'Yagga' Rowe: Injuries Interrupt (Pt. 2)

[ Part One] | [ Part Two] | [ Part Three] | [ Part Four]

Following up on part one of the interview where Lawrence 'Yagga' Rowe spoke about the early part of his career, the Jamaica and West Indies batting legend discusses the eye problems and other injuries that interfered with his performance...

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?.

* Look for part three of this interview, where Rowe talks candidly about the reasons for going to apartheid South Africa and the trials and tribulations of dealing with the life ban that followed.

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