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Rewind: Roland Butcher: First black cricketer to play for England, Jackman affair, getting UEFA coaching license

Rewind: Roland Butcher: First black cricketer to play for England, Jackman affair, getting UEFA coaching license. MyKhel interview.

Roland Butcher was the first black cricketer to play for England

Bengaluru, April 15: Roland Butcher broke the ceiling in 1980 when he became the first black player to represent England in international cricket. The breakthrough moment came in an ODI match against Australia at Birmingham. The rest of his playing career did not pan out as he would have liked but Butcher continued his strong association with cricket even after his retirement in several capacities.

Butcher even has a UEFA Coaching License, perhaps the only one cricketer who has, and MyKhel spoke to him over a variety of topics. Excerpts:

1. How did your migration from Barbados to England happen?

Ans: My parents had travelled to England in 1950s and settled there. I was living with my grand mom back in Barbados and 1967, and they decided that it was time the family joined them in England. I was on a flight to England that year to join them and started a new life there.

2. And for someone who grew up in the West Indies, how different an experience it was living and playing cricket in England?

Ans: It was vastly different. The Caribbean were sunny and people were a lot more outdoor. But the way of living in England was different, it was cold and gloomy most days and got dark in the blink of an eye. Initially, as a boy who grew up in the Caribbean it was difficult for me to adjust but then it became a part of life. And I have seen a lot of boys playing football than cricket where as in the Caribbean it was all about cricket.

3. In the 70s and 80s, Windies were the dominant cricketing side and Barbados had some great players too. Did you ever wish to go back and play for them?

Ans: As a kid growing up in the Caribbean I was interested in cricket and dreamt of playing for the West Indies. We had some great players Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher etc to look up to too. And in those days, I watched cricket more on telly or heard commentary in the radio. The first Test I had seen on the ground was the 4th Test between Windies and Australia at Bridgetown. It was six-day Test then. Bob Simpson and Bill Lawry made a massive 382-run opening stand (still an Australian record for the highest opening stand).

That said I was fortunate to go to England play for them at the highest level and had a long career with Middlesex. In school, we had an organised system with school coaches and all that facilities. There I had also chance to interact with Charlie Griffith and Seymour Nurse, both were from Barbados, and gradually I picked up more interest in cricket.

4. You'd had a piece of history secured as the first black cricketer to have played for England. How did it happen?

Ans: I began to play First-Class cricket for Middlesex from the mid-70s. Then came a good season for them in 1980 and it was also the year when Middlesex grabbed the championship double and I had made some big scores, couple of hundreds, fifties. It helped me to get noticed and got a call to the team and made my debut at Birmingham (against Australia in an ODI). That Aussies side had some very good players Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Len Pascoe, Kim Hughes and Allan Border. But we played some good cricket under Ian Botham and won the series. I made a fifty in that match (a 38-ball 52). So, it was a good debut for me. Subsequently, I was in the squad when England travelled to West Indies a year later (1981).

5. Was it a surreal experience making your Test debut for your adopted country in your own backyard - Barbados? What was the reaction of the local people?

Ans: It was a bitter sweet experience for me. It is always special for a cricketer to make his Test debut and that too at a place where he was born and spent childhood. There will be lot of memories. It was no different for me except that I was playing for England and there were these headlines like 'Our boy, their bat' etc in local newspapers. But once at the ground there was a lot of support for me as family members and old friends came to watch the match. But there was a sad moment for me because our manager Ken Barrington suffered a heart-attack on Day 2 and passed away. It made the whole atmosphere very heavy for all of us.

6. There was that incident with Robin Jackman, who was denied visa because of his South Africa connection. How did the entire episode pan out?

Ans: Robin came to the team as a replacement when Bob Willies got injured. The first Test was played at Trinidad and we had no issues there. But the Guyanese authorities on those days more hardliners in these sort of matters as Robin's wife was from South Africa and he had visited that country several times. The Guyanese government revoked Robin's travel permit sighting his South African links and the second Test at Guyana was cancelled. The entire tour was in balance that time. But Barbados took a more flexible view of the situation and allowed Robin to travel and the tour continued with the third Test.

7. Later you nearly got associated with the Rebel Tour to SA under Mike Gatting. What are your memories of those tumultuous days?

Ans: I was nearing the end of my playing career back in 1989 and I was selected for the rebel tour to SA. But my friends and other cricketers persuaded me not to go, telling me it would not do any good at that stage and I did not travel to SA. But a few others stuck to their choice and went to SA. Gatting thought he was hard done by England board and each of them had different and their own reasons. Those were pretty uncertain days.

8. After the retirement you turned to coaching and had few assignments with Bermuda and in the West Indies. How active are you?

Ans: I opted for coaching after my playing days and served as Bermuda national coach and then I took over the director of sports at the University of West Indies in 2004 and served in that capacity till 2019, the year when I retired. Currently, I am one of the directors of Barbados Cricket Association and in the cricket committee of Cricket West Indies (CWI) and a Barbados selector.

9. Since you have seen Windies cricket from close quarters, what is the reason/s behind them going down the order as a cricketing nation?

Ans: West Indies, at one stage, was strong that they had another 11 players who could have played in the first eleven. You know Clive Lloyd used only 19 players in his long career as captain but they had a second line ready to move in if needed. But the demise of Windies cricket started with those rebel tours to SA. The Windies side had some players like Lawrence Rowe, Sylvester Clarke, Collis King and even Colin Croft, who were not getting regular chances in the first XI. The Windies board banned them for life.

At that stage, it looked like a good political statement but effectively it snapped the supply line to Windies first XI and all of a sudden they had to fall back on the third row of players and they never really recovered. The final blow came through the future tours programme. In the 80s, teams will negotiate financial terms with each other before a bilateral series. If the West Indies are touring Australia then the talks will be between them. Now, once the future tours came into existence the home board takes all the revenue, so the teams are now waiting for home matches for money. They cannot compete with nations who have greater resources and ICC need to address this, may be by way of a special grant or something like it. Not just West Indies but teams like Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe need this support.

10. How did that UEFA Licensed coaching happen? Generally, cricketers getting a coaching license from UEFA is quite rare, perhaps it never happened...

Ans: As I said earlier, it started in England as boys used to play a lot more football there than cricket. I used to play semi-pro football for six months there and cricket for the rest of the months. It was a cultural change for me then. Then once I entered the coaching career, I also applied for UEFA B License and I did the coaching course along with Brendan Rodgers, who currently manages Leicester City in Premier League. We worked together at the Reading FC for a while as he called me to work with him until Jose Mourinho invited him to join Chelsea as youth manager in 2004. Later he joined Liverpool as the chief coach. I also worked as a community coach at Arsenal. I am very proud of getting a UEFA certificate, as it is not easy to get one.

Story first published: Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 13:50 [IST]
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