It’s not uncommon for singers on cruise ships to sit and mingle with the audience once the show is over. For Henry Olonga, one of the anecdotes he could share would be that he once dismissed Sachin Tendulkar, the premier batter of his generation, in an ODI. Olonga’s 4/46 – including the wicket of Tendulkar, caught by Grant Flower for just 11 – inspired a famous 13-run victory over India in Sharjah in November 1998.
Olonga, now 48, last played for Zimbabwe in March 2003, when he wasn’t yet 27. He hasn’t even been back to his homeland since. These days, when not doing the odd commentary stint in Australia, Olonga sings for his supper, sometimes on big cruise liners. “It’s not necessarily the peak of music performance being on a cruise ship,” he told London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper ahead of Zimbabwe’s Test match against England.
“In fact, some people think that singers go to die on cruise ships. But I don’t mind that. I don’t have an ego about my music. I sing in little retirement villages, I’ve sung to school kids, I’ve sung in little bars in front of three people. I just love singing. I love performing.”
Once, Olonga was the first black African to play for Zimbabwe, as an 18 year old just out of school. In a career that spanned 30 Tests and 50 ODIs, he would take 126 international wickets. He was too inconsistent to be considered an elite performer, but on days when the rhythm was right – as in Sharjah all those years ago – he could be a real handful.
Then came the 2003 World Cup. Once the poster boy of Robert Mugabe’s brutal and repressive regime, Olonga joined Andy Flower in a black-armband protest against the ‘death of democracy’ in their native land. Neither man played for Zimbabwe again. Flower, nearly 35, was anyway nearly finished, and would go on to forge a hugely successful career as coach. Olonga, then in his prime, just vanished.
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“I’m not just wagging a finger at people and that’s what the black armband protest was about - we can be better as a country we can be better as politicians, we can be better as citizens,” he said of the protest that cost him his career. “I got slaughtered for it.”
His father still lives in Zimbabwe. Olonga hasn’t seen him since Zimbabwe played the first six matches of the 2003 World Cup on home turf in Harare and Bulawayo. At the time, the world held up Flower and Olonga as exemplars of courage in the face of a cruel dictatorship. More than two decades later, Olonga is still counting the cost.
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