I think we got Test status too late: Brandes

You had 10 overs to bowl every game, and you used to just set out to do a good job. That day (against England in the 1992 World Cup) was no different. I happened to get four wickets, but the main thing was Zimbabwe winning. Looking back now, there were some really good players I got out — (Graham) Gooch, (Allan) Lamb, Robin Smith, Graeme Hick — and that was my day. But it didn’t always work out like that. You were just trying to do a good job. I was at university doing agricultural management and got picked out of the blue to go on a tour. I never finished the degree. In 1985 we went to England for experience. In 1986 we went back for the ICC World Cup Qualifiers. In 1987 we went over to India for the World Cup. I was going to go back to uni some time after that, but never did. Cricket got in the way.

It was a massive regret to miss the first Test victory, against Pakistan in Harare, but I had an Achilles injury and just couldn’t get it repaired. This is where we were way behind other teams. It got so bad that I used to limp until 10 o’clock in the morning after I got out of bed. I had a cortisone injection, which didn’t work. It was very, very frustrating.

We only came away with one win from that 1992 World Cup, but things could have been very different for us. We got 312 against Sri Lanka, which was a huge score then, but they knocked them off. We played New Zealand in Napier and they were keen to get the points for a home semi-final. They put so much pressure on the umpires that we ended up playing a 20-over game. We were sliding all over the place. It was ridiculous. Then we played India in another shortened game — 32 overs, I think — and were 100-odd for 1 chasing 204, needing around six an over, when the rain came down and the tournament rules said we needed to be on about 150-odd. Ridiculous.

After retirement, I wanted to stay involved in cricket. Ideally I’d have liked to have got involved with the Test side. But the dramas were starting to happen in the country. We hardly played any games. We basically just practised all year.

I went to Australia on a business visa, so I had to look for a business. I bought a photo shop about an hour away from home. Then, three months after I arrived, the coaching job with Sunshine Coast came up, and I applied for that, mainly as a quick way to meet people. I ended up doing that for six years. We won it in my third or fourth year, the only team from Sunshine Coast to win a Brisbane competition in any sport. So I was quite proud of that.

I held the national javelin record for a short while after school. (The World Cup in) 1987 was just wow! This is what big-time cricket’s all about. It was in India, which was enormous in itself. Every single day was a unique experience.

There were quite a few of us that batted a bit, bowled a bit. After the 1985 tour, I identified the opening bowling position as something to target, where we had the least amount of people. So I concentrated on that and tried to build myself into an opening bowler. I made my first-class debut against Minor Counties at Cleethorpes.

We had more confidence when we played England, because we’d beaten them a couple of times. Maybe they were wary of us. You only realise these things later on. Maybe if we’d been playing more international cricket, we’d have picked up on that sooner.

A lot of cricketers fought in the guerrilla war, because when you left school you had to do two years’ national service. Compulsory. The year I was going to go to the army was when we had independence. Ceasefire.

My mother was South African and my father was from Germany. We moved to Rhodesia from South Africa in 1964, when I was one year old. There were lots of adverts with opportunities for farmers. They were looking to branch out.

The last few years of my career were frustrating. I was the last amateur. I had my business. I was struggling to get to practice after they moved it to 10 in the morning rather than four in the afternoon. Cricket didn’t pay my bills. All I got was a match fee. There was no salary. You had to be careful.

You do have your favourite teams, and I suppose England became a favourite. But beating them didn’t mean any more than beating anyone else.

I can remember having a net practice with Davey Houghton in Harare. He was batting, I was bowling. We used to practise with really old balls, because getting cricket gear was a problem. He said to me, “What are you doing? Because the ball’s not swinging out, it’s swinging in.” John Traicos was trying to get me to change my action. I can remember changing grips and release to try and stop it happening. Only later did we realise that it was reverse swing.

I miss the African wildlife. The Australian wildlife is a bit boring, for want of a better word. The smaller it is over here, the more dangerous it is. They’ve some nasty little critters here.

It was quite a unique situation in that I was able to run my own business and get to play international sport. Lots of people do either/or. But there’s only 24 hours in a day and something does have to suffer. So when I look back, I don’t think I did anything to my utmost best ability, because of circumstances. I do have a big “what if?” and that’s a little bit frustrating, particularly as you get a bit older and you read some nice things that people say in their books - people like Wasim Akram. You just wonder if you could have done it in an environment like they do today, what could have been. Deep down I’m content rather than very happy.

The night before the Test against England at Bulawayo, we were finishing off practice and I said to Andy Flower: just give us a hundred catches. I used to do some at 20 metres, some at 30 metres, up till 80 metres out. I was taking the last one when I stood back and stepped on a picket fence and sprained my ankle. So I missed that game - that famous game.

We were an immensely proud team. As a nation, we’d been through so much: the guerrilla war; sanctions, when the rest of the world ostracised us. We always had to make a plan together and get through, so we obviously took that onto our sports fields. I didn’t have anything in place in Australia. It was just a case of start again and away you go. But Ian Healy was very good to me when we first arrived. It’s one of those things: you play sport and you make friends. He had a holiday cottage that he let us stay in. I like to feel liked and accepted, to make friends. It’s very important to me. Our culture in Zimbabwe was to be a real club member, to help the youngsters and whatnot, to socialise together. So when I went to England (to play club cricket), I saw that as a big part of what I did.

Toward the end of my career, it used to interest me why some days you had more rhythm than others, from a physiological or mental point of view. You’d look back at what you ate, how much liquid you’d drunk, whether you slept well. I don’t know if I ever had a theory, but I definitely became more and more aware of it. It used to annoy me when part-timers were brought on. Along the way I’ve been able to achieve a couple of landmarks that not many people have: four World Cups, a hat-trick in an ODI. I missed out on a hundred and 10 wickets in the same match, which was a little bit sad because that’s pretty rare. — ESPNcricinfo Magazine.