Herschelle Gibbs

Stories about sexual orgies, marijuana sessions and the dominance of a group of senior players in South Africa cricket squad have been exposed in out-of-favour opener Herschelle Gibbs’s autobiography — To The Point — which will be releasing Monday. South African weekly Sunday Times carried excerpts from Gibbs’s book, a day before its release.

The book graphically details the sexual exploits of the controversial player who has been in trouble for his late night binges and drunken driving charges, as well as leading players in smoking pot in the West Indies.

The book includes descriptions of sexual encounters in which Gibbs and other players took part, including one with a young girl attending a matric dance and a hotel-room orgy involving three girls.

Then, during one of their warm-up games on the 1997-98 Australia tour, Gibbs writes that he and some of the guys noticed a “pretty girl” and asked her to join them that evening. They started drinking and she mentioned she was a stripper.

Gibbs, who just last week confessed that he would have to work very hard to return to the national squad, could also incur the ire of fellow players after writing in his book that the Proteas are dominated by a clique of older players.

“The team has been criticised for being run by a group of senior players — Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, Mark Boucher, and more recently, AB de Villiers,” Gibbs wrote.

“This inner circle splits the team in two and makes any chance of developing true team spirit among the Proteas impossible,” said Gibbs, adding that former national coach Mickey Arthur had often bowed to them after trying to take them on.

Gibbs also disclosed how the squad never regained its spirit after former captain Hansie Cronje, now deceased, got a life ban following his admission to match-fixing that was first uncovered by Indian authorities.

“Things were never the same. I sympathised with Shaun Pollock (who took over from Cronje). He had a tough time filling Hansie’s shoes and gluing the team together. But the Proteas never had that same togetherness under Polly (Pollock). He never socialised with boys too much.” Gibbs was one of the co-accused with Cronje and Henry Williams, in allegations of match-fixing, in Nagpur. Though he was suspended for six months after that, but still respects the late South African skipper.

Gibbs summed up his own indiscretions, which included a confession to pulling out some of his wife Tenielle Povey’s hair while he was driving during a fight. “We were physically fighting while I was driving... I managed to pull some of her hair out.

“As you now know, I’ve managed to land myself in trouble with alarming regularity right from the start of my cricket career.

“A stint in rehab for alcohol abuse and a messy divorce would be more than enough controversy for most professional athletes, but, with me, that wasn’t the half of it,” Gibbs wrote.