I’ve been called lazy. I’ve been called irresponsible. I’ve also been called skipper, and those three things don’t fit together.
I don’t like cricket, I love it. I love it long and slow, I love it short and fast. I love to talk cricket and I love to play it. I like redefining what’s possible and I like digging the small things. And that is why I love being captain.
I will always be a captain. I’ve been doing it from primary school. At 10 years old I was a leader. I used to lead Rollington Town in cricket, and I led them in football. I gave all my mind to it and I gave it all my energy. I felt the responsibility and I relished it. He’s a leader, on di rise, comin’ tru’ di ranks.
In every scenario in every match I learned. Under every other skipper I learned more. And whether I am in charge or in the ranks, I settle on a golden rule that should never be broken: always respect your leader.
It doesn’t matter whether you like them as a person or don’t like them. It doesn’t matter if you agree their tactics or field placings. Yuh cyaan disrespec’ yuh leader. Disrespect them and you shouldn’t be in the team.
But it is a two-way process. A captain must be dedicated to his players. You have to make the physical time and the mental effort to get to know them, and you have to know how to get the very best out of them.
You don’t necessarily need a strong team to win games. If you as a captain can hold a group of players in the palms of your hands, then you have something far more powerful than a paceman with a bouncer or a number three who could hit a marble with a piece of string. If you treat your players as you would want to be treated, if you make them feel that they are appreciated and respected, if you communicate clearly with them, they will go out there and play flat-out ferocious cricket. Even when the tough scene comes to town they will dig deep for their captain.
Every captain has his different way of running the relationships. My style is to make sure the group know, if they have an issue, they should talk. Openly, and say whatever you feel, what’s bothering you. So we can have a better understanding, and so we can free the air, so everybody can be clear when they go out to the middle what they should do and how they should do it. An open discussion, for all to take part in, no favourites, no cliques, no anger or snipe.
Use the wisdom and ideas all around you. Use the experience of the senior players, use the energy of the younger ones. Make your vice-captain feel a critical part of it, because no man can do it alone, and when you gone, he’s the one everyone will turn to.
Teach everyone respect for the environment and each other. You do not all need to be friends, but cricket comes calling, all differences will be aside. As a captain, when I step on the field, it’s one for all and all for one.
I’m an easy-going man. I don’t obsess over fool little rules, over what shoes you wear or whether your shirt is tucked in or your collar up. I am a strong-minded person as well, and I will not tolerate disrespect or disunity. If you can’t oblige with what I want, it gonna be consequence.
And you will get my total commitment. Never will I rest or take easy options.
You might have a big-name bowler who thinks he’s capable of doing something special – opening the attack, coming back to go chest to chest out with their main batsman, coming back again when the game swings on an over or wicket to grab. As a captain you have to learn to read body language – not just sighs and shoulders slumped, but the tiny signs that show someone is just below their best. Then you must have the courage to act, even when he does not recognize it himself. You think you’re bowling this over? If the invisible signs are telling me you’re not quite right, I’m not going to give it to you. If I think you look like you’re intimidated, I’m not going to put you in that position.
It’s complicated, but so am I.
Playing for Excelsior over at high-and-mighty Jamaica College on Hope Road, playing well, I hit a sweet shot towards the boundary. Jogging back to the crease, thinking it has gone for four, I am run out by the fielder’s long throw.
Mr Mac, who gets so stressed watching us play cricket that he has taken up smoking, loses his temper. ‘How com’ you run out? You so crampy!’ Crampy means slow, crampy means laid back, crampy means skinny. And so a nickname is born, but don’t be fooled. My commitment is total. I just don’t like running.
As a captain you have to lead from the front.
I am a gladiator, and I will go out there and I will take the fight to the enemy. As early as possible I will put them on the back foot, establish the hierarchy. When your players see that, they will stamp their authority on the game too, and they will support you even more, because a true brave leader is what each player wants.
As a captain you have to perform. If you are a leader who is struggling to score runs or take wickets, players will ease off. They will think that, since you’re not doing it, you can’t talk to them about why they’re not doing it either. When the team sees you soaking up the short stuff, surviving brutal spells, staying alive where others would fall and refusing to give in when reasons to give in are all around, then they will feel they must do the same.
The winter of 2010, Adelaide. We have lost the first Test to Australia in three days, and we have been hammered. 187 all out, following on, and the knives are out and the critics breathing fire.
There is talk not only of how poor we are but how poor our attitude is, that the maroon cap does not sit straight upon our heads. Even our own management say things that no management should say to any team. Okay. As captain, I must stand with the players and be counted. As a team we must come together and plan it out: how are we going to fight back?
You fight back first by not giving in. Expected to fold, we make 451 in our first innings, Dwayne Bravo with a strong and resolute 100. Our bowlers fight the heat and the crowd and prise them out for just a few runs less. With four overs to go in the third day, stands roaring, close fielders sniffing like jackals, I stride to the middle with Adrian Barath to lead as I understand I should lead.
Not dancehall in my head this time but Marley, singing ‘Get Up, Stand Up’.
I can feel it on my lips and in my heart. Music has carried me through my life, and now is the time to summon everything you have.
If you want anything, you turn to Marley, and that will drive you on.
Stay alive where others would fall. Stand up and stand tall. We survive the darkening night and come back on bright morning, and we will not be beaten, not this time.
Early on Ricky Ponting calls for a referral on an lbw that the umpire has turned down. No sweat on my brow – he’s not nicknamed Punter without reason, and this one’s a gamble that’s all about the dream of a prize wicket rather than the odds that surround it.
I can play wrecking-ball, and I can play brick wall.
We have a lot of time. There’s nothing to chase. You are the captain, you are the one shouldering the responsibility, and you utilize your skills accordingly.
Make your calculations: what is the percentage chance of getting out to that bowler compared to that one, to that shot against this? You cannot go strokeless, for then you are not only leaning on the ropes but have your gloves down by your sides. Keep your guard up, but when they offer a little space or daylight, strike back hard and hurt them when you do. Now they hesitate a fraction when thinking about their own targets, because no one likes a bloody nose.
It’s a strong bowling attack. Mitchell Johnson, all snarl and slingy left arm. The secret with him? Don’t respond to the fury. It’s all bluster, and will blow itself out if he can’t strike early on. He struggles with long spells, and Ponting does not understand this, so stare back with your blank-eyed gladiator’s mask on and wait for the loose ones that will follow.
Peter Siddle. Not only a vegan Aussie male, but a vegan Aussie fast bowler. He drinks coconut water and eats 20 bananas a day, which even in Jamaica might run a few jokes. Here you take him serious. Tight bowler, aggressive bowler. Give him no gaps.
Doug Bollinger, fast and excitable. Wears a toupee, nicknamed Doug the Rug. Make him want to tear his hair out. Nathan Hauritz, Shane Watson: old stagers from the days in the Aussie academy. Bring back every memory from those days, recall and refocus on all their variations and preferences and stock balls and weak spots, use them all in the fight.
My 50 comes up off 78 balls, fast for some, steady for me. With Shiv Chanderpaul I drop a little more chain on the anchor; our 100 takes 34 overs.
Batters must try to wear down bowlers. Never let them in, never give them hope. One guy beats the edge, the whole attack takes energy from it. Tire them out, silence their shouts. A quiet field is a safer field.
Build partnerships, for two men together are stronger than one alone. Watch their body language, and build to the moment that they accept that you’re not getting out.
Dictate the pace. They will try everything – bowlers with long spells, bowlers with short spells. Long, slow overs, spinners racing through others like their house is on fire. Fielders under your nose, fielders around the fence.
Don’t think of the end, only the moment you are in. Don’t let the mind wander to how long is left, only the ball that is fizzing towards you. Work, and graft, and grind it out.
‘Don’t give up the fight . . .’
Past lunch, past tea, the bowlers trudging off to change shirts. My century comes round almost unnoticed, and like a man in the nets I look up only at the next bowler coming in.
It is physical, hot and sticky and sweat in your eyes, gloves soaked, trousers damp under pads and over thigh guards. Your mind and memories drive you on, because you have batted like this in the past, and whether on Lucas’s far side or Antigua’s green field against the 11 bowlers of South Africa you have both proven you can do it and honed your skills for the next time the challenge comes.
Don’t over-think it. Don’t worry about failure. Talk to yourself, boost yourself, sing to yourself.
‘Get up, stand up!’
Relish the challenge and savour your response to it. You love to bat, and you love to lead. In this fierce moment you are doing both.
Wickets fall, and my resolve stiffens. 150 to my name just before the close, 150 in over a day. From the drowning depths in Brisbane we have a lead of almost 300, and now we are the ones to fear. On the fifth morning Ponting pushes his fielders back far and wide, an unmissable admission that superiority has turned to deference, that attack has become defence.
At 317 I lose my last partner. I have batted for almost seven and a half hours. 165 not out. There for the first ball, there for the last.
Only three other West Indians have carried their bat in Tests, and only one – Frank Worrell – has scored more in doing so. Only three other overseas players have done it in Australia. One was Len Hutton, and that makes sense because he was another triple centurion. But another of them was Geoffrey Boycott, and I may have less in common with Geoffrey Boycott than any other man who has ever held a cricket bat. I’m also the only man in the history of the game to do it in T20 cricket, but that will come as surprises to no one.
We thought we might win it. We hoped Sulieman Benn’s spin would bite. But the track had flattened out, and although we dug out five of them, we could get no more. Yet from where we had been to where we were, it almost felt like a win anyway: having Australia hopping in their own backyard, having them hanging on and celebrating an escape.
We were a team together again, and I had done what a captain should do. In the third Test we went hard again, and this time, attack required rather than defence, I smashed a century off just 70 balls, the fifth-fastest in history. We fell just short, but we had them on the run again, and we had respect where before there was none. And I had led from the front, just as I knew I should, just as I had always done.
You learn from every captain, and you learn the good and the bad.
From the best I played under with the West Indies, Carl Hooper, came trust and belief. He is a calm man and would not be swayed by fear. Playing in Sri Lanka, struggling badly with the late swing of Chaminda Vaas, I’m almost waiting to be dropped. Instead he come to me, no anger or recrimination: ‘Lissen mi Chris, you playing every game.’
Confidence let you relax, and confidence let you flourish.
From Brian Lara came communication, although not as you might think. We won a few series under Brian, and we won the Champions Trophy, but to me Lara wasn’t the best captain. You have to have the players under your wing, and only seldom did he have control of his.
Maybe he intimidated them. He was the superstar, he was the world talent. He was the big man of the team, and people might not know what to say to him sometime. But he was never really approachable, and you need to get the guys up, for them to spring how you want them to spring.
Great batsman, moody person. Lara could just flip, and no one would have any idea why. I saw it happen in the nets and I saw it happen in the dressing-room. He wasn’t the sort of captain you’d want to look up to, and from that bad seeds are sown.
As a captain you have to be ahead of the game. You have to be ahead from the night before, before you come to spin that toss, and that knowledge came, like so much sweetness, from Delroy Morgan at Lucas. Alert, organized, disciplined and deep in love with tactics. I saw it too in Stephen Fleming when he led New Zealand; never captaining a superstar team, but turning them into superstars and a super unit through his tactics and motivation and understanding of what they could do rather than his disappointment at what they couldn’t.
Some men are born to captain. They are born with the ability to read another man’s character and the motivations that wrap around it. If you are raised in cricket and see it only as toil or pressure you will never care enough to add the rest. If you find fascination in all around you, then instead it will become instinctive; just as a musician knows what chord should follow another, so the natural captain looks at a batsman and knows the best field, looks at an over and knows what must come next.
It clicks for me. Sometime it takes deliberate thought, but often the solution just comes. A leader, on di rise.
Jerome Taylor, a top strike bowler. I use him upfront with the new ball, and I may use him at the death with the old. If he’s bowling the last over, I will let him know as early as possible, so he can prepare and settle on the concept.
Then, in the crazy madness of the game, I might notice his little trigger movement. No one else spots it. No one else knows what it is, maybe not even Jerome Taylor, but it is there, and it means he is not comfortable. He is nervous. There is doubt when I want raw unstoppable belief.
Now your mind is alive. ‘Fuck. Do I still give him that over? Who else could step in? Who else look ready?’
Next thought. ‘I’ve told him he’s my strike bowler. He need my assurance. He need me in his head.’
A jog over to him before the penultimate over.
‘Lissen mi. There’s reason why mi give you this. Because you da man. You da strike man. You have fi win us dis game.’
I have to get in his head, because I understand Jerome Taylor, and if you don’t, if you allow him to do his own thing, shit can happen.
‘Lissen man, you will win this game. If we lose with you, fine. But you can win us this game, and I know you will.’
Sometime the gentle arm, sometime the sweet nothings. Sometime the straight up. ‘Lissen man, you have to get the runs today, get job done today. If it’s not Chris, it’s you.’
Understand that no one wants to fail, that fear can make fools of strong men.
Runako Morton, a batsman with so much going on inside. When he failed to get runs he came back to the dressing-room like a crazy man, coming back and throwing his gear and throwing his pads and rolling on the ground. ‘Aaargh!’
Some want to laugh. Maybe he wants some to. From his captain he wants talk. He wants calm down.
‘Morton. Is just a game an’ not a life-threatening ting. So don’ be too hard on yourself, you know? What is for you will be for you.’
For each batsman will fail, and fear can strike anyone.
I remember one particular limited-over series in New Zealand. I was struggling, struggling. No one helping me. No kind words, my stumps always falling, my edges always carrying. Into the Test series, first match, first over, Shane Bond coming in fast and hungry. And how I survived that over is a miracle. Di ball jus’ swinging so big . . .
You can accept defeat and still believe in yourself and your ability. And the moment you can accept defeat and rebound and come back to war, it will be the best feeling you can know. That’s what I told Morton, and that is what I have told others. Breathe, and let the stress and anger go.
Critics talk about some players who are hard to captain. For me there wasn’t anyone hard to captain, because I’m not going to take bullshit from no one, and so disrespect and bad feeling could never grow. Players know the sort of person I am, and they know what I’m about as well. They know what I won’t tolerate, and they know the path that cannot be crossed.
Make it personal and make it clear. When Sri Lankan hero Mahela Jayawardene joined my Jamaica Tallawahs team, I met him at the hotel, sat by the bar, and explained it all.
‘Mahela, welcome. I give you a bit a where I want to go about the innings. Lissen, I’d love for you to bat early as you’re used to, but since Chris Lynn, he be more attacking at the fast bowlers, I’d love to have Chris Lynn batting at three, and I’d love to have you to anchor it at four, to actually control the middle. You’re a better player of spin, so I want you in that position – you control the middle and then you can know when to do what when it’s required. If you feel comfortable with that, you tell me.’
I’ll do the same to Chris Lynn as well. ‘Chris. Trust me. I think you’re an attacking player, you bat at three. You scare the fast bowlers, you continue to press gas. Play your game there. Utilize those Powerplay overs. Don’t worry about saving skin or going down. You don’t ease up.’
I’ll always explain those things in person. And know that whichever players come in, even if I’m captaining them for the first time, I’ve seen how they play and I know how they operate.
Make it clear that we must all be flexible, that the team’s aims come first. You want your players to feel comfortable where they’re batting, first of all. But sometimes a partnership will build, and the game with it, and you must make every player aware of it before it happens.
So me as a captain now, I’ll explain it. ‘Guys, the batting order gonna be flexible. So I want everyone to be ready. So if, say, you’re batting at three, if I see something different I might move it around. Whoever don’t bat in their normal position, you have to still have the same enthusiasm to go out there and bat properly and get the job done. I don’ want to see no screw-face or any attitudes saying you shoulda do this or you shouldn’ta done that. If you’re not happy with it, say it now.’
And you just clear the air from there, and you’ll get the best out them.
He’s a leader . . .
A new kid in the team. You wouldn’t say much except make him feel welcome. He might be a bit reserved, coming into a team for the first time, and sometimes I see a lot of people in his ear. So let him be himself, and don’t confuse him with new ideas or thoughts on his style. ‘Welcome to Test cricket, and congratulations. Jus’ relax yourself and enjoy yourself. Remember what take you here, and that all you need. It maybe feel be a bit different, and most people might not know about you, but you’ll get a chance to get a feel a tings.’
Know when to talk and when to fall silent.
Sometime in team meetings I wouldn’t talk at all, because five people be saying the same thing over. Often on the morning of a match I’d prefer not to have one anyway, because most of the time you make your plans, and then they are all ripped up by what happens on the field. React instead to the situation in the middle. When you do speak, make it simple. One key point, maybe two. Never repeat yourself. Trust the intelligence of your players.
Be different. I used to love the five-minute meetings of Ray Jennings, the South African coach who was in charge of Royal Challengers Bangalore when I first went there. Most of the times it wasn’t really about your opponents, or your tactics. It was a video clip of a kid in the stands, and a simple question: how are you going to put a smile on another’s face today? A montage of us all hitting our best trademark shot or sending some stump flying or fingers around some impossible catch. ‘How are you going to bring happiness to the world today?’
Every time he motivated me to go out there and deliver. Every time he made you hit the ground, running hard, running until the race was won.
A captain cannot lead alone. A captain needs a coach he can trust, just as an opening batsman needs a partner who will not leave him stranded mid-pitch.
Sometime it happens. Sometime it does not.
As West Indies captain, I had a coach in John Dyson who came from New South Wales but understood exactly what a West Indies side needs. All that is important is what happens in the middle. Don’t impose rules that are for the coach’s image rather than the players’ happiness. Give players their freedom away from the pitch, and let them express themselves in the middle.
John Dyson doesn’t give a fuck what anyone does or doesn’t. As captain I respect that.
And then it all changes. One day the bowling coach, Ottis Gibson, sidles over to me.
‘I’m coming in to coach the team.’
I look at him. ‘You know something I don’t?’
He makes a face.
I sigh. ‘Lissen, I’m gonna resign as captain.’
The panic. ‘No no no, don’t resign, don’t resign . . .’
So it happens, for whatever reason. They get rid of John Dyson, which is a big blow, and Gibson is named the coach of the team. Because I believe in respect, I give him everything. If he says jump to a player, I support it. Even when he starts behaving in a way that as a captain I normally wouldn’t allow, I allow it, because I’m letting him create his environment and his team.
He’s a Bajan, so you think everything will at least be relaxed. And then all of a sudden the rules start coming in. You can’t wear flip-flops. Travelling from your home to the ground, you can’t wear your own clothes. When you wear a West Indies shirt, it has to be a particular one on a particular day.
Now that might work in England. Not in the Caribbean. John Dyson doesn’t give a fuck what anyone does or doesn’t. Ottis Gibson gives a fuck about everything anyone even thinks about doing.
Players disrespected. Players talked about behind their backs. A team that was growing and succeeding is now broken and beaten. And then the captain gets it too.
I hear what he says: ‘Chris Gayle is not a captain . . . Chris Gayle don’t have any knowledge of the game . . . When Chris Gayle come to a team meeting, he don’t come with a pen and paper and take notes . . .’
We play South Africa in Barbados. Suddenly people in the stands are full of stories about the players, because Ottis Gibson has been telling them. Disrespecting players to total strangers.
I don’t want to interfere with the match, so I wait until it is over, call a team meeting and confront him. He admits to it. Players ask him about things he has said about them. He doesn’t deny it.
And so it falls apart. He would go on to keep me out of the national side for a year and a half on a personal vendetta. That’s life. But he’s not a head coach. Fair enough, I’ll give him the green light for being a bowling coach. That I’ll give to you. But he’s not a head coach. That was a serious backward move, to have Ottis Gibson as head coach.
As a captain, I stand for my players at all times. I will speak on their behalf, and in return I expect them to stand with me at all times.
In late 2009 we had played four consecutive series without the West Indies Cricket Board giving us contracts. The cricket was building, building, and we were winning games, but instead of contracts there was only talk, talk, talk. The West Indies Players’ Association recommended we strike; I sat down with the players and explained each and every thing to them, and everybody was willing to stand with us.
The board responded by picking a new team, a team led by a man who hadn’t played for the West Indies and with another who had just turned 16. Still we stood together. Even some back-up players, guys who weren’t in the original Test squad, refused the call-up.
In the crisis we found strength together. We were stuck in St Lucia, no cricket and no families, and so it became a cooking festival, Runako Morton leading the chef work, the evenings eased by a little Hennessy and team bonding.
I got called to a meeting with the board’s president. They sent someone who wasn’t the president, so I walked out. Still we cooked our food and carried on having a good time, regardless of the situation and the pressure, and Morton, already a top chef, developed even more skills.
Our togetherness made me proud. We had something special going: the players fought for me, did everything for me, and I gave everything back to them.
But even as the contracts were settled, something had changed in that moment for West Indies cricket at that time. Eventually they played the Bangladesh series, another meeting was called, and they came to discuss the captaincy. New terms, terms that I didn’t agree to, and a threat that if I didn’t agree to them I couldn’t be captain any more.
I made it clear. Fine. If that’s the case, I’m more than willing to be a player.
They named Darren Sammy as Test captain. I made it clear again. ‘Lissen, it not a problem, you’ll still get my support. Wherever. That’s my policy. It don’t matter who or whatever circumstance, I still play my supportive role. We move on.’
We went off on tour to Sri Lanka and in that first Test since being stripped of the captaincy, I scored my second triple century. The reaction of those who had removed me? He did it deliberately, just to prove a point. He did it out of spite.
Wow, to be able to make a Test triple century on demand! To be able to compile 300 runs, just out of spite!
I let it go. I don’t like to be ruled by anger. You can’t live in the darkness. Breathe, an’ let it go.
I still love to captain. Winning the Caribbean Premier League as skipper of the Tallawahs was one of my happiest moments. Most franchises still ask me if I will lead them. But I am older now, and while I still love the cricket, still love digging the nuances and studying the players and creating the bonds, I am tired of the rest.
A captain must be with the media every day. A captain must go to every official function, and he must always be the one to make the speech. Even after a net session there is a question and an answer, even if the question is no real question and the answer you’ve already given. I want my free time, I want my freedom. Someone come for interview, I’m not captain, you don’t have to get it. Simple as that. Sweet liberation.
And as captain, stories spread. There is one that has spread further than almost any other – the one about me, at some formal lunch in the south of England, sitting next to an Old Etonian and former president of the MCC, who pours posh chat in my ear for hour after hour about who knows what and when’s he going to stop? And when he finally does, taking his first breath for something like three hours, I’m supposed to have turned to him and asked, with deadpan face: ‘You get much pussy?’
Here’s the news. I remember the incident, but I don’t remember saying ‘pussy’ to him. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.
Yeah, a lot of people love that story. But I cyaan concrete seal it. I can’t take credit for what I can’t remember. Maybe it was the Jamaican accent, you know what I’m saying?