Cobras players held at gunpoint

Charl Willoughby feared for his life © Getty Images

Charl Willoughby, the South African left-arm seamer, feared he would never see his family again when he and seven team-mates were held at gunpoint near their Johannesburg hotel.

"All I could think was that I would never see my wife and child again," he said. Still shaken from their experience, he explained how they were hit by armed robbers at a Nandos (a popular South African fast food outlet) in Croydon on the East Rand on Saturday night.

Vernon Philander was standing with his back to the entrance of the store, while phoning his girlfriend, when he heard his captain, Con de Lange, shout that there were problems. At one moment Philander, the Cobras allrounder was looking down the barrel of a gun.

One of the robbers pushed the firearm into Philander's face and told him: "Don't try to be clever." The Cobras were staying at a hotel near the O R Tambo International Airport for their SuperSport match again the Titans in Benoni, had decided about at about 8pm to eat out.

Three armed robbers posing as Chubb security guards, complete in fake uniforms uniforms, and stormed into the restaurant ordering eight players and four other customers inside to lie down flat on the floor. They had to place their mobile phones, wallets and other valuables beside them on the floor.

The other players involved were Dominique Telo, Andrew Puttick, Alistair Gray, Henry Davids and Robert van der Ross. Their valuables were stolen as well as the keys to the team minibus in which they had arrived, after the incident the players were all pushed into a fridge before the robbers fled.

The coach Shukri Conrad said: "When Con phoned me later to tell me they had been robbed, and I must come and fetch them, I thought he was joking. I could see in the dressing room on Sunday that the full impact of what had happened was hitting home only then. It was all they could talk about."