievement at The Oval.

This was disability sport at the highest level, but when filtered down to cricket in schools that specialise in young people with a disability, self-esteem rises exponentially as they realise that they can take part in sport, too. Tony did a lot of work in these schools and explained to me why cricket seems to work so well with a range of disabilities. The game itself, despite its seemingly complex character, nevertheless has a formulaic structure to it that enables it to be broken down into bite-size chunks that are easily understandable. This is particularly attractive to Down’s Syndrome kids, who are able to get into the game more quickly than other sports which might appear less complex on the surface. The simple act of being able to catch a ball can give the empowerment and the self-belief that can change a ‘can’t-do’ attitude to a ‘can-do’ attitude, and that can start to transform a young person’s life.

Other team sports, such as football, are too fluid and too quick for this to happen. In cricket, there’s time to get your head around what’s going on, thus making the game’s ‘slowness’ a big benefit to young people lacking confidence because of their disability. In cricket, as Tony always says to his pupils ‘your time will come’, be it stopping a ball, taking a catch, bowling a good ball or hitting a good shot. Interestingly, I think that this is the same dynamic that keeps ordinary cricketers like me going. Even if only one good thing happens in a whole afternoon of cricket, it’s enough to keep you interested and to make you turn up next week.

Tony said that the major difference between ‘standard’ cricket coaching and coaching those with a disability was that in the former you’re coaching for excellence, whereas in the latter you’re coaching for confidence. Other things around the game help too – even the scoring system. This not only promotes numeracy, but many autistic kids who play love the detail that’s generated by all the statistics and quickly become brilliant scorers as well as players.

Getting the team together for an away fixture becomes an incredible adventure. Clambering onto the bus. Checking who’s there and who isn’t. Is the kit on board? What about the drinks? All these are important little milestones to be achieved and are all part of the harmony that generates ‘team spirit’, one of the main reasons we all play sport. And then the drive back, ‘always a nightmare’, said Tony, as the noisy post-mortems take place.

Some of the case histories of lives that have been changed are startling. Bilal had no verbal communication before he started playing cricket, but the game gave him a voice. Ferdie’s physical disability had stopped him from playing any sport, but taking up cricket enabled him to demonstrate what he could do at The Oval during the England v India tea interval, in front of 25,000 spectators. Young Ryan even wrote a story about how cricket had transformed him from being ‘a nobody into a somebody’. The parents tell the same stories. ‘Bethany’s just so much happier now she’s found your cricket,’ said one, and the same parents often become valued volunteers as they’ve seen how much more confident their own children have become.

In the inner city the challenges are different, but the results can be just as rewarding. One of the more obvious surprises about inner-city London is that there are hardly any cricket pitches. There are just the two Test grounds at Lord’s and The Oval, and three posh grounds at Westminster School, The Honourable Artillery Company in the City of London and the Guards’ cricket ground in Chelsea, all either in great demand or very expensive to hire, or both.

The creative answer to that problem was to play a version of the game that doesn’t need flash facilities – tapeball cricket. Tapeball is played widely in the West Indies and in Pakistan, and uses a tennis ball covered in electrical tape to mimic most of the properties of a cricket ball; either a wooden or a plastic bat; anything for stumps; and simplified laws. There is no need for a proper pitch. So, games were organised on all-weather football pitches, basketball courts – anywhere that was flat and available.

At an early demonstration of tapeball in Stoke Newington, the ex-Surrey coach Micky Stewart (father of Alec) watched as Maurice Chambers, now at Essex, bowled to Shaun Levy, who had a spell at Middlesex, and described it as ‘chaos cricket’. This was exactly the intention – to strip away the mystique of the game, leaving just the fun and the energy. Most of the players were not up to Maurice and Shaun’s level of ability, but that didn’t matter, as they were enjoying themselves, keeping out of trouble, and eventually even opening new avenues in their lives.

Some went on to Hackney Community College, getting them back into education, and joined Mikey’s Hackney College cricket team, which had picked up some strong fixtures. The rule was that if you’d done all your work, attended all your lectures, and were good enough, you earned the right to play cricket.

The players were a mixture of black, white and Asian kids, mainly in their late teens, a potentially combustible mixture, so Mikey introduced some more rules. Turn up on time. No fighting. No disrespecting each other. And because a lot of the Asians preferred speaking their own languages, Mikey insisted on only English being spoken to stop any cliques developing. The team was an eclectic bunch. Neneto was a teenager whose father, a policeman in Jamaica, had been murdered. Kenny’s family home in Montserrat had been destroyed by the Souffriere volcano, and Irfan had suffered prejudice in India as a religious Muslim but was now introducing cricket to the North London mosque.

Despite these differences and problems, all started to develop quickly into good cricketers and young men determined to make something of themselves, with Neneto and Irfan later going to university and Kenny becoming an excellent coach. The desire for higher education surprised me, and such was the demand that a few years later Mikey and I created a Community Cricket Coaching degree at London Metropolitan University, which in 2010 produced its first graduate, a young black guy who’d once been on Spurs’ books now looking forward to a teaching career.