Charlie Hemphrey's frustration

SAM DALLING: The former Glamorgan batsman opens up on his disappointment at the way in which his county career has come to an end

“To be put in a situation where you are made to feel that walking away from the game is the best and only thing you can do… well… that’s where the disappointment and anger comes in.”

Charlie Hemphrey is speaking candidly. The 31-year-old is hurting. It’s audible in his voice, every word slow and measured.

Talking with The Cricketer in the hours immediately following the formal announcement that his Glamorgan contract - due to run until the end of the season - had been terminated by mutual consent, Hemphrey is stoically looking forward. But the pain is there: it’s all still raw.

While at Glamorgan, Hemphrey counted as a county-qualified (local) player; he is not England-qualified until the end of 2021. The ECB incentivises counties for fielding, on average, nine England-qualified players throughout the season, and with Australians Marnus Labuschagne and Michael Neser – whose signing Hemphrey got the ball rolling on - filling Glamorgan’s overseas slots, the Welsh club reportedly would have missed out on approximately £70,000 had they selected Hemphrey.

It was not a risk they could afford to take. “I don’t have a problem with there being a rule in place,” he explains from Brisbane. “You can’t just skip countries and try to play for England straight away. But the baffling thing is that I’ve got one passport: a British one. I was born and raised in the UK. I lived there for the first 24 years of my life.

“Yes, I moved to Australia, and somehow ended up playing cricket for Queensland. I still don’t really know quite how that happened. It was never my intention or goal or anything. I just did. I told the ECB that this will end my career but they just said: ‘We have to stick to the rules’.”

The relevant regulations state that if you have appeared in another competition as a local player, you have to wait three years (until 2019 it was seven years) until you are eligible for England selection. Hemphrey’s last appearance for Queensland as a local in the Sheffield Shield came in the 2017-18 season, meaning that this year, he is stuck in a cricketing no-man’s land.

^{Charlie Hemphrey in action for Glamorgan}

He bears no grudge towards his former employer: “I was aware of the situation last year. The club were honest and open with me: they have to try and make as much money as possible because of the pandemic. I got turned down a bit from county cricket when I was younger and so I absolutely loved having the opportunity to play first-class cricket for Glamorgan. The fans that would come and watch – not those on social media, they are not so good – were brilliant.

“I did okay in my first year but never quite showed them what I was totally capable of. I’d have loved to have scored hundreds for them and scored lots of runs at the top of the order. I had such a good time and would have loved to have played there for a few more years. It just didn’t quite work out.”

Both player and club were aware of the regulations when Hemphrey arrived in Wales two years ago. But there is discretion in the regulations that can be activated “in what the ECB adjudged to be exceptional circumstances” (it is also subject to the ICC’s consent).

Hemphrey’s anger – and there is anger, although not rage – therefore is directed at ECB’s refusal to exercise the discretion, citing Darren Pattinson, who played one Test for England months after playing Sheffield Shield cricket as a local, as an example.

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“I asked them about Darren but got no response,” Hemphrey explains. “I felt that the case and situation needed discretion. I find it amazing because there definitely hasn’t been a case like this and there won’t be another one. It wouldn’t have opened the floodgates: there is a lot of uniqueness in the case. If the ECB had emailed the other 17 counties for a vote, I’d be amazed if anyone would have said no.”

The PCA and Glamorgan attempted to persuade to the ECB to change its stance but it fell on deaf ears.

An ECB spokesperson said: “The ECB applies the criteria for England qualification with fairness and consistency across all elite domestic teams and their players. The regulations allow players to be eligible to compete as county-qualified (local) players even if they are not England-qualified.”

^{Hemphrey photographed in his final year as a Glamorgan player}

But Hemphrey feels that conclusion goes against the grain of what cricket’s administrators should be trying to achieve. “For me, everyone who is not a player who works in cricket should be trying to promote the game and help players fulfil their dreams as much as they can.

“They could have just said ‘You know what, we are going to say Charlie is English-qualified so he can continue his dream of playing professional cricket.’ But this was the opposite. Alan Fordham said I was fortunate to have played for Queensland: that has nothing to do with it. I qualified, I scored runs, they wanted to pick me and they did.”

Hemphrey is seemingly being penalised for his unusual route into to the county game. Born in Doncaster, he grew up in Kent and represented the South at the 2004 Bunbury Festival in a team that also included Billy Godleman, Steve Finn, Stuart Meaker, Alex Blake, Ben Brown, Sam Northeast and Rob Newton.

But despite featuring heavily for Kent's second XI between 2005 and 2009, a first team call never came. Between 2008 and 2010, Hemphrey had wintered with Redlands CC in Brisbane and returned to play for Toombull District CC in 2014 while working as a baggage handler in the city’s airport.

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There, the runs flowed freely and by February 2015 he was debuting in the Sheffield Shield for Queensland. In all he made 38 red-ball appearances for the state across six seasons, scoring 1,967 runs with four centuries and helping secure the 2017-18 Sheffield Shield title.

When he signed for Glamorgan ahead of the 2019 season, he switched to being an overseas player for Queensland until his final game for them in December 2019. The 2020 English summer was his second season in Wales and it was tumultuous even by pandemic standards. He and his young family, including a new-born son, landed in England on the day that  lockdown commenced. Mindful of the need for childcare support while he was absent, they surrendered their Cardiff lease to move in with Hemphrey’s parents in Kent.

For the next few months, he regularly made the arduous drive from Wales to the south-east to spend time with his family: certainly, mitigation for his diminishing returns with the bat: 62 runs in six Bob Willis Trophy innings.

“I was pretty fucked,” he confesses. “I'm not using that as an excuse for my performance, but it probably didn't help. And then on top of that my wife wanted to get back to Australia where they were living a pretty normal life. We had flights booked and then they would get bumped off two days before.

“I think it happened three times and in the end, I just went: you know what, find a business class ticket and get home. We ended up paying $20,000 for her and my son to get home. And then she had to do two weeks quarantine with a 15-month-old baby. All this was buzzing away. I don’t want it to be an excuse but it was playing on my mind a little bit.”

^{Hemphrey represented Queensland as a local player in Australia}

Some would say Hemphrey could have fought on and played second XI cricket in a bid to win a contract for next year. He considered it but had to think long term.

“Yes, I could have gone back and done that all year but you’ve got to look at the bigger picture: I couldn’t take the family over again to not have a chance of playing any first team cricket. Last year I was happy to put a line through what I didn't achieve on the cricket field and would have loved to come back and had a chance to change that. As of December I could register but I had to weigh up whether Glamorgan would give another contract to a guy who would be 32 at that point and wouldn’t have played in two years?”

Last winter Hemphrey appeared sporadically for Sandgate Redcliffe District CC in Queensland’s first grade competition. While the carrot of county cricket continued to drive him, once it became apparent that he would not be returning, his energy was understandably sapped.

“Once I realised coming back wasn’t going to happen, I thought I can work during the week and spend Saturdays with my family. I just didn’t have the same drive an ambition to do well when on the field. I wasn’t disillusioned but was a bit like ‘this is done now; I have to try and move on.’

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“I was doing some coaching at the club as well. The Australian Cricket Association run a past-player programme where you paid a little if you help your club. I loved doing that. Even sitting there talking to batters on game day I enjoyed and I didn’t mind fielding.

“But when I went out to bat I didn’t really care what my performance was like or how many runs I scored. I’d rather sit down with the boys and watch a bit of racing than go out and bat.”

In six games he made just 142 runs at 28.4, dropping from the top of the order to batting at five. In what, for the time being at least, is his final game of cricket, his services with the bat were not required.

“It’s difficult to explain to people who haven’t played at the top level and then had that taken away,” he continues. “You lose the drive. What is left to achieve? That is where I am. Some people keep playing grade cricket after they finish playing for Queensland but they tend to end up being the bitter ones thinking they should still be playing for the state.”

^{In Sheffield Shield action, where he helped Queensland to the 2017/18 title}

Hemphrey’s love for playing may have weakened but cricket remains firmly in his thoughts. He spent the winter dipping his toe in the “cut-throat” coaching world at private schools, and is studying a post-graduate degree in high performance sports leadership at the Open University.

He also intends to return to the field in a different capacity: “Do you watch a lot of Big Bash, mate?” he asks. “If you do, you’ll see the standard of umpiring could be better – and that is being generous. The general consensus among the players is that they deserve better because umpires have such an important role in some players’ careers. A player might just need a score but they get a bad decision and end up getting dropped. There is a feeling that umpires aren’t always held accountable.

“It’s not an easy job, 100 per cent, but there are some decisions where you just think what the hell is going on. This is elite sport and the umpiring is not of the same standard. I love cricket but whether I can stand out there and make good decisions... I don’t know but I will have to find out. There is a is quite a long pathway and that puts some people off but I am starting in third grade in September. Being an ex-player definitely helps as they are desperate for more to come through.

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And when in the middle, he will forever have Matt Maynard in mind. “He is a brilliant coach: I loved working with him, he appreciates how the game has moved forward. He has been through some terrible stuff in his life and you can tell that in how he leads the team– if you try hard and put the work in, it is okay if it doesn’t work. Shit happens, you know?

“And he tells it straight. A couple of years ago David Lloyd got given lbw – it wasn’t a very good decision. He didn’t show dissent but there was frustration in his body language when he walked off. He got given a couple of points and as we left the game, Matt basically had the umpire pinned in the corner – not physically – but just talking to him. He was saying: ‘Look, you made a bad decision but there is no accountability for you, but you have put two points on his record for the next two years. How about you accept that you probably didn’t get the decision right and I will speak to the player?’ He has the players’ backs.”

At least then Hemphrey has closure, albeit not in the way he had hoped. “For me it’s a way of moving forward and actually looking at the future. I’m not going to play professional cricket again: do I want to play club cricket or build towards something for the next ten or fifteen years?”