Olonga: Cricketer, artiste and crusader

Adelaide: Henry Olonga’s otherwise modest cricket career (68 wickets in 30 Tests and 58 in 50 ODIs) was immortalised by two significant incidents in his life - one on the field and another, off the field. 

The mention of the former Zimbabwe pacer’s name always rings a bell among the 90s Indian cricket followers. His duel with Sachin Tendulkar in 1998 in the Coca Cola Champions Trophy is so fresh in memory it feels like it happened yesterday. And Olonga is well aware of it.

“I know everyone remembers that because it’s on YouTube,” he says in mock anger. “You start typing in Henry Olonga, it auto completes vs Tendulkar.”

Olonga is at the Village Green, and he has been commissioned to paint at the set-up where several other activities go on along with Test cricket.  

He is drawing the Adelaide Oval stadium, and says he is paid on an hourly basis for the gig.

A versatile personality, Olonga is also a singer and in fact auditioned for “the Voice Australia”, a reality singing competition.  

Coming back to his run-in with Tendulkar, Olonga, now living in Australia for the last eight years, reveals he wasn’t even supposed to play in that tournament.

“That was a good duel. I mean, I wasn’t even supposed to play in that match. I was in the squad but I think if you watch the footage, I didn’t even have my name on the back of my shirt because I wasn’t supposed to go on that trip but because I took five wickets in the Test match in Harare...

“They thought ‘oh, maybe we’ll include him in the squad for the one-dayers’. So that’s how I got to Sharjah and then we were playing in the last match which didn’t matter because Zimbabwe and India qualified for the finals and then in the match before the final I got (Sourav) Ganguly, (Rahul) Dravid and Tendulkar in three or four hours. Got Sachin out twice, once off a no-ball and then the next ball.”

Getting Dravid and Ganguly was enough, but dismissing Tendulkar was an even bigger deal then. Olonga was understandably ecstatic but perhaps he went a touch too far which probably didn’t go down well with Tendulkar.

“In the final he went crazy,” he recalls. “I went for plenty of runs and he smashed it. He was amazing that night.”

Tendulkar remained unbeaten on 124 off 92 balls (12x4, 6x6) as Olonga went for 50 in six overs.

“He was a very good player, Sachin. He has got my respect. People mustn’t make any mistake of misunderstanding,” he emphasises.

The other incident had far reaching ramifications. The stand he took not only ended his career prematurely at the age of 27 but also forced him out of his country.

Olonga, along with team-mate Andy Flower, wore black armbands against the “death of democracy” in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe’s rule during the 2003 World Cup in South Africa. He knew very well it wouldn’t end well for him but, the 48-year-old says, it was a small price to pay for a bigger cause.

“No regrets, no,” he says emphatically about his decision. “I mean, look, maybe I would have taken another 50 wickets in Test cricket, I would have taken 100 wickets maybe. That’s not even in the conversation of great players. Great players started with 300 wickets, 400 wickets... So, I was never going to be that. I played in a relatively weak team. Relatively. (But) I was never going to play in a team that made other teams follow on often, which means as a bowler you get more opportunities to take wickets.”

So that didn’t happen often in my career. Oftentimes we’d bowl once. The team would get 500 and bowl us out twice, win by an innings. I’m not saying I’ve checked this statistically, but that’s generally what happens. What I’m saying is that as a bowler, the stage was never set for any Zimbabwean to go and take 500 wickets.”