Kieron Pollard: Hire and a household man

First six: “Just took a chance, didn’t hit it cleanly, but it took off really well.” Second six: “In the straight slot, that’s my game.” Third six: “Outside the off-stump, over the eye-line. I support myself in 100 balls every time.” Fourth six: “Slog sweep, not my favorite shot, but in the middle.” Sixth Sixth: “Just pure power. No time, no legs, nothing. Just look at the ball and use my strength.” Sixth Sixth: “Free swing, can’t be lbw (the bowler is bowling around the stumps). So I swing, the ball was on legside and the wind helped it.”

It’s not the strokes or the small print that appeal to Trinidad and Tobago coach David Furlong to Pollard. But, “look into his eyes.”

“You see, you understand his will, his drive and everything you want to know about him,” Furlong tells The Indian Express. It tells a narrative, because it did a few years in the past with Furlong on the Queen’s Park Oval Cricket Club.

A slender, tall teenager stood on the door of Trinidad’s most prestigious cricket membership. Someone – a neighborhood scout or acquaintance, Furlong scratches his reminiscence – introducing him because the “gifted boy of suburbia”. He requested her age. A stern voice replied: “14”. Furlong informed him: “Dude, come back when you’re 15.”

Back within the day, the membership was not a lot into junior cricket, and the ‘come again subsequent yr’ line was a euphemism for disapproval. Many teenagers do not return usually—within the Caribbean, he says, “kids move fast”—however Furlong knew Pollard would return subsequent yr. “Look him in his eyes. The wish I saw, I knew he would return.”

He returned every week after turning 15. Tall and robust just like the Caribbean tearway archetype. Scout conveys: “He knocks on the head.” But within the nets he picked up the bat first, not the ball. “Strong, powerful, good hand-eye co-ordination, just needs a bit of polishing.” The coach requested him the place he often bats. He replied: “No 10”.
“At that moment I felt his schoolmaster isolate,” Furlong remembers.

That schoolmaster was Aslam Mandol, an agriculture instructor who doubled as a cricket coach on the Success Laventil Composite School. He had his causes although. “If the school had allocated more budget to buy cricket balls, we would have opened with Kieron every time because he was hitting every ball in the swamp or bushes,” he laughs. He has additionally misplaced the depend of the variety of glasses he broke. But within the inter-school matches, he was pushed into the order with out hesitation.

His early coaches couldn’t be blamed for wanting a bowler – Atlas-like shoulders, Hercules-like forearms and Prometheus-like fireplace in his eyes have been extraordinarily fast-bowler-like. At its peak, with a brief run-up, adopted by extra strides, Pollard hit 130kmph. Maybe a Trinidadian sobers? Although the ‘T20 Sobers’ can legitimately declare the title – 11,232 runs, 300 wickets, 313 catches. And additionally six sixes in an over.

Pollard additionally drew individuals to the stadium for age-group video games. Crowds gathered to see him – in the future somebody even introduced a metal band. “They came in large numbers to see him. He has hit some of the longest sixes ever,” says Furlong. “It’s an instinct, second nature to him.”

Often his mom Hazel used to come back to see him. He virtually at all times had a query for coaches: “Is his son capable enough to build a future in the sport?” She was single-handedly elevating Pollard and his two youthful sisters and couldn’t afford to reside lengthy earlier than her son may earn and assist the household. “She was suspicious but at the same time, wanted her son to do what she really liked. So, she would ask us if her son was good enough. We used to tell her he was very, very good,” Furlong it’s stated.

The fireplace in his eyes was his household, his vault to succeed the desperation to place meals on his household’s desk. Before congratulating him as a T20 mercenary, condemning him as a benevolent freelancer, one must know who Pollard is and the place he’s from.

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Tacarigua, about 20 km from Port of Spain, was one of the infamous suburbs in Trinidad on the flip of the century. Drugs, ganja, gang incitement and homicide have been frequent. Throw poverty into slurry, childhood was like strolling on a coal carpet.

It was troublesome, Pollard informed the Sydney Morning Herald in 2010: “It was so hard, getting up wasn’t ideal and your mother says ‘we only have X amount of money’. Growing up was very hard, and it took us to play cricket. A lot of sacrifices had to be made because cricket is an expensive sport, getting all the equipment and sponsors. It was a place where a lot of criminal activity happens, and things like that happen.”

Pollard did not have any cricket gear of his personal – he had to make use of the conventional equipment at college. One day, his mom organized for him second hand gear, which he enthusiastically took to high school. But his pure capacity was such that Mandol knew that he would overcome all these struggles. “Even at that time, he was very motivated, and we knew he didn’t like doing drugs. Give him a bat or a ball, he would play cricket all day long,” he says.

However, the mom was at all times anxious and needed her son to do nicely in schooling in order that he may do away with poverty. “Then this was the way. Study well, get a good job. The future in sports is uncertain,” he says.

It was a troublesome time even for a cricketer within the Caribbean. West Indies’ slide as a cricketing superpower was in full swing. Its constructing was rocked by teammates preventing, Russian roulette below captaincy, and administrative chaos and apathy.

The wealth of T20 was additionally far-off. All of this might have formed Pollard’s preferences and selections, most strongly his prioritizing membership over nation. He was not the primary freelancer of cricket however was most likely the youngest. He was barely 25, getting into the head of his profession, whereas most freelancers on the time have been heavyweights above the hill. The flashpoint got here in 2010, when he was denied a central contract by the West Indies Cricket Board to play T20 cricket for Somerset.
was counterattacking. Michael Holding stated: “Kieron Pollard is not, in my opinion, a cricketer.” Pollard, in his personal phrases, “felt worse than the rebellious cricketers (who toured South Africa).”

Such condemnation was not meant to discourage or deter him – he was or nonetheless is on the payroll of 18 franchises. He, like all mankind, is monetizing his present to earn a dwelling. The present of hitting sixes, the foreign money of gold in T20 cricket. He has hit 758 sixes with virtually equal frequency (as soon as in 9.7 balls off Gayle’s 9.4 balls), behind solely Chris Gayle (1,042).

He as soon as informed Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde within the ebook Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution: “You will never understand the situation until you are in the position.” Pollard was not a daily within the West Indies crew in any format, his future in Caribbean cricket was unsure, T20 leagues have been happening all over the world, and past that, he needed to preserve his household. No one bothered to name or console him after he was dropped from the West Indies crew for the primary time.
“Yeah, I wasn’t performing. But afterward nobody referred to as and did not say something. If I had given myself to 25 years and hadn’t made it massive, I might have gone again to high school and grow to be a regulation enforcer. would go,” he as soon as stated.

At that point he was married and had grow to be a father too. Responsibilities have been blooming. “My mother is rising up, so I wish to give her the absolute best retirement life she may have. I began my family too, so it is about working exhausting for me to assist my household in order that they do not need to undergo what I went by way of after I was rising up.” Morning Herald.

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It’s like a carnival when Pollard finds time to play for Trinidad. When he’s there the entire crew turns into a star. “He takes them to his room. They’ll be playing cards or video games. All the fun, when he’s around. Everyone wants to be with him, just like he wants to be with them,” Furlong says .

Although it started as a Koch-Ward bond, then became a father-son relationship, Pollard and Furlong are actually like brothers. “We go for drives, chat, have drinks often, have fun anniversaries collectively. He is somebody who values ​​friendship and has associates in all places.”

There are many individuals who name him their greatest good friend. Dwayne Bravo and he come a good distance, with the latter recommending him to Mumbai Indians, mentioning him within the music ‘Champion’ and calling him his son’s ‘father-in-law’. He is a brother in arms to the Pandya brothers. For Nicholas Pooran, he is sort of a father who was by his hospital mattress when he suffered a life-threatening automobile accident. Since his reinstatement because the captain of the West Indies, he has unwaveringly supported the gifted however susceptible younger weapons like Shimron Hetmyer and Pooran.

“This is our alternative for these kids (Pooran and Hetmyer) to be there and embrace and shield them, then allow them to come out of it. As a crew, we’re able to work with these kids as a result of we all know what they will do.
Young individuals watch for Pollard to reach on the Queens Park membership. Charity video games, fundraising video games, donations to hurricane victims, Pollard is only a SMS away. “He will carry them kits, jerseys and naturally lots of love. For him, it is all one massive household,” Furlong says.

In that sense, Pollard is a paradox – the cricketer who treats each crew as one household can be the quirkiest, having pulled shirts from 18 completely different sides, from Bridgetown to Dhaka, Multan to St Lucia and Cape Town. He is just not a freelancer because the cricketing world envisioned – chilly and exhausting, plastic and pretentious.

Maybe, he’s greater than a misunderstood cricketer. To perceive his motivations, one wants to know his situation, upbringing and background. However, to understand his six-hitting prowess, it is all YouTube.