?Hugh Hen­der­son

About six years ago I was re­quest­ed to write a se­ries of ar­ti­cles on the crick­et ca­reer of Lar­ry Gomes, which to my sur­prise was quite well re­ceived and there were sev­er­al sug­ges­tions that the se­ries be turned in­to a book for record pur­pos­es. I was not keen on the idea and was re­lieved when Lar­ry said "peo­ple will re­mem­ber what they want and the rest won't mat­ter." How­ev­er, over the years the top­ic that con­tin­ues to evoke heat and emo­tion is Lar­ry's de­ci­sion not to ac­cept a lu­cra­tive of­fer to play in South Africa (SA) dur­ing the apartheid regime. Why did he choose coun­try over "blood mon­ey"? (as it was la­beled). Here is my first hand ver­sion of what took place. Ear­ly in 1983 I was con­duct­ing a man­age­ment sem­i­nar in Ja­maica when news came through that six high pro­file West In­dies crick­eters had re­ceived lu­cra­tive of­fers to play in SA. Lar­ry's name was not among them but the 1983 World Cup was com­ing up in Eng­land, so I ad­vised Lar­ry to keep his ear to the ground as he might be ap­proached, a key rea­son be­ing that his fair com­plex­ion was re­ferred to in SA as "coloured" as op­posed to "black" or "white", which made him a very at­trac­tive propo­si­tion.

As it turned out, Lar­ry did re­ceive a phone call in Eng­land from some­one who would not give his name and told Lar­ry they could not meet for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons but in­di­cat­ed he was want­ed in SA. Lar­ry then cool­ly ad­vised the caller that there was a guy named Hugh Hen­der­son liv­ing in Cana­da, and he would deal with Lar­ry's af­fairs. It might have been nice of Lar­ry to let me in on the se­cret which I first heard about when I en­tered my of­fice in Toron­to, an­swered a ring­ing phone to dis­cov­er I was speak­ing to Dr Ali Bach­er, ex-Test play­er and Nu­mero Uno in SA crick­et at the time. Dr Bach­er in­vit­ed me to meet him in Lon­don, I in­vit­ed him to meet me in Toron­to and we agreed to meet one an­oth­er in New York along with Lar­ry. There were many se­ri­ous prob­lems to deal with start­ing with the con­se­quences of hav­ing a SA stamp in Lar­ry's pass­port, the ques­tion of where the Gomes' sec­ond child ex­pect­ed in March 1984 would be born and the po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences of that de­ci­sion. Of course, both Lar­ry and I dis­cussed the prob­a­bil­i­ty that if he went to SA I might nev­er see him again giv­en the glob­al feel­ing against apartheid and SA.

Even be­fore Lar­ry came in­to the pic­ture, I had long asked my wife not to buy food prod­ucts made in SA, es­pe­cial­ly as I worked in Zam­bia for the year 1967/68 and ap­pre­ci­at­ed the pol­i­tics of Ian Smith in Rhode­sia and the gen­er­al cul­ture on the race is­sue. There were many emo­tion­al mo­ments among mem­bers of the Gomes fam­i­ly and orig­i­nal prayers were com­posed for the sit­u­a­tion! It was a tense three weeks be­fore Lar­ry and I went to NY to meet Dr Bach­er who turned out to be a most charm­ing, rea­son­able and trust­ing man. We were to meet Dr Bach­er at 6 pm, and I vivid­ly re­mem­ber Lar­ry and I kneel­ing in prayer ask­ing for wis­dom, guid­ance, courage and all oth­er gifts nec­es­sary, be­fore we climbed the steps to his room. Lar­ry in­struct­ed me to work out the best deal pos­si­ble which I promised to do, but re­mind­ed him that there was noth­ing in it for me, and he alone would make the fi­nal de­ci­sion.

Dr Bach­er ex­plained the his­to­ry of SA crick­et and pol­i­tics with which I was very fa­mil­iar as apart from hav­ing crick­et his­to­ry as a life long hob­by, I was al­so in Zam­bia at the time of the "coloured" Basil D'Oliv­era af­fair when he was se­lect­ed for Eng­land to tour SA but was re­fused en­try which start­ed the whole messy mat­ter.

In the next three hours a deal was ham­mered out which would have made Lar­ry a very wealthy man, and then all of us went to an In­di­an restau­rant for din­ner, not that I felt like eat­ing. How­ev­er, even though the mon­ey was mouth wa­ter­ing, lots of oth­er things were not. For ex­am­ple, Lar­ry was not al­lowed to re­turn to Trinidad in case his pass­port was con­fis­cat­ed; al­so he had to fly to Jo­han­nes­berg from a spe­cial air­port in New Jer­sey and not from New York or Toron­to where he might be recog­nised. There were al­so spe­cial arrange­ments for him to be met in SA and pri­vate spon­sors were lined up to en­dorse him. I may be wrong, but I think I was able to ne­go­ti­ate that none of the fam­i­ly would have a SA stamp in their pass­ports. I re­mem­ber feel­ing al­most ill with wor­ry when we re­turned to Toron­to and I promised Lar­ry that if he did not go to SA, Clive Pan­tin and I would or­gan­ise a spe­cial Ben­e­fit Year in T&T for him when he would re­ceive count­less gifts from lo­cal com­pa­nies to fur­nish his new home from top to bot­tom, and Clive will­ing­ly agreed as he was to­tal­ly against Lar­ry go­ing to SA. The day Lar­ry left for New Jer­sey was one of my sad­dest days, as I was sure I would nev­er see him again. As long time men­tor and stu­dent we both wept a mil­lion tears.

He phoned me from the New Jer­sey air­port to say he was board­ing in 30 min­utes and I swear his tears flowed through the tele­phone. I vague­ly re­call my wife telling me that apartheid would not last for­ev­er and some­how it will work out okay for Lar­ry and fam­i­ly. About an hour lat­er my phone rang and it was Lar­ry telling me that he had walked to the steps of the plane and then de­cid­ed to turn back be­cause he could not let down his coun­try re­gard­less of the mon­ey in­volved. I could hard­ly be­lieve my ears and when I re­cov­ered I phoned Clive Pan­tin and told him the news. In be­tween all I have writ­ten there were many sit­u­a­tions to deal with, such as oth­er West In­dies play­ers en­cour­ag­ing Lar­ry to come to SA, but in essence the above cap­tures the sto­ry of a hero who has nev­er cap­i­talised on his hero­ics but which is why I re­gard the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um as most de­served recog­ni­tion. The sta­di­um re­flects Lar­ry's crick­et record but to me, it stands for his sense of val­ues and prin­ci­ples. True to his word Clive helped me or­ga­nize Lar­ry's Ben­e­fit Year and a col­lec­tion dur­ing the 1984 Aus­tralian Test match at the Oval, yield­ed over $25,000.

In ad­di­tion, many busi­ness hous­es do­nat­ed every item Lar­ry need­ed for his home so he was well tak­en care of. As I write I think back of meet­ing Lar­ry when he was 13 years old, deal­ing with all his pro­fes­sion­al con­tracts and en­joy­ing his suc­cess on the crick­et field. I saw him as a glo­ri­ous stroke play­er up to his first tour in 1976 and then turn in­to a bor­ing Mr De­pend­able in com­par­i­son. His son Richard was born on the same date as me and his daugh­ter has the same name as my wife. My son is named Steven Lar­ry and Lar­ry is his god­fa­ther which has brought Steve fame in Cana­da among crick­eters he might know. This year the young al­most reclu­sive boy from Ari­ma be­came a grand­fa­ther and we keep in touch on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. Twen­ty sev­en years ago I was pre­pared not to see him again but God is good and knows what is best for all of us.