Michael Holding - No Holding Back: The Autobiography

Table of Contents

No Holding Back

MICHAEL HOLDING

Orion

www.orionbooks.co.uk

An Orion ebook

eISBN : 978 0 2978 5937 6

This ebook produced by Jouve, France

I cannot have been far off my seventh birthday when on a December night I wriggled into bed between my mother and father, seeking comfort and pretending to be interested in the crackle and wheeze of the transistor radio concealed in the bed head. They were listening to coverage of the West Indies tour of Australia in 1960-61. I was asleep long before I knew who was actually batting. I had little interest or understanding of what the commentators were explaining, but looking back on that wonderful memory, it brings a smile to my face to think of what life had in store.

My childhood was full of such happy times. I grew up at 29 Dunrobin Avenue in Kingston, Jamaica, the fourth and youngest child of Ralph and Enid. My mum and dad met at Kingston Parish Church. Mum was in the choir and Dad was an altar boy. It was a religious household and every Sunday we would be up early for church.

Sport was something of a religion for the Holdings, too. Mum did athletics and table tennis and Dad, who was a building contractor, loved his football, although cricket ran it a close second. In fact, I was only a few days old when he registered me as a member of the famous Melbourne Cricket Club, tucked away in a quiet corner of Kingston, which provided and continues to provide players for both Jamaica and the West Indies cricket teams. He captained the clubs Minor Cup side, which was used to blood youngsters, and later in life he became president. My eldest sister Rheima competed in high jump in the inter-secondary school championships and Marjorie ran at the inter-collegiate championships representing the University of the West Indies, but neither would claim to have excelled; it was participation that mattered. Ralph Junior, who is five years older than me, loved his sports too, but was more of a musician. While he was at school (Kingston College, the same one my dad and later I attended), he sang in the choir and was lead treble on a few records that the school put out. He ended up living in Germany for about 15 years, touring Europe with a band and recording music, but then moved back home in the early 1990s and to this day continues, albeit part-time, in the music field, sometimes performing at the various north coast hotels in Jamaica.

My sporting life began in the gullies, woodland and scrubland that surrounded Dunrobin Avenue, which was a small residential area and completely underdeveloped, not like the bustling commercial centre it is today. Our old house is now an industrial complex and there are very few residences left on the road.

Behind that house in the wide open spaces, I played football, cricket or marbles and would go into the woods to shoot birds with homemade slingshots - anything which would get me out of the house.

As soon as Id had my breakfast, I was outside playing. I was active, perhaps too active for my mothers liking. I was diagnosed with asthma when I was about three years old and had to carry an inhaler around with me everywhere I went. My mum and dad would always warn me not to overdo it. Im sure a few international batsmen will scoff when they read that Michael Holding had asthma, in fact one day the asthma just disappeared and I havent needed that inhaler since I was an early teenager.

I got into scrapes with my mum and dad because of my love of disappearing outdoors for the day. Often I would choose a day of running around with friends instead of cricket at Sabina Park on a Saturday. Sacrilege, I know. A day at Sabina was a big deal then, a real family affair. The Friday night before the match, everyone would be busy cooking rice, peas and chicken to take to the game but come Saturday morning, I would get up early and disappear before I could be dragged along. In the 1960s and early 70s, the seating in the South Western stand where my family sat wasnt that luxurious, and rather than sit and fidget in the same uncomfortable seat for six or seven hours, I preferred to play cricket myself.

This independence would come at a cost, though. I knew when Mum and Dad got home there would be a scolding, sometimes a beating too. It wasnt because they were afraid of what might happen to me (there were no such fears about letting kids run loose like there are today), but more to do with the fact that I hadnt sought their permission to do my own thing. I can still remember being out in the gully until darkness, losing track of time because I was having so much fun, and hearing Mum shout my name from the back fence to come in.

I didnt grow up in a rich household, but I got everything that I needed, rather than what I wanted. This way of living was something instilled in me from a young age: need, not want.

Just up the road from us lived the Blake family. Evon Blake was a respected businessman in Jamaica and he was, to put it diplomatically, more financially stable than we were. Both families were friendly and I was friends with the son, Paul. Paul got what he needed and probably wanted, too. Paul had bicycles. Note the plural. One day I borrowed one of his bikes and we were cycling down Dunrobin Avenue and unbeknown to me, Mum and Dad drove past us. Later on, Mum wanted to know why I was riding Pauls bike. My excuse was that I didnt have one of my own and Paul was happy to lend me one of his.

If you dont have it, you can do without it, Mum said. What if you had damaged it? You would have to replace it and you still wouldnt have one. She was teaching me to live within my means.

When I was not riding other peoples bikes, I was out in the gully playing sport, especially cricket, a form of the game in Jamaica that was called Catchy Shubby. Catchy Shubby could be described as organised chaos. It was the sort of free-for-all game played by scores of kids and grown men where the first one to turn up with a bat batted and when that person was out, it was the turn of the person who dismissed him to bat. While we obviously only had one batsman at a time, there could be four or five balls available to be bowled at him.

The ball was made of twine wrapped tightly around a hard core, then covered with layers of some form of cork seemingly mixed with a black tar-looking substance and painted red (proper leather cricket balls were too expensive and didnt last long enough for our budget). It would not take long before that red paint would get chipped away and we would be playing with a black ball that we all referred to as a cork and tar ball. There was a shopkeeper who we only knew by the name of Mr Mattis, whose store overlooked our playing area, and every now and again he would send one of his sons down the hill with a brand new red cricket ball. It was heaven. I think Mr Mattis enjoyed what he saw happening on the field and wanted to encourage us youngsters. Of course his kids took part at times, but that had nothing to do with his generosity.

The stumps were a sheet of corrugated iron. They needed to make a good loud noise when the ball hit them so the batsman would not be able to deny that he was out. Without umpires, you can well understand why being bowled needed to be indisputable; there were no lbws, caught behinds were a rarity, too, and thin edges were hardly ever owned up to. If a batsman was out caught, it was the fielder taking the catch who would next get to bat, not the bowler. As a bowler, there was no point in trying to deceive the batsman with a beautiful slower ball so he might miscue into the hands of mid-off. I worked out that if I wanted to bat, I would have to bowl people out. Ping the zinc if you like. However, it was not easy because with no leg before, batsmen would cover the stumps with their legs and if they were hit in front, it didnt matter.