Left Field Lives After Cricket

You’re a professional cricketer whose playing career has finally come to an end. What do you do? Cricket is probably all that you’ve known. Your A-levels are a distant memory. And even if you went to university that second class history degree doesn’t exactly make you a hot commodity in the jobs market. The prospect of finding gainful employment can be a scary one.

This is where it pays to think creatively. You’ve spent years playing on the box and wearing a box, so now it’s time to think outside the box to avoid having to sleep in one.  Not everyone gets offered a cushy job in the media – Mike Atherton (cough), Nasser Hussain (cough), Jonathan Agnew (cough) – so you have to look deep in your soul to identify and then harness latent talents.

The following former cricketing heroes did exactly that. And more power to their elbows for doing so.

Bryan Strang

Teaching is quite a common pursuit for former cricketers. Martin Bicknell is Director of Cricket at Charterhouse School, Ashes hero Simon Jones is coaching at the Cathedral School in Cardiff, and my old schoolmate and former Gloucestershire all-rounder Mark Hardinges is a house master at Malvern College.

However, the benchmark setter here is undoubtedly Zimbabwe’s Bryan Strang. Rather than teaching conventional subjects, Bryan teaches yoga. We love a good Yoga Yoda on TFT.

Curtly Ambrose and Henry Olonga

Cricket and music go together like dreadlocks and holidays. Indeed, a number of cricketers including Mark Butcher have recorded albums worth listening to. However, nobody has done it with quite the panache of Ambrose and Olonga – even though their contributions have come at very contrasting ends of the music spectrum.

Ambrose pursued his passion for music almost immediately after hanging up his bowling boots. He initially joined a band with perhaps the coolest name since Country Joe And The Fish. Sadly I never saw The Big Bad Dread And The Bald Head but I’d wager they were completely awesome. Curtly subsequently joined reggae band Spirited in 2011 and hasn’t looked back. He’s the tallest and meanest bass player in the world.

Well spoken Henry is a completely different kettle of fish. He’s a classical singing machine who recorded his first album Aurelia back in 2006. Last year he appeared on the Australian version of The Voice and sang Skyfall (the bond theme) alongside some rapper called Denzel. Henry obviously stole the show and looked (and sounded) a lot cooler than the Eminem wannabe he was performing with. Check it out below.

MS Dhoni

They say that comedy is the new rock and roll. They might be right. But poker comes a close second. Several cricketers have attempted to carve out a living this way from Ed Giddins, who has won close to £100k in his career, and more surprisingly Harry Gurney. Not many people know this but Gurney was a sponsored professional for a few months in 2008 after he left Leicestershire.

However, Giddins and Gurney are small fry compared to MS Dhoni and Shane Warne. We all know about Warne’s penchant for the game but Dhoni recently signed up to become a PokerStars ambassador. He will join professional player Muskan Sethi as a representative of the brand for the Indian market. I’m sure MS will be quids in whatever luck he encounters on the tables.

Imran Khan

Being captain of the national cricket team brings with it a certain status in Pakistan. But Imran wasn’t content with this. Oh no. He wanted to control the whole country instead. And naturally, being a born winner, he eventually achieved his goal – although I don’t envy him at the current time. Handling the Pakistani military in the middle of a global pandemic is even tougher than dealing with the cricket media.

Interestingly enough, Imran wasn’t the first former cricket to get involved in politics. Others include Learie Constantine, or perhaps I should say Sir Learie Constantine, who had a long and distinguished political career and was instrumental in the appointment of the Wests Indies’ first black captain. Constantine became party chairman of the People’s National Movement in Trinidad, and became Minister of Communications, Works and Utilities. He later became Trinidad and Tobago’s first High Commissioner in London.

I should also point out that Alastair Cook is destined to become UK prime minister one day. He just doesn’t know it yet. Andrew Strauss may get there first though.

The tallest and coolest bass player ever.

Craig Kieswetter

Remember him? Once the future of English wicket keeping and pinch hitting, Kieswetter suffered a horrific injury while batting against Northants in 2013. He broke his nose, damaged his eye socket, hurt his cheekbone, and ended up in hospital wrapped in more bandages than an Egyptian mummy. Retirement soon followed.

One thing the injury didn’t take away from Kieswetter, however, was his brilliant hand eye coordination. So he turned to another summer sport that’s just as graceful but not quite so dangerous – golf.

Although Kieswetter will never be Tiger Woods – he can actually keep his snake in its cage – he managed to turn professional in 2017 and finished a creditable 38th in the Dubai Creek Open. He’s also received lessons from Nick Faldo and Ernie Els’ mentor David Leadbetter.

David ‘Syd’ Lawrence

Remember Syd? He was extraordinarily lovable for one of the fastest and most fearsome pacemen on the circuit. What a shame that a horrific injury suffered while on England duty in New Zealand finished his career prematurely.

A character as exuberant as Syd was never going to end up with a mundane life though. He ultimately took up body building, a pursuit his large frame was ideally suited to, and was named ‘Best In The West’ of England (in the over 40s category) in 2014. How brilliant that a man who’s fragile knee prevented him from fulfilling his potential in cricket now has one of the buffest bodies in the business.

Andrew Flintoff

Freddie has found a niche in the non-cricketing media and now co-hosts Top Gear. He’s also hosted Australian Ninja Warrior – yes, this is a real show – and enjoyed a stint in the boxing ring a few years back. Amazingly Flintoff also won the Australian version of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! which sadly remains the only thing he’s ever won down under.

Honourable Mentions

The super eight above definitely set the standard when it comes to life after cricket. However, plenty more have trodden unexpected paths. There’s Adam Hollioake (cage fighting), Chris Old (fish and chip shop owner), David Sheppard (Bishop of Liverpool), and Ken Barrington (car salesman, clothes retailer, legal professional, accountant, and decorator). There weren’t many things Barrington couldn’t do.

James Morgan

18 comments

  • Thanks James, an entertaining read as always. Two random observations:

    – Learie Constantine was in fact the first black member of the House of Lords, though he was not able to participate much due to ill health. More significantly, he successfully sued a hotel for turning his family out in 1944 at the behest of some American servicemen. There was no anti-discrimination law at the time, so he sued under an old law about the right of public houses to admit/exclude customers. It inspired him to become a barrister and politician, and he was an important figure behind the first Race Relations legislation, in the 1960s. None of that would have happened without his cricket career, which gave him the public respect and stature.

    – Andrew Flintoff captained England to victory down under in the Commonwealth Bank ODI tri-series (the old B&H World Series) in 2006/7, thus doing the cricket world a favour by reminding everyone 99% of limited overs cricket matches and tournaments outside the World Cup are forgotten before the players even leave the pitch, while test cricket (including unfortunate 5-0 defeats) has an infinitely greater significance.

    • Thanks James. I think I do actually remember that Commonwealth Bank series come to think of it. Didn’t Collingwood score loads of runs. Man of the match in the final maybe? Perhaps I remember it because it was so unexpected. But yes I agree that most ODIs and T20s tend to be forgettable.

    • Most limited overs games full stop are forgotten. the only people who remember limited overs games is whoever wins the final and then the very very very rare ‘good’ game that appears.

  • Yes Collingwood was England’s leading scorer. Australia were top of the group table but England beat them 2-0 in the finals. I remember it mainly from Ponting looking miffed afterwards, presumably wondering how the England side that had turned up at the test matches had turned into one capable of winning anything. England famously built on that redemption by going on to be useless at the next World Cup, but I guess they redeemed themselves on that count 12 years later …

  • At least it’s not confined to the footie afterlife of pundit or pub landlord.
    As cricketers tend to be from more educated backgrounds you would expect them to be more imaginative about the way they prepare for and conduct their post sporting careers.
    They will generally have more transferable skills, even if many of those skills have been dormant since they became professional cricketers as they no longer had the time to use them.

  • “another summer sport that’s just as graceful but not quite so dangerous – golf”.

    In truth, golf is more dangerous than many people realise:

    https://golfsupport.com/blog/sports-related-injuries-golf-more-dangerous-than-rugby/

    Anyway, that aside, it’s good news that several sources think golf courses will be open sooner rather than later – not that they should ever have been closed.

    P.S. George Dobell thinks Harrison will go over the 16.66 so he might have to find something to do after cricket too. Somehow I think he’ll probably manage.

  • A few I’ve seen about:

    Inzamam – opened a meat-packing business called Meat One with Saeed Anwar.
    Arshad Khan – drives an Uber taxi.
    Nathan Astle – successful sportscar driver.
    Ewen Charfield – another who drives cabs.
    Chris Cairns – reputedly cleaning bus shelters and working in bars.
    Dilip Doshi – CEO of a company that books luxury brands for Indian venues.

  • Phil Tufnell surely? A Question of Sport. Made it his own. And didn’t he win I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here?

    • He was bound to win Celebrity. It was the only way the viewers could ensure he remained in the jungle as long as possible. Rumour has it that his former teammates organised a mass voting exercise, with Phil Edmonds running a call centre.

      • I thought it was because no one realised he was a celebrity, so assumed he was there as one of the production crew, the bloke who held the boom microphone or fetched the coffee, for example. The number of fag breaks he’d have taken would have added to this assumption.

  • At least cricketers can’t have the same disaster as boxers if they make ill-advised comebacks. Cricketers will simply not be picked, or will be dismissed quickly/hit around the park. Not the same as the disasters that were Ali v Holmes, Ali v Berbick/Holmes v Tyson and everyone Holmes fought thereafter etc. Foreman is the exception that proves the rule.

  • As well as Imran Khan and Learie Constantine a nod should be given to Alec Douglas Home. Only a few FC games and was never going to struggle for a post-cricket career – but he did become PM. And Frank Worrell became a Jamaican Senator before his early death.

    But my favourite has to be C Aubrey Smith, who after finding himself captaining England in his only test against SA (to his surprise I believe), went to Hollywood and became a fixture as the aristocratic or military Englishman in many films. And he founded the Hollywood Cricket Club as well.

      • Andy Roberts is also worth an honourable mention. Having been one of the world’s most feared fast bowlers, he subsequently became groundsman at the old Antigua Recreation Ground – and made it into the world’s most batsman-friendly surface!

    • Aubrey Smith just exudes that Edwardian air of superiority, typecasting him in Hollywood.
      Like David Niven, the post war Aubrey Smith, he was doomed to play the resident Englishman.
      Would have loved to play alongside him. I’m sure to him Niven would have been, ‘a young pup’.
      Can imagine him as captain Smith in Hollywood. You wouldn’t argue with him would you.
      With the motley crew he had at his disposal would have been like a pre war ‘Outside Edge’.
      He’s perfect for films like ‘The 4 Feathers’ and ‘Prisoner of Zenda’. Can’t imagine anyone else.

  • There are also interesting (and maybe cautionary) stories of young players who didn’t make it, particularly those who looked to be really promising players. I am thinking of Adam Riley from Kent, who was being talked of as maybe a potential successor to Graham Swann in the England team, and has now been lost to county cricket.

  • If the conditions England players are going to be expected to meet as reported in the Guardian are accurate, any player who tells them to eff off has my sympathies. This is the behaviour of a brainwashed cult, not a sports’ team. I for one will not be watching.

  • It may not be ideal at all. However, we need to find some way of keeping cricket alive. If not, there’ll be nothing whatsoever to watch at all in the future. Players at England level are very well renumerated.

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