Fate, tragedy and going to war: The story behind Roland Butcher’s remarkable Test debut

NICK HOWSON: Forty years on from becoming England’s first black Test cricketer the former Middlesex and Gloucestershire batsman tells the story of a return to Barbados that didn’t go entirely to plan

A moment in time. A dream realised. Years of work finally rewarded. History made.

Roland Butcher’s Test debut on March 13, 1981, was so many things. He was the first of an ever-increasing number of black cricketers to represent the national team in the greatest format, the latest with Caribbean heritage. It can be cited as an inspiring moment for youngsters up and down the country over the last 40 years, not to mention an emotional return to his homeland where his love for the game was first established.

But it is also a moment associated with controversy, linked with tragedy and which challenged those who were there like never before, or perhaps since.

This is the story of a talented England batter who channelled ambition to reach the summit of the sport and quickly learned just how relentless and cruel it can be.

The tale starts where it eventually ends, at the Kensington Oval. In a female-dominated household, among Butcher’s first experience of cricket came aged 12 when cousin Monica took him to watch Australia take on the West Indies in what was the fourth Test of the 1964-95 tour.

He watched Bill Lawry and Bob Simpson become the first opening pair to score double centuries in the same innings as part of a stand of 382 for the first wicket, a fraction short of what was then the world record. From that moment, there was no looking back.

“I would play morning, noon and night with my peers, the bigger boys,” he told The Cricketer. [The household] was all women, my grandmother, aunts, etc. They liked cricket, but in terms of knowing much about it not so much. The only one who loved it was one of my cousins, who took me to my very first international match in Barbados, West Indies v Australia in 1965 at Kensington Oval. That was a memorable Test match. That furthered my passion for the game. 

^{Butcher doing the hard yards during the winter}

“My grandmother was a very practical and straightforward woman, she believed that she didn’t mind you doing recreational activities but there were certain chores you had to do and they always came first. Once you completed those tasks you were free. 

“I stuck to that, but the game had such a lure I’d slip away and forget what I had to do. She was very strong. We lived in the country and one of my duties was to ensure that I got enough grass for our animals overnight. You start to play cricket and you’d forget to do certain things and you’d have difficulty.”

Soon enough, Butcher’s grandmother submitted to her grandson’s desire for greater freedom. His parents had fled to England as part of the Windrush generation during the 1950s and were keen he and sister Margaret joined them. Come 1967, they made the move across the Atlantic.

As Butcher describes, it took time to adapt to his new surroundings and recapture his affection for cricket in an otherwise football-mad country.

“I arrived in England and it was a strange place,” he added. “The weather was a huge factor. In Barbados the sun shines 365 days of the year, it is warm and it is very much an outdoor life. I arrive in England and it is, even though it is May, absolutely freezing and that was a culture shock. 

“I had no friends at all and there was only me and my sister. My family in England there were another four children. We didn’t know each other apart from pictures and we had to make that adjustment.

“I didn’t play any football in Barbados but as I started to make friends in the area I very quickly gravitated to their passion and fell in love with that too. It was through that that I got back into cricket, through football. 

^{Bill Athey was preferred to Butcher, who was 12th man, for the Centenary Test against Australia at Lord's}

“That’s how I got back into the game. If it wasn’t for football, I wouldn’t have known the route back into the game. As I got into the system, I made more friends and got to understand the place and it became home. 

“At the beginning it was difficult, and you would expect that. If you take someone who is 13 years of age from one side of the world and place them another side, it is going to take time. People had to be patient with me and that paid off.”

Based in Hertfordshire, Butcher got involved at Stevenage Cricket Club by accident after the 3rd XI needed players. Alongside his education at Shepalbury, he was playing for the first XI by the time he was 15 and represented North Hertfordshire Schools. His fondness for the sport had been firmly rekindled, though he would go on to become Stevenage’s first black footballer.

If good fortune had provided Butcher with his route back into cricket, there was nothing lucky about how he navigated his way to the very top. His dynamism at the crease and desire to constantly improve was pounced upon by Cyril Hammond, a legendary figure around Ditchmore Lane. He mentored the right-hander and recommended him to Gloucestershire.

Playing centrally for the Second XI, Butcher split his time between staying with Hammond and in the Bristol dressing rooms with the rest of the squad. It would be fair to say it was a formative experience.

“They were decked out with sleeping bags and a TV,” he described. “[Coach] Graham Butcher’s wife would cook breakfast for everyone then we would go off to play cricket. That was a daily routine. For the first year, I stayed with Cyril, the second year with the boys. That’s what I did. You know what boys do, they enjoyed themselves. That was a fantastic experience. I needed to be with other players, to share and be with them.”

^{The Robin Jackman affair almost ended Butcher's Test career before it had begun}

Butcher was quickly picked up by MCC Young Cricketers and moved between Bristol and Lord’s for a handful of years in the early 70s, discovering what it takes to make it on the circuit. Learning alongside Ian Botham, Keith Jennings and Barry Lloyd was a litmus test of Butcher’s dedication.

A regular at the home of cricket, it was inevitable that Middlesex’s interest would eventually be piqued, and a three-year deal followed before he’d played a senior match (though it wouldn’t be until 1974 that he made his debut).

Against the backdrop of Butcher’s emergence was the rise of the National Front in the United Kingdom, high levels of employment inequality in the United States and the continuation of racial segregation in South Africa, the apartheid system. But cricket embraced Butcher and treated him like any other player in the system.

“I was never made to feel like an outside player or a foreign player,” he explained. “I was made to feel like any other player who was there, right from my Stevenage days. I played with guys who were very caring, and they took me under their wing. I was treated as just another kid who likes to play cricket.

“I came into first-class cricket via a similar route to a lot of English-born people. My situation was exactly the same. When I got the chance at international level, I was like any other kid born in England going through the ranks.”

Butcher didn’t perhaps enjoy the immediate success in first-class cricket that he would have liked. He finished with an average above 30 just once in his first six seasons. It took until his 34th County Championship match for his first century, which unsurprisingly came in familiar surroundings at Bristol against former employers Gloucestershire in August 1978.

It was during this period that Butcher made a seismic step towards international honours. Rules regarding the number of overseas players allowed per team in the County Championship changed and, in an effort, to sustain his career and support his young family – which included son Paul - he made himself available for England, protecting himself at a time when Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards were on the circuit.

Roland Butcher: "We need ACE Programme to go on for 20, 30, 40 years"

Alan Lee wrote in the December 1980 edition of The Cricketer Magazine that the decision could “have caused endless heart-searching”. But as Butcher recalls, he barely gave the decision a second thought, though it involved giving up a lifelong dream.

“Why would I put myself and my family's livelihood in jeopardy making a sentimental decision? It had to be a practical decision because we live in a practical world. You must provide for your family and my profession was cricket. 

“I did not feel that I would put that on the line just to fulfil another ambition, just to play for where I was born. When it came down to making the decision it was a very, very easy one. I did not give it any thought at all, really. 

“Obviously as a kid, I had a desire to play Test cricket for the West Indies because that is what I knew. But the way my life panned out after that and when the opportunity that came wherever it was it was to play Test cricket. 

“If it were to play for England, Scotland and the opportunity came I was there and I would take it. In this instance sentiment did not come into it, there were practical things that needed to be looked at and that is how I looked at it.”

As it turned out, the decision paid off. In 1980, Butcher enjoyed what he describes as the best year of his life. In February he married his partner, Cheryl. In the middle, he averaged nearly 40 in first-class cricket and helped guide Middlesex to their sixth County Championship title. That led to his international debut as England's first black cricketer in the second one-day international against Australia at Edgbaston, a call-up he found out about via the nine o’clock news. A half-century helped the team claim a 47-run success.

If that run had Butcher on the precipice of England Test selection, then the Gillette Cup Final against Surrey tipped the balance. Another fifty as part of a 79-run stand with Mike Brearley convinced the Alec Bedser-led selection panel to take the plunge for the West Indies tour of 1980-81, which was due to include two ODIs and five Tests.

^{Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner: the ferocious West Indies attack}

“Back in those days, communication with players was not what it is now. You almost find out you’re playing by default,” said Butcher.

“The [1980] season finished with the Gillette Cup final. I didn’t have a honeymoon, so we had a holiday. With our one-year-old son, we took off on vacation to Canada and stayed with a cousin in Hamilton, Ontario. We never told anyone where I was going.

“The phone rang at the house. ‘Who the hell is this?’ A reporter tracked me down and he was the one who told me I had been selected to tour the West Indies. No confirmation from anyone. Only when I came back that things picked up in relation to that. That’s how it was. It was done on the news or radio.”

He added: “Everyone wanted a piece of you, talk to you, question you and it was quite draining and exhausting. It was a bit of a distraction too because time was taken up talking to people, reporters from all over the globe. You had to manage that and get yourself physically and mentally ready for what was ahead which was going to be the most difficult tour that any cricketer could imagine. It would have been better for me if I could have been away from that sort of attention and concentrate on the task ahead.

“I felt immense pride to be selected for England, to be considered one of the best 15 cricketers at that time out of 40 million people. Fulfilment of an ambition. You haven’t fully got your ambition but you’re as close as you’ll get because you’re in a squad. It is up to you to force your way in and get that opportunity. The first half of the ambition had been achieved. You would have put in a lot of years of graft from being a child for that moment. It was something to look forward to.”

Butcher had targeted a Test debut in the Centenary Test the previous summer but was only 12th man as England preferred Bill Athey and Mike Gatting in a batting order laden with legends Graham Gooch, Geoffrey Boycott and David Gower. But a good word from ex-MCC graduate Botham, now skipper, worked in his favour just in time for a return to his homeland.

^{Butcher was given a rousing reception upon his return to the Caribbean}

“I wondered how some places would receive me,” he conceded. “South Africa was very much a topic of discussion and some of the Caribbean governments were hostile in that area. I wondered about the reception, but it was not something that I should have even contemplated. 

“The reception I received in Jamaica was unbelievable. It was hugely surprising. Wherever I went the reception was the same, there was no negativity. From the press to individuals. It was overwhelming in all of those countries. I was hugely surprised. I expected a good reception in Barbados, where I was born, but the other countries it was a pleasant surprise. It was quite overwhelming.”

Though he made runs against a WI President’s XI and played in the opening ODI at Kingstown, he was omitted for the first Test, as Brian Rose and Geoff Miller completed the top-order. The tourists were humbled by an innings and 79 runs.

Not unexpectedly, after playing his third and eventually final ODI, Butcher was given the nod for the second Test in Georgetown. But the waiting game would continue.

Having heard on a Jamaican radio station of his link to South Africa, where he would coach and play during the winter, Robin Jackman – an injury replacement for Bob Willis and who had also been on standby for that Centenary Test - had his entry permit into Guyana revoked by the government who were severely anti-apartheid.

England stood by the then 35-year-old and the Test was eventually cancelled. Indeed, the entire tour almost followed.

“It was like déjà vu,” Butcher outlined. “I had experienced that situation before. When I was playing for Barbados in the Shell Shield against Guyana, we arrived for the four-day game and just like the Jackman affair, Geoffrey Greenidge who was ex-West Indies and played for Sussex. He was my opening partner and previously had played in South Africa. The same thing occurred. 

“They eventually revoked his entry permit. The team had to leave and that game was cancelled too. The Jackman affair was the second time it happened to me. I am not sure anyone has had the privilege of not being allowed to play in Guyana for those reasons. Jackman was No.2.

“There is no way you can be part of the team, a teammate is thrown out, and you stay behind. That would have been ludicrous. The players had no hesitation in supporting any decision the foreign office had. 

“Robin Jackman was a member of the team, if he wasn’t welcome then none of us were welcome. Unfortunately, that would have been the case – there would have been unfulfilled dreams for him and myself. If that is what it had to be, then that is what it had to be. If you can’t take all of us, then none of us.

“It was a political hotbed and something beyond us. We were pawns and we had to go with the flow. It was the government, it was cricket politics and it just so happened it was South Africa and you’re still within an apartheid system and feeling is very high in certain parts of the Caribbean in relation to that. 

March 13th is the 40th Anniversary of my England Test Match debut against West Indies at Kensington Oval. Barbados pic.twitter.com/wWoDX3FMUR

— Roland Butcher (@butcher_roland) March 12, 2021

“It was a very tense time. It could have been the end of the tour and a lot of careers, some of which hadn’t begun. It was out of our hands and it was not something we had a lot of control over. Any decision that was made was made at a higher level and wouldn’t be questioned.”

Fortunately for Butcher, opportunity knocked amid familiar surroundings when the tour moved to Barbados and he retained his place for the third Test.

“Call it fate or whatever that is how it worked out. I could have been selected for the first Test but for me it ended up being perfect. The significance of making my test debut in Barbados, for me, my family and I think for Barbadians too is more impactful than if I’d made it in Trinidad or Guyana or anywhere else. That worked out well. What happened during that match you could never have envisaged.”

Back at the ground where his love for cricket was realised, against players who he’d grown up with and played against at the county level, this was a match made in heaven for Butcher. But as it turned out, it was a historic event for lots of the wrong reasons.

West Indies ran amock. Lloyd made a first-innings hundred, England were bowled out for 122 in 47.5 overs (Butcher made 17) and as Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner ran riot and the hosts led by 149 with nine second-innings wickets in hand at the close on day two.

It was that evening that a turbulent tour turned to tragedy. Assistant manager and selector Ken Barrington suffered a heart attack and died in his Bridgetown hotel room. It sent shockwaves through the squad, not least the sport given the indelible mark Barrington had left on it during a stellar career.

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Three days of the third Test, a pair of tour matches and two further Tests remained on a trip that still had four weeks to run. Butcher still wonders today how the squad lasted the pace.

“That threw everything upside down,” he said. “That is not something you can expect or plan for. You can never imagine how you would react to something like that. It is bad enough when a friend passes away 5,000 miles away. But when it happens to someone in your dressing room, in your hotel, on tour with you with a period of time in the middle of the most difficult assignment you will ever face as a cricketer you cannot imagine how you would feel physically, mentally when it happens.

“It was an unbelievable situation. It was quite frightening. You’re fine one day, you go to your hotel, you don’t feel well and in the morning you’re gone. How can anyone comprehend that? It focuses your mind that life is fragile. It is something to be treasured. You can’t have many great expectations because you don’t know where the future is going to take you.  

“It teaches you that you have to live in the moment, the here and now because no one has the future laid down. With all those things going around your mind and you have to deal with four of the fastest, meanest bowlers in the world on a very sporting pitch. I don’t think an assignment could ever get any more difficult. It was a bridge too far.

“We had a lot of characters in the team and normally it would have been full of fun and excitement. Botham, Boycott, Gooch in their own way. We had different characters who livened it up and provided an atmosphere. But even those guys who were the life and soul of the party couldn’t carry on as normal.

“People spoke briefly. It was one of disbelief and no one could comprehend what had happened. We knew we had to carry on. I don’t think any great expectation were put on anyone after that. We’d try to do the best that we can. The reality is for most of us mentally the tour was over.

“We’d been building up for months for a keen contest against a top team and in the heat of battle, we were deflated. Could you pick yourself back up to that level of motivation and intensity for a few more weeks? You’d try but there was something missing. We finished the tour physical but mentally it was hard to cope.”

England would lose that third Test by 298 runs, Butcher made two the second time around, but they drew the remaining two games to depart home with a 2-0 defeat. Peter Willey and Boycott scored centuries in Antigua, and Gooch and Gower scored 153 and 154 respectively at Sabina Park.

“The team had to show tremendous resolve,” Butcher stated. “You were playing against the best team in the world who were steamrolling everybody before them. Even at your best that was going to be no easy ride. 

^{Ken Barrington, second right, passed away after day two of the third Test}

“To have sustained what we sustained, first the humiliation of Guyana, the events of Barbados and then pull out some top performances, that for me is courage. To do what we did after what happened to them is not recognised. People just say England lost another series in the Caribbean 2-0. But they don’t understand. That is the sadness of that tour – the lack of understanding of what 15 or 16 guys went through. What they were able to produce is not recognised.”

Though England channelled that fortitude during the extraordinary Ashes series which followed that summer, Jackman, Athey and Butcher were dropped. The latter would enjoy a playing career that lasted the remainder of the decade before going into football and cricket coaching. But the bright lights of the international game faded into the distance.

Though not part of England’s immediate future in the early 80s, he is a more important figure than ever in the 21st century. One of 13 Caribbean-born players and the first of 21 black cricketers to represent England, Butcher is living proof that dreams can become a reality.

A patron of the Ebony Rainford-Brent-inspired ACE Programme which aims to drive participation of members of the African-Caribbean community, there is genuine hope that a group that includes himself, Gladstone Small, Monty Lynch and Jofra Archer will only grow.

“It means a great deal to me. I am very proud of that happening. That was the beginning of the motivation for many of the black players in England who perhaps felt they would never get the opportunity to play. 

“It certainly helped them and spurred them on. I feel very proud that I was the catalyst for that change. The numbers who have walked through that door have obviously motivated others as well. It needs to be spoken about. I don’t feel that the ‘81 team was given the credit that it deserves. It went to war and survived.”

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