The law on his side

This happened while I was playing for Western Province in a very important first-class fixture at Port Elizabeth, back in the 1970s.

We were one-down overnight. I was on 3. That night a friend invited me to a party, which went on and on until the police intervened at 3am and shut it down.

I asked if the police could drop me at my hotel, which they did. When we got there, I asked them if they'd like to come up and have a few drinks with me in my room - which, too, they did. They then invited a few of their colleagues, and before we knew it, we had about eight policemen in there, with their guns all over the room. There was plenty of accompanying noise, which woke up our captain, Eddie Barlow. He walked in and kicked the cops out. It's the other way round, normally!

I overslept the next morning and missed the bus. I then took a cab to the ground, but when I got there I discovered that none of the players was allowed to talk to me - the captain had decided that I was to board the next plane home to Cape Town on account of my misdemeanours.

The only reason I didn't take that flight was because I batted for the whole day - they couldn't send me home! Barlow, who was my slips partner, tried his best to not speak to me when we fielded, but gave up after a while and burst out laughing.