Even in retirement, Iain Nairn has plenty to offer to disability cricket

SAM DALLING: Nairn has been awarded an MBE after seven stellar years in the England pan-disability side. For a large portion of his time, he served as captain. With his playing days behind him, his role is ambassadorial these days

An England captain. A son of County Durham and product of the club’s youth system. A long-suffering supporter of Sunderland AFC. And now honoured by Her Majesty the Queen for his services to disabled cricket: Iain Nairn MBE.

“I went to Royal Grammar School. One of the other houses there is Collingwood, and I wrote a piece for the school magazine about following in Paul Collingwood’s steps.

“He was the first man to lift a world T20 trophy for England and I was the second. We both played for Durham, and are both Sunderland fans. He got his MBE for being part of his Ashes in 2005 and now I’ve done that. The fact that I’ve received the same recognition as him is awesome. It’s a massive honour and a huge surprise.”

His award came after seven stellar years in the England pan-disability side – one of four disability teams run by the ECB. For a large portion of his time, he served as captain. With his playing days behind him, Nairn’s role is ambassadorial these days. He has plenty to offer, and certainly wants to.

The England side was born in 2011. Its maiden tour – a losing T20 and ODI trip to the UAE to take on Pakistan – took place the following year. Nairn was not on the plane. He had been invited to a trial weekend but was unable to attend. He was not fully aware of what was at stake: had he been, pre-existing arrangements might have been re-shuffled.

“I’d never played disability sport until that point,” he tells The Cricketer. “I was only asked because the son of one of the coaches at Durham played for the deaf team, so he was on the email ‘hit list’.

“If someone had asked me to go and play disabled rugby or football, I probably would have said: ‘Nah, you’re okay, thanks.’ But disabled cricket for England… well, I was there as soon as I could.

“I couldn’t make to the camp in 2011 as I was away. Instead of saying: ‘Would you come to the next weekend?’ it was just left. I would have cancelled my holiday if I’d understood what was going on!”

Nairn would not have to wait long to don the Three Lions. Two years later he was named in Chris Ellison’s 15-man squad to repeat the 2012 tour.  It marked the start of an attitude shift for Nairn. He lost his right leg as a youngster and, despite having used a prosthetic limb for most of his life, had not classified himself as disabled from a cricketing perspective. He represented his country through to U18s level and played club cricket for Chester-le-Street CC.

^{Iain Nairn (left) has since retired from playing}

“While I had a disabled badge, I don’t think I was atypical in being someone who hadn’t classed myself as disabled because I was playing mainstream sport. I was living my life as everyone else was.

“People have bad backs, pain here and there, and I was walking around on a prosthetic limb. It was very much just something that you crack on with. I suspect there are a lot of people out there who are the same.”

And Nairn vividly recalls trepidation the first time he left the north-east to join up with the squad at a training camp at Malvern College, Worcestershire. “I was driving down with all these questions running through my head; what am I going to find when I get there? What sort of people are they going to be? What disabilities are they going to be suffering from?

“You probably discriminate against disabled people as you’re doing it. Am I going to be running around and there’s a bunch of people in wheelchairs? Is that going to be awkward for me?”

Instead, he found cricket of the highest order. A shift in narrative required, then? Nairn thinks so. “The word disability… it does say you are less than abled. I also play golf, so I actually prefer handicap because a handicap is something that balances you out. But that was very much frowned upon.

“The Indian team call themselves ‘differently-abled’: I think that’s a brilliant phrase. I’m left-handed and there are things that Eoin Morgan does that I’m not able to do. Most of them are not about my disability – it is a lack of talent! But I can have a bloody good try at the majority of them.

“I just have to work out a different way around, so that I’m as able as others. As a kid, my coaches would always say: ‘You can’t get your leg in this position, can you?’ And my response would be: ‘If that’s where I need to be, I’ll get into that position – just give me a while to look at it. Once I’ve trained my body to get there, I’ll able to do it.’”

His former teammates are the same. Take former Yorkshire and England opener Gordon Laidlaw who has cerebral palsy, a condition that impacts movement and co-ordination.

“Gordon has a hand in spasm, so he’s always been a one-handed cricketer. But if you saw him pull over midwicket for six, you wouldn’t consider there to be a disability there. He has trained his body – with all that’s going on with the spasm down his right-hand side – to still be able to clear the ropes. Everything is achievable if you want it to be.”

^{Nairn in his days as England captain}

2015 saw England claim the title at the inaugural physical disabilities world series. By that point Nairn had been appointed captain. The five-team tournament took place in Bangladesh, Nairn’s side taking on the hosts, plus India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, whom they defeated in the final. The profile of disability cricket rose, and Nairn laughs as he recalls the follow-up press. “I call it the gratuitous leg shot,” he says of the videos of him in the nets and close-ups of his prosthetic limb. ”We’ve got to get the black piece of plastic in, otherwise I just look like an average cricketer without much talent!”

But there’s a serious side too. Neither the 2015 series, nor the 2019 iteration – held at Worcestershire CCC’s New Road and won by India – were ICC recognised.  The former was organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The lack of status means the likes of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies and Sri Lanka have not, as yet, fielded sides.

“Until someone at the ICC says: ‘This is what disability cricket looks like under the ICC rules and regulations,’ it’s difficult for other boards to buy into it. We are lucky as a nation that we are very open to disability sport. We get funding through Sport England and ECB.”

But there are promising signs, with arguably the world’s cricketing superpower taking an interest: “The Pakistan and India sides were privately funded a lot of the time, but the Indians have now been brought under the BCCI umbrella. That’s massive: India are the current world champions and they will want people to be playing cricket so that they’ve got another trophy to lift.”

As an insolvency practitioner, Nairn understands the sticking point: funding. “My day job is to deal with failing businesses and finance, so I’ve got a real understanding of how the ECB views us as on an accounting basis. Ultimately, you have to remember we’re a drain of resources and it’s up to us to prove the value that we bring and show them we are worthwhile investing time and money in.

“We aren’t able to generate our own revenue streams yet because we can’t play at Lord’s and get 26,000 people to watch us. They could potentially use us for marketing opportunities and there will be people who want to do that; that could bring in additional revenue.

“But that’s a big rights issue. What have the ECB sold already as part of the Sky, Cinch and IG contracts? We all get put into one pot and just get our share. There was no naivety around how we were funded. We knew that we were paid for by the ECB and that the men’s game earns all the money. We are a very small cog in that big machine.

^{Nairn, a left-handed batsman, at the crease during the Physical Disability World Series in 2019}

If that sounds disheartening, it’s not meant to be. It’s a view stationed in pragmatism. And there is plenty of hope. Nairn cites the development of the women’s game as a path to follow. That’s only been furthered by The Hundred, with a crowd of 17,116 watching the Oval Invincibles claim victory over Southern Brace in the recent final. “We are following in their footsteps. In my seven years with England (2012-2019) we have seen the women, led by Clare Connor, go to being professional cricketers.” And that excites Nairn, who also draws parallels with the Paralympics in Tokyo.

“We are not even 10 years through our cycle. If you’re an 18-year-old now, by the time you hit 28… well, that’s two decades: the time it took the Paralympics to get from Barcelona to London. It took from 1992 to 2012 to get really big.

“The fact that we’ve managed to get in two world series and play some tri-series is actually quite impressive, and thanks to the hard work of people like Ian Martin and Neil Bradshaw at the ECB.

“In ten years’ time there could be some really exciting stuff going on around disability cricket. Players who are 13 or 14 now, could have a brilliant life, travelling the globe, playing in World Cups alongside the men and women’s teams. There is so much opportunity there for disabled cricketers. My age is my biggest regret: if I was 10 years younger, I would have still been doing a lot more cricket for the next few years. How exciting would that have been?”

Not that Nairn has any complaints. It’s two years since both he and then-head coach Ian Salisbury broke the news to the dressing room that they would be stepping away. Two figureheads of disabilities cricket passing on the baton, Salisbury to care for his wife in her final days and Nairn to focus on the arrival of his daughter.

Now aged 40, Nairn no longer plays at all. While he would get travel expenses, there was no pay for his England appearances, and he would regularly use holiday from his day job to play.

“I viewed my role with England as a little bit of a job. I wanted to take it seriously, to be captain of my country and show off what I can do. It maybe took away a bit of the joy of the game. I probably played 100 times in an England shirt but only 20 of them counted as internationals. But in all the games we were working towards something.

“I had a really nice life playing senior cricket since I was 13. I loved that. But I found it very, very difficult coming back to club cricket. When you turn up on a Saturday and there are three hungover, and a few teenagers it’s very difficult to get your head around compared to playing in a World Cup final.

^{Nairn joins in with a visually impaired game at a NatWest launch session}

“For seven years I’d been training from October to March away in Birmingham one weekend a month. And in the summer we’d play six or seven games a year, travelling up and down the country. The north-east is a great part of the world except for the fact it’s bloody miles away from anywhere!”

Even when as things developed and he would appear alongside Eoin Morgan at events, he would receive only his train fare. “If you asked Eoin Morgan to turn up for an after-dinner speech, it would probably cost you ten grand. I’d probably do it for a couple of beers and my tea! So, you have to understand the value, but I probably used six or seven days holiday a year for cricket. That was family time that I missed, and rest time that I missed. If that had been paid by England, I could have taken it as unpaid leave and protected my holiday balance at least. That bit does need to change.”

Not that Nairn is anything but content: “I’ve had my fun, experienced countless things I’d otherwise not have experienced, and it absolutely changed my life for the better. I’d do it all again. But it has tired me of playing cricket.

“My wife deserves to get some time back before I become too old. One things for sure: I’ll be encouraging my daughter to play cricket. I hope that one day she can walk onto a cricket field, get hug pleasure from it and go and play. But for a little while, I’m just enjoying being a dad.”

His desire to remain involved in the game as disability cricket progresses though, remains undiminished. And given his business background he would doubtless add significant value as the game faces financial challenges.

One is that the ECB, to its great credit, runs four disabilities sides. In addition to the Physical Disabilities side, there is a Learning Disability team who most recently toured Australia in 2019, a Visually Impaired team who were due to take part in the Blind Ashes in 2020 before the pandemic hit and the Deaf Team.

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“We’ve got four disability groups. What is it that makes the PD cricketers more special than the deaf, the visually impaired or the learning disability group? Why should we get paid and not them? If you want to have squads of 15 you need to be paying 60 professional cricketers.

“I suspect that until that becomes ICC driven and money starts to drip down more, it will be a challenge. But there are organisations out there who would want to be associated with disability cricket and would pay to be.”

One alternative would be to take disabled cricket under its own umbrella, while still working in parallel with the ECB: “If it was under the England Disabled Cricket Board banner, would we be able to raise additional funding? Would it make us better off or worse off? That’s a really hard one. Again, could you create a disabled ICC as opposed to an ICC? The Paralympics and Olympics work together separately.”

Food for thought certainly, but however it evolves, Nairn is keen to continue giving even in retirement. And he views disabilities cricket’s remit as wide one.

“I’d love to be involved if there was an opportunity. But I know the game is in really safe hands with the work than Ian and Neil are doing in driving its future.  I’m still a massive supporter and believer that disabled cricket isn’t just about people with disabilities. We can get able bodied people to play the game. If a guy with one leg can do it, a guy with one arm can do it, then everyone can get involved. You can always find your level. There is always a team of the right standard.”

What comes next is unclear. With many of the potential opponents currently “red list” countries, the return of international cricket is not imminent. But the ECB is currently piloting a new Disabilities Premier League. All being well, that will launch next year. Maybe Nairn will be tempted out of retirement?