Rebel without a pause
Two decades after touring apartheid South Africa, John Emburey, English cricket's foremost rebel is at it again, coaching in the unofficial Indian Cricket League and dreaming of a global inter-city event
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
Two decades after touring apartheid South Africa, John Emburey, English cricket's foremost rebel is at it again, coaching in the unofficial Indian Cricket League and dreaming of a global inter-city event. In a fascinating interview in The Observer, he talks candidly about those 1980s rebel tours.
After the first one, in 1982, he said: 'I'd have thought twice about going if I'd known the ban would last three years - that stunned all of us. Assuming I would have been chosen for England's tours, and played my share of Tests at home, I have lost financially.'
And he also looks at whether the ICL will have a London franchise.
There are 13 League football teams in London, so one cricket team should be possible,' he says. Not only possible, but very lucrative. Which sponsors would not want to be associated with the first team to carry the London brand into a competition played out in the globe's largest market?
Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa