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| Clive Lloyd |
London: Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd has been accused by his wife of being “a womaniser”, saying she helped maintain his image as a “gentleman” because she “never had the courage to walk away”.
“They call him the gentleman of cricket and he makes out that he’s such a principled man but he has been a womaniser throughout our entire married life,” Waveney was quoted as saying in an English daily on Sunday.
Waveney says she always knew that “he was sleeping around.” “Clive seemed to have a woman for every continent,” Waveney said. “I feel ashamed now knowing that I helped maintain this charade. That I never had the courage to walk away, while I was still young enough to start over again,” said Waveney, who has filed for divorce settlement with the former West Indies captain.
She says that she has now broken her silence because she wants the world to know the truth. “I don’t really want to air our business in public, to expose myself to public ridicule. But I feel I have no choice. I will no longer suffer in silence. This is my attempt to put the record straight and regain my self-esteem,” says Waveney, who fell in love with Lloyd in 1968 and married in 1971.
She said people “see him as this gentle jovial giant but he is moody and emotionally distant”. “For much of the marriage I felt as if I had to walk on eggshells around him. I lived in fear of his dark moods. He would give me the silent treatment if I did or said anything he Didn't like,” she said.
Lloyd, one of cricket’s most respected figures, captained West Indies between 1974 and 1985. He was the first West Indian player to earn 100 international caps. He led the West Indies in three World Cups. They won the 1975 final and the 1979 final.
Waveney said that over the years he would come home and “I would find items of women’s clothing, make-up etc in his luggage or washbag.”
One of the few times Waveney fought with him over his “womanising” was in 1986, when she found “blonde hair” in his bathroom bin while he was staying in London.
Last year, Lloyd was spotted at Wimbledon sitting in the royal box with Bertha Joseph, the first Afro-Caribbean woman mayor of London borough of Brent, giving rise to fresh speculation about their troubled marriage.
This was the breaking point. “It was so open and blatant that I knew the end had come.”
Feeling bitterly humiliated, she filed for a divorce.