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Clowns and tigers in IPL circus

In an extract from his newly published book, New Zealand international cricketer Ross Taylor discusses the moment he became a millionaire, playing with Shane Warne and putting David Warner in a headlock.

‘Ross came out with Jesse and a few others, looked at me and went ‘‘A million bucks!’’ really loud.’ Victoria Taylor

The 2011 Indian Premier League auction got under way after stumps on day two of the first test against Pakistan at Seddon Park. The visitors were 235-4 in reply to our first innings of 275. In the changing room, Brendon [McCullum] was following the auction on his phone and providing a running commentary. Early on, Bangalore bought [South African] AB de Villiers for US$1.1 million. Then suddenly: ``Ross is up to $500,000 . . . he’s at $550,000.’’

When it got to US$650,000, I went outside to ring [wife] Victoria. The noise from the changing room was getting louder and had gone from ``Woohoo’’ to more like ``Whoa’’. I went back in. Brendon was saying, ``$900,000 . . . $950,000’’. The boys were going off. I was trying to find out which team was doing the bidding – it was good old RCB [Royal Challengers Bangalore]. Then the Rajasthan Royals came in at US$1 million. I was shaking, thinking, ``Holy shit, what’s happening?’’

Victoria Taylor: It was mindblowing. I went to pick him up from Seddon Park. I walked into the ground – there was no-one around. Ross came out with Jesse and a few others, looked at me and went ‘‘A million bucks!’’ really loud. My first reaction was to shush him, as if to say ‘‘Keep it under wraps.’’ We went home and had a few champagnes and Mum and Dad came around. I don’t think we slept much that night. It was like ‘‘What the heck just happened?’’

Shortly after tea on day three we were 36-0 in our second innings, 56 runs behind. The game didn’t go into the fourth day: we were skittled for 110 on what was a decent batting wicket. Pakistan needed fewer than four overs to win by 10 wickets. Talking to the media, new coach John Wright called our performance ``unacceptable’’. In the privacy of the changing room, he was more philosophical: ``Remember, boys, it’s just a cricket match. No-one gives a f... in China.’’

Ispent four months in India that year: two months at the World Cup, two months with Rajasthan. Victoria, who was pregnant, was at home organising the wedding and renovating the house. As much as I like Indian food, I did get to the point of making the odd visit to McDonald’s.

While it was amazing to go for $1m, in the long run I would’ve been better off if RCB had got me for US$950,000. If they had, it would have been my fourth year with them. While the IPL is pretty unsentimental, there is loyalty towards long-serving players and I probably would have had a longer IPL career as a one-franchise player. On the other hand, if I’d stayed at RCB, I wouldn’t have played with greats such as Virender Sehwag, Shane Warne, Mahela Jayawardene and Yuvraj Singh.

When you fetch that sort of money, you’re desperately keen to prove you’re worth it. And those who are paying you that sort of money have high expectations – that’s professional sport and human nature. I’d paid my dues at RCB: if I’d had a lean trot, the management would have had faith in me because of what I’d done in the past. When you go to a new team, you don’t get that backing. You never feel comfortable because you know that if you go two or three games without a score, you come under cold-eyed scrutiny.

A case in point: Rajasthan played Kings XI Punjab in Mohali. The chase was 195, I was lbw for a duck and we didn’t get close. Afterwards, the team, staff and management were in the bar on the top floor of the hotel. Liz Hurley was there with Warnie. One of the Royals owners said to me, ``Ross, we didn’t pay you $1m to get a duck’’ and slapped me across the face three or four times. He was laughing and they weren’t hard slaps, but I’m not sure that it was entirely playacting. Under the circumstances I wasn’t going to make an issue of it, but I couldn’t imagine it happening in many professional environments.

There was never a dull moment with Warnie running the show. After we got humiliated by the Kochi Tuskers – they chased down our miserable total in seven overs – Warnie gave the team an almighty spray. (I didn’t feel it was directed at me because I didn’t play that game.) One of the coaching staff took him aside to let him know he’d gone over the top and probably upset the younger lads.

Warnie called the team together to apologise. He concluded with,

``After all, it’s just a game of cricket. Tomorrow morning the sun will rise and I’ll wake up beside Liz Hurley.’’ Something in those mixed messages must have struck a chord because we blew the Mumbai Indians away in our next game.

The expression ``living legend’’ should be used a lot less than it is, but that’s exactly what Warnie was. I watched his every move. The fact that he was larger than life – a great performer who was also a showman; a generousspirited, vibrant personality who was always fun to be around – made his premature death even more shocking. He lived life to the fullest: it could be said that he packed more into his abbreviated existence than many people would manage in several lifetimes. This line from Blade Runner could serve as his epitaph: ``The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and you have burned so very, very brightly.’’

South African off-spinner Johan Botha and I were sitting next to Rahul Dravid at breakfast in Jaipur. We asked him if he wanted to go for a coffee; he didn’t really, but we twisted his arm. We got a cab to a fivestorey mall. We hadn’t taken any security with us, which was naive.

Within two minutes the mall was packed – there were at least 4000 people – and we had to get mall security to extract us.

I’m sure Rahul saw it coming, but he was too polite to turn us down. ``Botes’’ and I were profusely apologetic on the way back to the hotel. Rahul played it down with his usual class, saying we probably would’ve been OK in a bigger city like Mumbai but, in the smaller cities, they didn’t see big-name cricketers that often. Jaipur’s population is around 4m. After that, coffee with Dravid was always in the hotel.

There was always a commotion in the hotel when the superstars came down for breakfast. Virat Kohli would often wear headphones – it’s hard to buttonhole someone who has got headphones on.

One of the things the Indian players enjoy about touring New Zealand is being able to walk from place to place, for instance from Seddon

Park back to the hotel. If Sachin Tendulkar had tried that in Mumbai, he never would have got home.

Nayan Doshi, who played for Surrey and whose father Dilip played for India, was in the Rajasthan squad. Although he was classified as a local, he was born and raised in England and tended to hang out with the overseas players. He was right into photography and had a contact at Ranthambore National Park, a tiger reserve. He was planning a night drive up to the reserve after the game, did I want to go? I was dead keen and knew Dravid was too, but we decided to leave early in the morning.

Nayan and Jake Oram left after the game while Dravid and I headed off about 5.30 the next morning. You don’t leave the ground until quite a while after the conclusion of a day-night IPL game, then it takes two or three hours to wind down, so you mightn’t get to sleep till 2 or 3am. The drive to the reserve took several hours. On the back roads, we seemed to bounce from one pothole to the next – it was like driving on judder bars. I tried to sleep but my head just kept banging against the window.

I asked Dravid, ``How many times have you seen a tiger?’’ He said, ``I’ve never seen a tiger. I’ve been on 21 of these expeditions and haven’t seen a single one.’’ I thought, ``What? 21 safaris for zero sightings.’’ If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gone. I would’ve said, ``No thanks, I’ll watch the Discovery channel.’’

Jake had been out in the morning – no joy. There was some baseball game on TV that he wanted to watch so he didn’t come with us on the midafternoon safari. It wasn’t long before our driver got a radio call from a colleague to say they’d found T-17, a famous, tagged tiger. Dravid was thrilled: 21 safaris without seeing as much as a tiger turd, but half an hour into number 22 he’d hit pay dirt.

We pulled up beside the other vehicles, open-top SUVs a bit bigger than Land Rovers. The tiger was on a rock, a good 100 metres away. We were stoked to see a tiger in the wild, but the people in the other vehicles immediately aimed their cameras at

Rahul. They were as excited to see him as we were to see the tiger. Maybe more: across the globe there are almost 4000 tigers in the wild, but there’s only one Rahul Dravid.

We went out again the next morning and found some tracks. Next thing a tiger was right in front of us, no more than two or three metres away. The driver had barely finished telling us that they’d recently seen this tiger’s sister when she appeared: we had two tigers almost within touching distance. We were in an open jeep, so quite exposed, but the tigers were obviously used to vehicles. The game wardens with us had guns but said we’d only be at risk if we were threatening the tigers’ young ones. It was pretty amazing to have gone two from two – two tiger sightings on two safaris. Rahul was two from 23 but he couldn’t have been happier. He had a smile on his face for days afterwards.

Warnie gave me a hospital pass when we played RCB, tossing me the ball when Kohli and Chris Gayle were in full flow. Warnie was a gambler: the game was slipping away from us so he tried to buy a wicket. I managed to bowl five respectable balls but the last one went for six.

My only other IPL over followed the same script.

It was Bangalore against Chennai in South Africa, with M S Dhoni and Suresh Raina at the crease. The first five weren’t bad, but then

I tried an arm ball. It came out as a low full toss and Dhoni gave it what it deserved.

In 2012, I was traded to Delhi and my salary went up to US$1.3 million, which worked out at around US$85,000 a game. The way it works is that you get 80 per cent of your sign-on fee whether you’re selected or not. If you were signed for $2.8 million for a 14-game competition, that’s a match fee of $200,000. If you’re not picked, you get $160,000. There’s no rhyme or reason to what happens at IPL auctions: the more you try to analyse and understand the decision-making, the more confused you become.

There were games when Sehwag went nuts, so I was surplus to requirements battingwise. I didn’t get a catch, in fact barely fielded a ball, but I still got paid. You could say it was swings and roundabouts: I had to forgo some big paydays to play for New Zealand, but there were also times when I was lavishly rewarded for just turning up. Missing three games with a broken arm cost me more than a quarter of a million, but I’d have missed more of the tournament if I hadn’t had an operation straight away. It was definitely money well spent.

We had a memorable night at Sehwag’s restaurant. A lot of the guys liked football so we were watching Manchester City play Queens Park Rangers. It was the final round of the Premier League and Sergio Agu¨ ero scored in stoppage time to give City a 3-2 win and their first title for 44 years. The food was fantastic, particularly the prawns. I couldn’t stop eating them but didn’t realise Sehwag was aware that I was making a pig of myself. We played the next day. Sehwag was smacking it to all parts, making it look easy. The overseas batters, me included, were struggling. I was feeling nervous because I was on big money and knew I had to deliver. The pressure was on when I went in to bat, but Sehwag was so relaxed: he glove-punched me and said, ``Ross, just bat like you’re eating prawns.’’ It was like cricket was a hobby and he was just playing for fun. From then on, whenever our paths crossed, he would remind me about the prawns. We had a fantastic team: as well as Virender, there was Jayawardene, Morne´ Morkel, Kevin Pietersen, Andre Russell and David Warner. Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell wouldn’t even be at the games because you could only take six overseas players to the ground.

We were having a few drinks one night and Warner was getting a bit loud. By the time we got into the lift to go up to our rooms, he was being smart and annoying with it. I put him in a headlock and gave him a couple of don’t argues. ``Oh f...,’’ he said, ``I forgot you Islanders are strong.’’

David and I have been good ever since. He developed this routine of walking past me when I was batting and muttering – with a big grin – either that line from Once Were Warriors, ``Cook the man some f .... n eggs,’’ or, ``You got something wrong with your eyes, boy?’’

When we found out I was going to Delhi, Victoria and I started thinking about the Taj Mahal. Mackenzie was six months old and we um-ed and aah-ed about whether we could take her. When we found out it was a four-hour drive to Agra, we shelved the idea. Mother and daughter remained in Hamilton.

As it turned out, a number of players and partners wanted to go to the Taj Mahal, so the team manager asked the franchise owners if there was any chance of putting on a private jet. We had a game coming up and eight hours on quite a dangerous road wouldn’t have been ideal preparation. Infrastructure conglomerate GMR are joint owners of the Delhi Daredevils (now the Delhi Capitals). Kiran, son of GM Rao, the company’s founder, and a very nice, softly spoken guy, agreed to the request. There were 11 of us and a jet could only take nine, so Kiran provided two. The flight took just 22 minutes. There isn’t a civil airport at Agra so we flew into a military base: some highly placed person had obviously pulled a few strings. It was stinking hot – mid40s – but an amazing experience, especially since we had exclusive access to the main tomb.

Victoria was back in Hamilton thinking she and Mackenzie could have gone after all. To rub salt in the wound, the next day the Times of India ran a photo of Leanne McGoldrick and me on the seat Diana, Princess of Wales, sat on in that famous shot. The caption was, ``Ross Taylor with wife Leanne at the Taj Mahal.’’ The whole episode still annoys Victoria, and I just can’t help winding her up. Every time we see the Taj on the news or in a brochure or whatever, I wax lyrical about how fabulous it was.

Extracted with permission from Ross Taylor: Black & White , written with Paul Thomas ($49.99 Upstart Press, out now).

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2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

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