Hail Tim Albone, a fine writer and lover of Afghan underdogs
If the question is “beer or coffee” and the answer is “beer”, then there is a good chance you are going to have a fun interview. When it is a four-beer interview, as my chat with Tim Albone, former journalist become gym owner, turned out to be, then it is a hoot.
I interviewed Albone for a profile that is published in this week’s Financial Mail. He is the man behind the Ritual Gym that opened a few months ago in the Thrupps Centre in Illovo, a concept that promises to get you in and out of the door, trained, showered and changed, inside 30 minutes. A gym for those short on time with everything provided.
Walk in dressed in your work clothes, put on the kit provided, do a 22-minute highintensity session with a personal trainer in a small class, then shower and walk out with smoothie in hand.
Ritual Gym was founded in Singapore, the busiest of busy cities. And it is expanding to the US and South America. Albone has plans to expand his range, and we spend much of the fourbeer afternoon talking about how the business of gyms works. But Albone’s past is a story in its own right.
He was a freelance journalist in Afghanistan for a number of years, where he met the Afghan cricket team and followed them as they tried to qualify for the T20 World Cup in 2010.
the documentary that begat a book, is described by The Guardian as one of the “great stories in sport”, following them from Kabul to their first match at that 2010 tournament against SA.
“England were playing Pakistan in November 2005, and The Times called me up and told me Afghanistan had a cricket team and could I write a story about how they might tour Afghanistan one day. I met them, and it was a really interesting story, one that stays with you. The guys were really charismatic. It was a huge underdog story.
“They were bad, though. They had nothing. They had four nets and no grass, and no money. They were terrible.”
Albone admits he is a sucker for the underdog. He supported Cameroon in the 1990 World Cup, “cried” during Runnings and celebrated when Kenya got into the semifinals of the 2003 Cricket World Cup.
Afghanistan trying to qualify for the World Cup? It was made for him.
“A few years later, I got a bit fed up with writing and wanted to do a documentary. I thought back to it. It stuck with me. We just decided we had to do it. They said they were going to qualify for the World Cup. The first match was in Jersey in 2008. They were in division five, as I remember. We had enough money for the qualifying tournament and that was it. We thought we would do a 20-minute piece and that would be it. It would be a little funny and interesting.
“And they just kept winning. They became really good. When we started following them they were the lowest-ranked team in the world. Now they’ve got Test status. It’s an incredible story.”
The players welcomed Albone with open arms. He says he never received as many hugs as he did during his time with them. The Afghans were trusting and knew they had a story worth telling. Albone, with Leslie Knott and Lucy Martens, were the lucky ones who went along for the ride.
In that first match in Jersey, Afghanistan were chasing 80 for victory, but collapsed to 42/7 before managing to salvage the win. In his book, Albone writes of their 24-hour trip to Jersey via Dubai, where the team are mobbed by an excitable group of girls who treat them like superstars.
There is a level of intimacy and detail in the telling of the story that makes a nonsense of Albone’s assertion, after the third beer, that he isn’t much of a writer. I bought
after we met. It’s a rollicking tale, funny and poignant, and most assuredly one of the best sports stories ever told.
And that’s not just the four beers talking.