By the time he strode out to open the batting in a charity match in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, John Major had overcome personal doubts about the event as well as objections from senior advisers, newly released government files reveal.

Months of preparation leading up to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Harare in October 1991 are documented in records passed to the National Archives in Kew.

Work on the conference began as early as April that year when Norma Major received an invitation through Downing Street to visit a school near Bulawayo. “Yes, please,” her husband noted on the letter, “but plenty of travel pills!” Asked to speak at a white farmers’ club in the Zimbabwean capital, Major declined.

The letter suggesting a visit by Norma Major, with John Major’s comment ‘Yes please’

In September, the cricket-loving prime minister received a sporting proposition from his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. “I entirely agree with you that cricket unites nations on all continents,” Sharif wrote. “I feel that the unifying aspect of this game would be vividly demonstrated by organising a festival charity cricket match during the next Commonwealth summit at Harare between … all the delegations attending the conference.

“Being an avid follower of the game like yourself, I would love to take part in such a match and I hope you would be able to lend your support to such an idea.” In blue biro, Major commented: “Please support. A very good idea. J.”

Kieran Prendergast, the UK’s high commissioner in Zimbabwe, expressed reservations about the game. “Assuming Nawaz Sharif’s suggestion is serious, the idea of any kind of cricket match at Victoria Falls is a non-starter,” he cabled back to London.

“It is too hot. There is no ground there and I understand anyway that the PM’s knee is not up to a long innings … As you know I am not myself a member of the cricketing faith.”

Instead, Prendergast proposed an “informal supper party” with a few Zimbabwean cricketers accompanied by Sharif, the Australian and Jamaican PMs Bob Hawke and Michael Manley and Barbados’s cabinet secretary.

But Major persevered and supported the donation of £1,600 worth of cricket equipment to local clubs as part of UK overseas aid. In October the prime minister received a note from an official reporting that Sharif had been “practising in the nets in Islamabad”.

The elaborate menu for the long flight to Harare was shown in advance to No 10. It featured “Flemish-style peas, parmentier potatoes, scampi provençal, glazed courgettes and lemon sorbet with raspberry coulis”. Major jotted: “As long as there’s soup and cheese and biscuits, I’ll be alright.”

The flight menu. Photograph: Handout

The cricket match took place on Friday 18 October 1991. The West Indies Test batsman Clive Lloyd, England’s Graeme Hick and David Houghton of Zimbabwe participated. Major and Hawke opened the batting for the politicians, who were each allowed a limited number of overs. The rules of the charity game recorded that singles scored by heads of government would each earn Z$250 for charity.

Major, playing defensively, hit fewer than 10 runs but was not out. The occasion raised more than Z$71,000. In a letter dispatched two days later to Mark Williams, the Zimbabwean correspondent of the Cricketeer magazine who had arranged the match, the prime minister confessed his initial nervousness.

“May I thank you for the tremendous work you put into the organisation of Friday’s cricket match,” he wrote. “I approached the occasion with the greatest trepidation but in retrospect I concede that you hit upon the right formula. The match was a great success: by bringing together different parts of the Commonwealth in an enjoyable social occasion, by helping to promote cricket at a schoolboy level in Zimbabwe and by raising money for charity.”

Major also wrote to the chief executive of the Zimbabwean cricket team thanking him for the use of the Harare ground. “With the jacaranda in full bloom, it is one of the finest cricket venues in the world.”

Major and Mugabe exchanged letters, the Zimbabwean leader declaring: “May I thank you for contributing, in quite a substantial manner, to the ease and friendliness that characterised our debates and discussions. Everyone I talked to during and after our meeting said they were highly impressed by your exceedingly friendly and accessible manner.”

Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in 2002 after Mugabe’s disputed re-election and withdrew in 2003. Talks negotiating its return are ongoing.