Andy Lloyd taps an area near his right temple where a Malcolm Marshall bouncer slammed into his head 40 years ago. “It hit me here, right here. It fractured the socket of my eye.”
There is no scar. He does not wear glasses, aside from reading, and looking at him now fit and full of energy at 67 you would have no idea that one bouncer on his England debut inflicted such a serious head injury, permanently reducing the vision in his right eye by 35 percent.
“Most of the time it is fine, but if I do this,” he says, turning his head slightly, “I can’t see the right side of your face.”
The injury ruined his sense of depth perception. We are sat just a few feet apart, Lloyd relaxing in the sitting room of Hunscote stud farm where he has been manager since 2011 breeding horses for some of the sport’s top trainers and jockeys.
A little earlier, Lloyd posed with some difficulty with a young foal, sired by the legendary Frankel, which refused to stand still and took a shine to the photographer’s jacket and camera bag, giving them a nibble as he was trying to frame the shot.
Now relaxing in the farmhouse sitting room, Lloyd recalls his “one day of Test cricket” in 1984 against the mighty West Indies with the sound of horses in the stables and a dog barking in the yard a reminder of how his life has changed away from cricket.
These days it is usual to tug the forelock and fret over the future of West Indies cricket or hear from former legends about tales of the Fire in Babylon glory days. But what about the guys at the other end? Those who actually had to go out and face Marshall, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and other fearsome fast bowlers unfettered by modern day limitations on bouncers all the while protected by flimsy pads, gloves and primitive helmets without visors – that’s if they had a helmet at all.
Lloyd is an extreme example of what could go wrong. Picked for his debut at the age of 27, that one bouncer ended his Test career after just 30 minutes, 17 balls, 10 runs and one four. He spent a week in hospital after he retired hurt and within a few weeks was told the devastating news his eyesight would never recover enough for him to play Test cricket again. He was a one cap wonder left with a permanent disability, although not unique for that summer Paul Terry had his arm badly broken on debut by Winston Davis and never played for England again either.
Something Lloyd had worked towards his entire life ended so abruptly and cruelly at a time when there was no awareness around mental health, post traumatic stress and it was a case of just getting on with things. “I’m a bit of a fatalist, actually a lot of a fatalist,” he says with a shrug. “I ended up being known for that. It is what I left in Test cricket. It used to come on television quite a lot on ESPN Gold. I would get a text from mates saying ‘switch on the tv you’re about to get hit,’. It was a bit of a joke. And you know, every time that ball hits me, It never misses.”
‘Gower was a pretty average captain’
Lloyd debuted on his home ground, Edgbaston, where this week West Indies and England will play the third and final Test of the current series. The 40th anniversary of the match passed last month – June 14 – while Lloyd was working at the stud.
Like many in that era, Lloyd had played for years in county cricket, building towards a Test call up. Consistent run scoring for Warwickshire, he had made more than 1,400 first-class runs in the four previous summers, earned his chance in 1984 playing under David Gower and opening with Graeme Fowler. He had played the three one-day internationals leading into the Test series, averaging a creditable 33, and made 72 the week before against a strong Essex attack on a club pitch in Ilford. “I was feeling good, I was ready,” he says. He was familiar with surroundings at Edgbaston and felt relaxed. “I turned up on the Wednesday, we had a net, well, it wasn’t really a net, just a bit of fielding. Then we went to the Plough and Harrow for a team dinner and I went back to my house in Kings Heath. It was like playing a home game.”
There had been chat over dinner about sticking West Indies into bat if England won the toss but classically for the time, England were never really sure what to do against West Indies. “We were going to win the toss, put them in, and play Neil Foster and Bob Willis and bowl them out cheaply which we all know at Edgbaston is the wrong thing to do. If you ever stick anyone in at Edgbaston you’re f—— nuts. Anyway, we got together the following morning, Fozzie is not playing and we pick Nick Cook, play two spinners and bat first. You can’t name a Test match when a spinner has won the game at Edgbaston. Gower was a pretty average captain in my view.”
Gower won the toss, England batted but were soon in trouble, Fowler and Derek Randall out for ducks and Gower at the crease with Lloyd with only five on the board. Wisden states that Lloyd showed a “sounder technique and greater resolution” than some of his team-mates. He was feeling comfortable, in form and while it was very tricky against Marshall and Garner, Lloyd felt at home. He had already ridden a couple of short balls from Marshall and says “I was a good player of short pitched bowling, it never bothered me.”
Clive Lloyd changed the field. He brought Larry Gomes into a catching position close in behind square on the leg side so it was not a surprise what happened next. Marshall, bowling from the City End, dug the ball in just short of a length. Lloyd looked to duck, turned away and the ball did not climb as much as he thought. He made, in a millisecond, a misjudgement that changed his life. “I thought the ball was going to go over my left shoulder. I went to corkscrew out the way and it just slightly straightened on me which is why it caught me.”
The ball hit the visorless helmet and landed in the covers. Lloyd went down immediately, the sound of leather crunching into a plastic helmet sickeningly ringing around Edgbaston. “Ooh, dear me. Ooh, I didn’t like the look of that at all. That did look very nasty,” said Richie Benaud on the BBC. Desmond Haynes at short leg was the first to reach Lloyd, who lay on his side as one of the West Indians took off his helmet. He quickly jumped up to applause from the crowd and a pat on the back from Garner. By now Bernhard Thomas, the England physio, had reached the middle.
These days players have a mandatory concussion check when they are hit on the helmet, regardless of the severity of the blow. They are asked questions such as what is the day of the week? Who is the Prime Minister? That kind of thing. There was nothing like that in 1984, but Lloyd did his own check and knew something was badly wrong.
“I wasn’t unconscious, there was no pain and I thought ‘I’m okay here’. On the boundary boards was advertising an old tv company called Rediffusion and I looked at their board on the boundary and I couldn’t read it. It was blurred. Then I knew something was wrong and went off.”
Lloyd walked off with a purposeful stride, 12th man Foster carrying his bat for him. “I think it is the most sensible thing to go off,” said Tom Graveney, commentating alongside Benaud, who thought staying on risked “delayed shock” which would be worse “out in the middle than the dressing room.”
In fact, within minutes Lloyd was sitting in the back of a red Volvo being driven to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a couple of miles from Edgbaston when the real damage to his vision began to unfold.
“Structurally there was nothing that major,” Lloyd says. “It just fractured the socket of my eye but there were no badly broken bones. But the back of your eye is made up of a series of cones and rods. The impact of the blow basically killed a big section of those cones and rods in my right eye.” It was clear within a couple of hours of the blow his Test match was over. “Oh yes, the damage was obvious. I was never going back to Edgbaston.”
He was told to keep his head still as possible to help the regrowth of the photoreceptors – those cones and rods – in his eye. But Lloyd’s worst fears were confirmed a few weeks later.
“After a month I was told they would not all regenerate and that I was never going to be strong enough for my eyesight to recover. I knew then that I could never get back in the England team again because you have to be 100 percent to play Test cricket,” he says.
‘I ended up being known for that injury’
Lloyd did recover enough to play cricket again, resuming his career in 1985. He scored nearly 1000 runs that season for Warwickshire in 1985 and threw himself into his county, eventually captaining the club and laying the foundation for the side that dominated in the mid 1990s. He phlegmatically took his bad luck in his stride.
“That day I could have had my middle pole knocked out next ball, made nought in the second innings and never been picked again. I ended up being known for that injury. It is what I left in Test cricket. I would have loved to have played 50 Tests but I was happy to play once against one of the best teams of all time and it was a shame the way it all ended up. At least I was able, even though I lost a lot of vision in my right eye, to play county cricket again. That showed the difference between Test and county cricket. The fact I was no more than 65 per cent able after I had been hit that I could play county cricket to a level.”
Lloyd turned down an insurance pay off to retire, and played until 1992. “It was never ever on my mind to play for England again. I knew I was flawed. But I was better known than people who played 100 Tests and I became a Trivial Pursuit question [name the only batsman never dismissed?].”
Given our surroundings it feels apt to ask if he had any problems getting back on the horse – what was it like facing short bowling again? “I never had any mental negatives from the hit at all. One of my first games for Warwickshire in 1985 was at Edgbaston against Glamorgan. They had Greg Thomas who was a rapid bowler. He tried to bounce the s— out of me. What he didn’t know was the short balls were not the problem because on depth perception the more time you have to see the ball going down, the more you have to see it coming up so I never had a problem with the short ball. I scored 170 in that innings. But there was a guy who played for Lancs – David Makinson. He bowled left arm over. He kept bowling me yorkers and I was lbw and bowled by him a lot because he was pitching the ball up. Those were the balls I had problems with – yorkers and full tosses were more difficult than regular length balls because the depth perception problem.”
Fielding was tricky too, and Lloyd says he compensated for his disability by playing more shots, perhaps because of the reality that everything could come to an end within one ball.
The helmet he wore is now in the Edgbaston archives. There are no indicators of his previous life at Hunscote apart from a door knocker shaped as a bear – the Warwickshire emblem. He remains in touch with Allan Donald and many of his old Warwickshire team-mates and is good company, referring to his cricket friends warmly and enjoying life in the racing world where there are dangers too.
Head injuries are not uncommon for jockeys, brave sportsmen and women who put their lives on the line for their job and he knows some who have died. Lloyd’s fatalism is useful.
“I get introduced at dinners now by a mate of mine in racing who says ‘here is Andy Lloyd. He played cricket for 20 years, did corporate parties for 20 years and now manages a stud. He has basically never done a day’s work in his life.’ It is a bit like that. Cricket is a great way of living life. The lads playing for England now, these are the best years of their lives.” And Lloyd he knows, it can change in one ball.
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