The backpacking cricket addict and a cricket widow

Leaving behind a cushy life to go on a whirlwind world cricket tour has so far been a journey of self-discovery and learning. And we are only halfway through

Subash Jayaraman in Cricinfo

October 11, 2014

 

With wife Kathleen and Colin Croft in Trinidad © Subash Jayaraman

It has been nearly three months since my wife Kathleen and I boarded a flight out of Newark International Airport in New Jersey headed for Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago - the first leg of a cricket journey around the world that is to culminate at the final of the 2015 World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. The objective: 255 days on the road through 12 countries, following as much cricket as we can.

This was a dream trip many years in the making for me as a cricket fan. As such, the decision to leave our cushy lives of comfort and guaranteed salaries to explore the cricket world and come back to start anew wasn't that hard to make. After all, it is cricket we are talking about.

Though I swear by cricket, I actually didn't step inside a cricket stadium to watch an international match until 2007. Growing up in India, cricket was always around me, but I never had the means to actually be at a match. I watched it on TV, read about it in newspapers and magazines, played it in the streets, backyards and terraces, on patches of land and in riverbeds, in hostel corridors and in living rooms, but the fan in me wasn't complete till I watched it in the flesh in Antigua during the 2007 World Cup. And then, I caught the bug.

Since then, I have travelled to Jamaica, Trinidad, England, Bangladesh, India and Australia to watch cricket - sometimes as a fan and other times as a media person. As Kathleen and I took more and more one- and two-week long cricket trips, the idea of a long one around the world began to germinate. We took inspiration from an Australian couple who were backpacking through North America for six months while taking in cricket in the Caribbean.

	Fans went out of their way to help us find accommodation, buy us a few pints, help us with travel and food

As soon as we returned to our home in USA after watching a Test in Trinidad in 2012, we looked up the Future Tours Programme and decided that the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was an obvious final destination of our trip. We worked backwards to come up with an itinerary that took us through almost every Test-playing nation, and set off on July 15, 2014. Since we derived our inspiration in Trinidad, it was logical to begin our trip there.

We have met former and current Test cricketers, legends, commentators, famous writers and journalists, who have all enriched the trip in more ways than we could have imagined. More than that, it has been the fans - some friends and some strangers - who went out of their way to help us find accommodation, buy us a few pints, help us with travel and food - who have made this trip possible and thoroughly memorable.

We had the privilege of speaking to Colin Croft about his career and the great West Indian side he was part of, while sitting in the stands of the Queen's Park Oval, the venue of his best bowling figures. We have been within touching of Sir Garfield Sobers at the Kensington Oval. We paid our respects at the final resting places of Sir Frank Worrell and Sir Clyde Walcott. We had the joy of bowling in the Wanderers Cricket Club nets, the oldest club in Barbados. We were given a guided tour of a cricket museum by Malcolm Marshall's son. We sat among the who's who of Indian and English cricket journalists covering the Tests in England. We shared a lunch table with Kapil Dev and Wasim Akram. We rode tubes and elevators with some of the best known voices in the game. We were interviewed on the BBC. We had a feature written about us in an Indian newspaper. We ate dinner in a castle in Ireland that was formerly the summer home of Ranjitsinhji during his last years. We walked into the home of one of the great names in Indian cricket and spent hours talking cricket. We got a private tour of the only cricket museum in India. Many of these instances are each worthy of a piece of its own, and I shall revisit some of them in these pages at a later time.

	Bowling at the Wanderers Cricket Club nets in Barbados © Subash Jayaraman  Enlarge

Many people have asked us: Why make this trip at all? What are our plans once the trip is over? What is it all for?

Well, it is part fun, part self-discovery, and part experimentation. We were leading lives of comfort and security, where we seemed to be almost on autopilot. Putting our regular lives on hold for nine months to see whether we - a cricket addict and a "cricket widow" - could come out the other side is certainly one aspect of it. It is also an opportunity for Kathleen to explore the cricket world, its culture, customs and traditions to better understand the sport her husband is so hopelessly addicted to.

We do not know just yet what we will do when the trip is over. We moved out of the apartment we lived in for years and gave away nearly all of our possessions. In effect, we have forced ourselves to start afresh. The future is wide open and filled with limitless possibilities.

We are currently winding down the (southern) Indian leg of the trip and are headed to the UAE to watch the Pakistan-Australia Tests. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India (the north), South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia and New Zealand await. About 160 days of travel and cricket are still ahead of us, and based on our experiences so far, they promise to be one hell of a ride. Most of all, we look forward to meeting the people who are bound to keep making this trip unforgettable. As we have learned in our time on the road so far, the cricket world is full of friends; only, we haven't met them all yet.

Couple's week-long sailing trip turns into 16-year round-the-world voyage

Clive and Jane Green returned to the UK last week, 16 years after they left for a week-long sailing trip to Spain

Clive and Jane had intended to travel to Spain, via Ireland, to see how they coped together before tackling an ocean crossing Photo: Wales News

By Claire Duffin in The Telegraph

 13 Aug 2014

When Clive and Jane Green set sail from Wales, their intended destination was Spain, a relatively short hop over the Atlantic.

Sixteen years later however, and they have only just returned home, having turned their experimental seven-day getaway into a 58,000-mile round-the-world voyage.

Their journey has seen them visit 56 countries, swim with sting rays in Tahiti, navigate through pirate-infested waters off the East African coast and survive 23 days at sea without fresh water, desalinating seawater to stay alive.

“We have been very lucky so see our planet in such an amazing way - we didn't ever plan to sail around the world it just happened," said Mrs Green, 60.

"We would sail to a place and then through word-of-mouth from other sailors hear about somewhere else to go on to.

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"That has been our life for the last 16 years - it's been an amazing experience."

^{Clive and Jane Green during a trip to a glacier in New Zealand (Wales News)}

The couple, keen sailors all their lives, bought their 1981 Trident Challenger yacht in 1997 for £16,500. They then spent several months,and £20,000, doing it up.

On July 11, 1998, having taking early retirement, they set sail from Pembrokeshire destined for Spain, via Ireland.

They had rented out their home in Wales but wanted to see how they coped together before tackling an ocean crossing. They were also unsure if they had enough money, and wanted to see how much they would need to live on the yacht.

But their maiden voyage was a success and the couple decided to carry on.

From Spain they sailed to the Cape Verde islands and across the Atlantic to Barbados before island-hopping through the Caribbean.

They then sailed up the east coast of America, stopping in New York for a three-day shopping and sight-seeing trip.

After four years at sea, they sold their home meaning there was no turning back. They invested the money into two smaller properties, and used the rental income to help fund the trip.

But it meant Mr Green, 60, who worked for a utility company, and Mrs Green, a hospital microbiology technician, had to survive on £130 a week, bartering their few belongings for supplies, even swapping one of Mrs Green’s Marks and Spencer bras for a sack of fresh fruit and vegetables on a small island off Fiji.

"The tribe didn't speak any English so it was difficult to find out what we could trade,” Mrs Green said.

"But one of the women suddenly lifted up her jumper to expose her bare breasts and I realised she needed a bra.

"I gave her a spare one of mine and we left with enough fruit and veg to last us a month."

From America, they headed north to Canada before journeying down to the Panama Canal, crossing the Pacific to Australasia, then up through Indonesia to South East Asia, over to India and through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean where they have spent the last couple of years.

During their trip, they saw orangutans swinging from the trees in Borneo, swam with seals off the Galapagos Islands and watched sparks shooting into the night sky from an active volcano in Fiji.

They also encountered turtles and even a giant Sei whale - bigger than their 35ft yacht called Jane G.

But they said meeting different people was the highlight of their journey and that they had been helped along the way by members of the sailing community.

When they left the Galapagos Islands they were given a bunch of 79 bananas which they hung from the stern of the boat to ripen, taking one each a day during the next leg of their journey.

“We have seen some wonderful sights but it is the people that we remember,” Mrs Green said.

They even called in to Florida and moored up there to have a couple of days at Disney World but Mr Green, 62, said it was not a typical holiday.

“We were on a strict budget so that took some getting used to,” he said.

"If we had a problem with the boat we had to fix it ourselves - Jane is just as capable as me, there's nothing on this boat she can't do.

"And she's a lot better at sewing sails than I am."

During the trip, the couple, who do not have children, spent two years in two years in Australia and another 18 months in New Zealand where they bought a van for £180 to tour both islands for six weeks.

^{Jane during a camel ride in Egypt (Wales News)}

While at sea, Mr Green suffered from a tooth abscess and also sliced off the tip of his finger on the galley table but otherwise they survived without a scrape.

Their biggest scare, they said, was when they discovered they were being followed by a boat in waters inhabited by Somali pirates.

But it turned out to be an Eritrean fishing boat with crewman on board who had a severe gash to his leg.

Mr Green said: "It wasn't very brave of me but I watched as Jane hopped onto their boat to clean and dress the wound before we waved them on their way."

Mrs Green said: “We didn’t come across anything that we could not cope with. We are both very resourceful.

“We had such a fabulous time. People say to us ‘you should write a book’ but the thing is, disasters sell books and we haven’t had any disasters – we have had good weather, we have met wonderful people everywhere we have been – we can’t fault it.”

The couple arrived back in Neyland Marina, near Milford Haven last week to be greeted by friends Wendy Abbs and Ian Bevan who had cast them off 16 years, one month and two days earlier.

Mr Green said: "We really had gone full circle - all the way around the world at an average speed of 4.5mph.

"It is good to be home to see all our family and friends and we have promised ourselves to spend a few months getting to know them all again."

They plan to spend the winter on their boat in Wales with the view to beginning their next adventure next year, this time on a wide beamed boat through the canals of Europe.

“But if it does get too cold, we might set off again somewhere sunny before then,” said Mrs Green.