Rowe Faces The Consequences (Pt 4)

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

After the controversial decision to lead a 'rebel' side to South Africa, Lawrence Rowe faces a lifetime ban from all levels of cricket in the West Indies.

He knew of the consequences for his decision but how did he cope with the reality of the ban? Did it affect lifelong friendships, like the one he had with Mikey Holding? In the final installment of our exclusive interview, Rowe talks about the ramifications of going to apartheid South Africa...

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.

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