Graeme Cremer returns and wants to give back

WHEN former Zimbabwe cricket captain Graeme Cremer’s wife Merna was offered a job as an Emirates Boeing 777 pilot, the leg spinner opted to ground his own career so hers could take flight. The couple moved to Dubai, from where Cremer hoped he would be able to travel for national duty, but quickly realised that was not to be. “I was going to fly back and forth, but with the two kids and the ages they were then (three and six), I saw very quickly that it’s not going to work,” Cremer says.

“It was only once I got to Dubai that I had to make that decision, and it was fine because everything was new. It was almost like a fresh start. Obviously I missed cricket but it was what it was at that stage.” The break turned out to come at a good time, in fact, largely because cricket in Zimbabwe was at an all-time low.

The team had failed to qualify for the 2019 World Cup, the entire coaching staff had been sacked and the future was uncertain. On the other hand, Merna’s stocks were on the rise after she did her time at Air Zimbabwe and succeeded in landing a post at Emirates, a decade after she first applied there.