Herschelle Gibbs has exposed the dark side of South African cricket, including sexual orgies, marijuana smoking and how the Proteas are controlled by a "clique", in an autobiography that is set to rock the cricket world.
The book, To The Point, 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.
Gibbs writes: "Two beds, two cricketers and three women. One of them wasn't all that keen, though; she just lay on the bed. Which was fine - there was enough for everyone. The other two girls, however, more than made a go of it.
"I got the ball rolling, but then I noticed that my mate was feeling a little left out. Now he's lying on the other bed, so, big-hearted chap that I am, I say, 'Well, you can't leave my mate all alone there.' And fortunately one of them was only too happy to transfer ship."
There were always women: "They came hunting in packs, and if they liked what they saw, you were in for the ride of your life."
During the same tour, he writes about bumping into a girl on her way to a matric dance: "I spotted one particularly gorgeous girl, obviously dressed to the nines, walking around the hotel lobby. After a few drinks and a few words, she came upstairs with me to my room and gave me a little dance of another kind. She then left and went back to the dance proper."
Then, during one of their warm-up games on the 1997-98 Australia tour, Gibbs 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.
"Things loosened up a lot more after that. Various items of clothing were removed in an eyebrow-raising kind of way, and one thing invariably led to another."
The book, to which the Sunday Times has been given full access ahead of its release Monday, also reveals how 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 - and this inner circle splits the team in two and makes any chance of developing true team spirit among the Proteas impossible," says Gibbs.
Former coach Mickey Arthur tried to take on the senior players, but often bowed to them.
"Simply put, without Graeme's backing, Mickey didn't have much influence over the guys. In the end, Graeme was simply too powerful."
He reveals how the team never regained its spirit after former captain Hansie Cronjé was dismissed for match fixing.
"Things were never the same ... I sympathised with Shaun Pollock - he had a tough time filling Hansie's shoes and gluing the team back together. But the Proteas never had that same togetherness under Polly. He never socialised with the boys too much.
"I think if we're honest with ourselves ... we've got to admit that the Proteas have underachieved in international cricket over the past decade."
The book also lays bare Gibbs's legendary propensity for getting himself into trouble.
"As you now know, I've managed to land myself in the kak 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."
His marriage to Tenielle Povey ended in 2008, but not before his drunken ways got really nasty.
"We were physically fighting while I was driving ... I managed to pull some of her hair out. As explosive as my batting can be, it hasn't quite matched the pyrotechnics of my life off the field."
Anecdotes from cricket tours include how:
* He regarded tours to Australia as shopping expeditions for "eager young Aussie lasses";
* Some of his teammates flew out waitresses from the infamous Port Elizabeth restaurant The Ranch to join them on tour; and
* He spent the night with two "hotties" with a reputation for making their way through cricketing nations.
Gibbs admits that his "most expensive shag" set him back R5000 in a fine for poor performance on the field the next day.
In a chapter titled 'The Proteas and Me', Gibbs says: "Some people aren't going to like this chapter, but I've always believed you have to call it like you see it. Given the talent we have had at our disposal, we should have won at least one World Cup and been consistently challenging the Aussies as the top Test team in the world. But a fear of failure, reinforced by an essentially conservative approach to the game, was the team's "Achilles heel".
He loved and loathed some of his colleagues. He says he "could never figure out" Daryll Cullinan, who told him to "f** k off" on his maiden tour.
Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds, whom he befriended while playing for the IPL team Deccan Chargers, had "a great sense of humour", but was "not such an easy guy to be around" after a few drinks. "He is genuinely scary when he's pissed."
Regarding Cronjé, he says despite "the cloud that hangs over his legacy, I can tell you that I've never played with anyone who possessed such a die-hard attitude to winning".
The book deals with other "controversies", including match fixing and weed smoking by some of the players.
"I went through a lot in life and I want people to read my side of the story," he told the Sunday Times in an interview this week.
Gibbs, who has played in three World Cups and is contracted to the Proteas until April next year, still hopes to make the team at least one more time.
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