FORTY YEARS OF CRICKET AND TRAVEL
Andy Moles tells his story to NCLS
Andy Moles has spent forty years in professional cricket and is one of the very few batters to average over 40 (he made more than 15,000 First-Class runs at 40.70, with 29 centuries) not to have played Test cricket.
He told his remarkable – and occasionally scary – story to the last meeting of the current programme of the Nottingham Cricket Lovers Society (NCLS) at Trent Bridge at the end of March.
For a relative late-comer – he didn’t play the game at all until he was 15 and signed his first professional contract at 25 – ‘Moler’ has had a varied and eventful career in the game.
“I wasn’t interested in cricket as a kid,” he admitted, “It was all about football.” Andy showed sufficient promise to think of joining a club academy but a broken leg set his training and development back and he was advised to look elsewhere.
“That’s when I picked a bat for the first time – and I fell in love with the game straight away.”
By this time his family were in the West Midlands and Andy started playing for his local team. He may have been a late starter but his abilities were recognised very quickly and within a matter of weeks he was in the Coventry under-16s.
Andy went into an apprenticeship which, he freely admits, he hated. “The best thing about that job was winding up the foreman,” he joked. But it did lead to him playing for the Dunlop works team and the chance to compare his skills in a higher grade of cricket.
“We played a few games against Warwickshire Seconds,” he recalled, “And I got a few fifties against them. “I thought ‘I’m as good as you blokes’. He got the chance to show that in a few games where he deputised for injured players in that Second Eleven.
“I decided to have one last push at getting a professional contract,” he recalled, “and wrote off to all the counties (except Yorkshire who in those days did not pick players from outside the county) …and got not a single reply!”
Not even his own home county responded but fortune offered Andy a chance to remind them of his abilities.
Another injury to a selected player led to him getting a late call-up to play for a Dennis Amiss XI in a benefit game versus a Richard Hadlee XI. “I got 75”, he said, “and when I went back into the dressing room, Norman Gifford, then Warwickshire coach, asked if I had a pro contract.
“When I pointed out that they hadn’t even offered me a trial, “He told me not to worry about that and that I would be offered a professional place at Edgbaston!”
His understandable delight was tempered somewhat when he found out that the initial contract was for just six weeks.
Fortunately – or perhaps more likely through talent and determination – Andy Moles proved his worth and for the next eleven years he was a stalwart of Warwickshire cricket.
He had memories of great cup successes, the 1994 ‘treble’ season and personal highlights to share with the NCLS audience but some of his best stories were about the stars that he shared a dressing room with.
Having worked as a coach in South Africa, he was deputed to collect the Bears’ latest overseas recruit when he arrived in the UK – one Allan Donald.
“Alan was remarkable,” Andy Moles remembered, “a raw Afrikaans-speaking young man but he became one of the great quick bowlers.
“He worked hard at his game and soon developed what we called ‘a bit of mongrel’, ready to challenge any and every batter.”
Another superstar to come to Warwickshire was Brian Lara. “The message from the scouts in the West Indies was clear,” said Andy Moles, “We had to get Lara, he was going to be something special.”
Just how special was brought home to Andy as he made his way back into fitness and the first time after injury. “I was told to go into the Seconds and get some runs,” he said.
“I did just that – making 134 – and sent the message ‘tell them I’ve got the runs, I’m ready.
“The reply came swiftly back – ‘no-one’s talking about you ‘Moler’, Lara’s just got 501!’ ”
Andy Moles had spent time in South Africa, coaching at a local level and playing First-Class and List-A cricket for Griqualand West and it was another ex-batter and coach with South African experience, Bob Woolmer, who suggested to ‘Moler’ that he get into coaching as his playing days were coming to an end.
“So it was thanks to Bob that I got my coaching badges,” he said. “By the end of 1996, I was thinking serious about what came next and coaching was the way to go.
“I was offered a two-year deal with Free State in South Africa but if I was to give up my job at Warwickshire, I want a bit more security and held out for a five-year deal.”
From there he went on to coach in Hong Kong, Kenya, Scotland and New Zealand. Andy’s time in New Zealand weas cut short when senior players made it plain that they wanted a coach that had played Test cricket, this despite the fact that he had just led the Black Caps to the Champions Trophy final.
“That was hard to take,” he recalled “and I thought I’d earned a bit more respect that they showed.”
Respect was a recurring theme in Andy’s talk – his opening remarks were, “always respect the game, always respect the opposition” – and he returned to that mantra a number of times.
The matter of him not having Test experience came up more than once in his coaching career, which made the discovery, many years after he had finished playing, of just how close he had come to an England call-up all the more frustrating.
“Years later, Mickey Stewart asked me if I knew how unlucky I had been. I had no idea what he was talking about…
“…apparently, I was due to be selected to open for England in the next Test – the regular openers were struggling and I was next in line.
“In the match before the selection committee was due to meet, I was playing for Warwickshire, opening with Nick Knight. He played a drive and we had one those ‘yes-no-yes’ calls and as I set off for the eventual run, my Achilles snapped.
“That was that, I was injured and unfit for selection and never picked again. And do you know who got my place in the Test side? ****** Nick Knight!”
Despite all these dramas on and off the field, the biggest challenges were still ahead of Andy.
Having had his ‘love of the game’ restored by coaching young black and coloured South Africans at the University of the Western Cape, Andy Moles was unprepared for the next call from his agent…
The Afghanistan Cricket Board wanted someone to go for a week as batting coach. He took advice from his brother, an expert in counter-terrorism, but determined to go. That first week started with him being greeted at Kabul airport as a VIP.
“There was no waiting at customs,” he said, “I was shepherded through and into an armoured car, complete with armed guards.
“I had man with an AK47 with me everywhere”.
All that changed as he became a more familiar presence in Afghanistan; the risks of kidnap or bombings were still there but Andy was now on regular visits and trying to blend in.
“It was strange to get advice on where to sit in restaurants or how to scope out the safest seats and the quickest escape route.
“But the necessity was underlined when we had a bomber appear at one game. The bravery of a security guard who wrapped themselves around the bomber meant two or three people were killed when it could have been dozens.”
Andy Moles led Afghanistan to the 2015 World Cup where they had their first win at that level, beating Scotland. In October 2019, he was made chairman of selectors and director of cricket meaning, as he put it “I had actually had every job in Afghan cricket, having started as batting coach”.
The Taliban had apparently made it known that they approved of the work that Andy Moles was going and that whilst he was working in Afghan cricket, he would not be the target for assignation or kidnap.
Ironic, then, that having survived Afghanistan, he contracted the infection that changed his life in the (relatively) more peaceful surroundings of Abu Dhabi.
“I went for a walk in the heat, not thinking about the hazards and returned to find a huge bleeding blister on my left foot.
He had immediate treatment and returned home to Cape Town – Andy lives in South Africa – having had skin graft on the foot.
But the foot never healed properly and the risks became more serious. “I was told that I’d have to lose the toe,” he told the NCLS, “but in fact they removed a whole slice of my left foot.”
Even then, the infection could not be stopped and the doctors finally decided that, to save his life, amputation was necessary.
Andy agreed to have it done, and done quickly, but there was more drama to come. On the morning of the operation, the hospital was in chaos – that was the day that South Africa went into lockdown for Covid 19.
Coming out of the operation, he had to come to terms with life as an amputee but, typically, was undaunted. “I could see bodies being wheeled about in the hospital as people were dying from Covid.
“I knew that there were patients and their families suffering far more than I was, so determined to get through it.”
His globe trotting was only on hold, however. Six months after the operation, Andy Moles was invited to Uzbekistan to help get a cricketing coaching course started and added another country to his growing list.
Out of work, he was applying for jobs when Andy Pick, the ex-Nottinghamshire quick bowler now working as a coach, rang him from The Bahamas to tell him to expect a call.
“Greg Taylor, the president of the cricket board, rang me and said ‘we’re looking for a coach and Picky says you’re the man’.
“I asked him, ‘you do know I’ve only got one leg?’ To which he replied, ‘I don’t want you to play, I want you to coach. I want what’s in your head, not what’s in your leg’.
“That was good enough for me.”
The initial contract was for three months to help The Bahamas prepare for the American qualifiers for the T20 World Cup and he has been back there several time since.
Andy Moles’s latest venture is the publication of his autobiography – Around the World in Forty Years. It is a remarkable story of a remarkable man and his passion for the game of cricket.
This was the last meeting of the Nottingham Cricket Lovers Society for their 2025-26 season. During the summer, the NCLS Committee will be working on a programme of speakers for 2026-27. Details of that programme and any NCLS news will be posted on their website, www.nottinghamcricketlovers.co.uk.
March 2026