David Gower (Text Only)

Two of my better friends at King’s were one Andrew Newell, the headmaster’s son, and Stephen White-Thompson, the Dean of Canterbury’s son. Andrew was similar to Alec Stewart in as much as he did not let his background prevent him from being one of the boys. The point, however, is that between the two of them it was not very hard to acquire a key that gave one access to the postern gate, and thus an easy exit to the town and beyond. It was relatively easy to take away a key for long enough to get a copy cut, which of course ruled out the need for crampons, pitons, and the possibility of reporting to matron with a punctured posterior. I nearly got rumbled once when one of the masters found this strange key in my possession and gave the relevant gates a try. Fortunately it had been cut badly, and only worked if you waggled it around in the lock, so I got away with that one.

I was doing well with the work and sport, but the blots on the copybook were beginning to add up, and discovering girls was next on the agenda. On one particular occasion the school had been granted a day off for some reason or other, though this was due to finish with a roll-call at round about six o’clock in the evening. I had made it as high up as a house monitor, which in terms of high office would hardly give you vertigo – roughly equivalent to lance-corporal I suppose – but I thought at the time that it might be enough not to qualify me for roll-call. Wrong. I’d actually disappeared off to Ashford, which was about a twenty-minute train ride away, to meet a girl I had met at one of the dances that the school occasionally organized, and after a couple of drinks we decided to see a James Bond film at the local cinema. By this time, apparently, we had both been reported AWOL, and as we came out of the movie the search party that had been put out for her came upon us strolling down Ashford High Street. She was dragged off, not quite in chains, and off I went to catch the train back to Canterbury. Unfortunately, the events of the day – in particular the sojourn in the pub – had left me drained, and I woke up at the end of the line in Ramsgate. I did manage to hitch a lift back to Canterbury, where a vast tub of hot water awaited, and it was back to the ranks – an unfamiliar feeling then, if not now.

In most respects, school had gone reasonably well. I’d enjoyed my sport, and if I had also enjoyed one or two extra curricular activities too well for an unblemished record, I’d studied hard enough to end up with eight O levels, three A levels, and one S grade in history. I sat the history exam for Oxford, and although I wrote quite competently on half the questions, I found myself rambling on at one stage about King Arthur, a man whose career I had never actually studied. I was, much to my surprise, invited up for an interview. So I spent the next few weeks swotting up on Arthur, before driving up in the family Anglia (the car which we had brought back with us on the boat from Africa) for the interview. Unfortunately, Sod’s Law struck, and most of the interview consisted of questions about what Richelieu and his mates were doing at the Court of Louis XIV, all of which I’d just about forgotten. Needless to say, it did not go well. Another piece of misfortune was that I had applied to St Edmund Hall, which had quite a sporting reputation, but apparently at precisely the time they were starting to think about their academic reputation. Bye, bye Oxford.

I already had a place at University College, London, but between my mother and the headmaster at King’s it was deemed to be a good idea to stay on at school and try for two more A levels. This is where I lost enthusiasm. In the summer of 1974 I had played a few games for Leicestershire 2nds and their under-25 team in the previous school holidays, and had rubbed shoulders with the likes of Micky Norman, Maurice Hallam, and Terry Spencer, scored a few runs, and had an offer to join the county the following season. This also had an extra bearing on a distinct lack of application concerning these two extra A’s. So I went to the headmaster, told him I’d had enough, and he more or less agreed that I was wasting my time. My mother was upset, of course, but off I went to Leicestershire and said, ‘Here I am, I’m yours for the summer.’ Mike Turner said, ‘How much do you want?’ I replied, ‘How about £20 a week?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you £25,’ and we shook hands on it. This to me was bliss, though the wages and my attitude to the game have both changed somewhat since.

I’d enjoyed my previous summer’s cricket, and Leicestershire represented the next beginning in my life. I’d arrived at Marlborough House at the age of eight which was a bit intimidating, starting again at King’s was much the same, and believe it or not, so was turning up at Lutterworth for Leicestershire 2nds versus Middlesex 2nds. Even though a certain amount of natural eye and ability got me through okay, the one thing I remember most from those first senior games was how much I struggled against the turning ball. Good spinners take a long time to develop, and I had hardly any previous experience against this type of quality bowling. Still, here I was back for a full summer, living at home with no overheads and no commitments, and getting paid what for me at the time was a handsome amount of pocket money. I knew I would be taking up my university place in London come October (Mike Turner was the first to advise me not to abandon the academic option), and although to a certain extent I was playing as the carefree amateur, deep down I think I was already two thirds of the way towards full time cricket. The summer of 1975 did nothing to alter that view. Leicestershire won the championship for the first time in their history, in which I featured in about three games, and I also played in half a dozen Sunday League matches.

I was never that committed to university, where the only thing we really had in common was the fact that the place was situated in Gower Street. I was supposed to be studying law, but in the six months I was there I learned a good bit more about kebab houses in Charlotte Street. The best way to put it is that we parted company by mutual consent the following summer, and almost before I knew it I was playing in a Benson and Hedges quarter-final at Worcester. I forget who was missing from our side, but I opened the innings and got thirty-odd, which was satisfying enough at the time, even if we did lose a high-scoring match.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_c01d811a-eae7-52c4-bf7c-9d7e4973c92e)

‘Bloody hell, Gower. Have you just come in?’

THE first game I played for Leicestershire was a Sunday League match. I’d been in The Hague for an under-19 youth tournament, playing for England North against sides from Holland, Belgium and Canada. I got a stack of runs there, and won a bat as batsman of the tournament, so I was in a pretty good frame of mind when the team caught the ferry back across the channel to Harwich. I got a train to Liverpool Street Station, tube to St Pancras, train up to Leicester, and phoned my mother from the station to tell her that I was just about to get the connection to Loughborough and would she be so kind as to come and collect me? She said, ‘Oh no, darling, I think you had better stay in Leicester and get a taxi to Grace Road. They want you to play this afternoon.’ She was right. John Steele was injured and I opened the innings with Barry Dudleston. It was very sudden and I was too tired to be nervous, but I do remember thinking that the Surrey attack was a little more tricky than Belgium under-19’s. Caught Skinner bowled Intikhab 11. ‘Gower played one or two pleasant shots before falling to a careless stroke,’ according to the Leicester Mercury. Doesn’t sound like me, does it? He must have been mixing me up with someone else.

My next match was also in the Sunday League at Grace Road, against Sussex, and I appear to have made 21 before getting out to another spinner, John Barclay. The Mercury man must have spotted something, though, as he wrote: ‘Gower, slung in at the deep end at 28 for 2 from nine overs, showed a great temperament and is clearly a man with a big future.’ I got a couple of fifties later on, and I made my championship debut that year against Lancashire at Blackpool. The match was drawn, and I made 32, batting at No 7, before being caught Reidy bowled Shuttleworth. I don’t remember how, but the one thing I do recall from that match was dear old Raymond Illingworth, ‘Illy’, blowing a gasket in bizarre circumstances. During the course of an unmemorable century from David Lloyd, our wicketkeeper, Roger Tolchard, had missed stumping him off Illy because he was standing too far back. Tolly then got injured, Barry Dudleston took the gloves, and soon afterwards he whipped off the bails with Lloyd about a yard out. Unfortunately, the bails fell back into the grooves on top of the stumps, at which point Raymond exploded. He booted his chewing gum up in the air, and frothed: ‘Well, bugger me. One useless (expletive deleted) can’t reach t’bloody stumps, and t’other useless (expletive deleted) hasn’t got strength to knock t’bloody bails off.’

I didn’t play the next game – possibly because of lily’s tantrum at Blackpool, we played two wicketkeepers, or at least David Humphries made his debut as wicketkeeper and Tolly played as a batsman. I then played against Northamptonshire (0 and 21) and my only other championship match that summer came in fairly unusual circumstances against Kent at Tunbridge Wells. I was actually 12th man, but Brian Davison went home to Leicester when news came through that his father-in-law had died. The game had already started, but Mike Denness gave permission for me to step in, and although I didn’t contribute much (1 and 11) it was a vital match in the championship, and we sneaked home by 18 runs. It was an average start to put it mildly, but it was marvellous just to be involved that year. We not only won the championship for the first time, but also the Benson and Hedges Cup.

I was a bit wet behind the ears to begin with, and had turned up for pre-season training in a suit. I had no idea of how I should be dressed for my first day at the office, as it were, but it appeared to cause a fair amount of mirth. I was very shy and retiring to begin with, but the atmosphere at the club under Illy was so good that the little boy lost feeling didn’t last very long. All in all, this was to be a good summer and a turning point in my life. The attractions of a career playing cricket meant that from now on the idea of pouring over books in the law library was never likely to be a serious rival.

I might never have gone on to become a full time professional cricketer had it not been for the death of my father in 1973. When the various crises came at school, only my mother was around to deal with them, and knowing my father’s determination for me to pursue an academic career, things might have turned out very differently had he still been alive. I was 16 when he died. He had been ill for two years – a combination of Hodgkin’s disease and Motor Neurone disease, which by and large comes under the umbrella of Multiple Sclerosis. He had not been working, and was gradually fading away. The brain remains very sharp, but the body just gives up. Eventually he got too weak to do anything at all, and went into hospital and died. It left a big gap.

Because I was away at school so much it probably helped me cope better than I otherwise might have done, and it was harder for my mother than it was for me despite her own independent and strong character. I’m sure he would have tried to be a bit sterner on school matters, but he was very supportive of my sporting pursuits and maybe things would have turned out much the same way. That’s something we’ll never know. Sadly, he only had one chance to see me play representative cricket before he died, and that was at Rugby School playing for Public Schools against the English Schools at under-16 level: the likes of the Cowdreys against the likes of the Gattings. I remember hitting a six which he greeted by tooting the car horn. It was a cold and windy day, typical cricket weather, and what with his illness he had sensibly confined himself to the car with the heater turned on. He loved watching me do well that afternoon, and I’m sure he would have enjoyed most of what has happened since. My father’s encouragement on the cricket front had also extended to rigging up an old net in the back garden, although my mother probably ended up bowling more overs in it.

He was an intelligent, well-organized man, which just goes to show that not everything is inherited in the genes, but he also had a keen sense of humour that I like to think was handed down. He also loved his sport. He would quite often take me to soccer matches on a Saturday afternoon, Nottingham Forest one week, Leicester City the next, and occasionally to Leicester Tigers or Loughborough Colleges for a rugby match. Things were okay financially when he died, in that while we were never what you could call genuinely wealthy, one of my father’s talents was that he was quite clever with the financial side of life and made all the right sort of provisions. He dabbled in the stock market, leaving my mother with a reasonable amount of collateral in stocks and shares, which she in turn passed on to me. He was a good bit shrewder than me in this sort of area, and definitely less extravagant.

My father’s death obviously left a void, but we were both able to cope fairly well. Nevertheless, as my cricket career began to develop, there was always this feeling of how much he would have enjoyed being around to see it. I felt it most acutely in the summer of 1976, when I scored my maiden first-class century. We were playing Middlesex at Lord’s, and I had a fairly undistinguished first innings, bowled by Selvey for 0. However, in the second I had played pretty well to be not out at lunch on the second day, and came out after the interval to complete what one or two observers imagined to be a thoroughly relaxed and nerveless hundred. On this occasion they would have been confusing relaxed with half asleep (I spent the lunch break fully asleep) because, I have to admit, I had not spent the previous evening preparing in a wholly professional manner.

I’d been out on the town somewhere, and while I think I managed to beat the milkman to the hotel door the next morning, it would not have been by much. The apparently laid-back Gower at the crease the next day was in fact trying desperately hard to stay awake, an exercise only achieved by repeated stabs between overs from the business end of Brian Davison’s bat. It was probably the least he could have done for me as Davo had become something of a soul mate of mine – and when it came to burning candles at both ends he was close to being world champion. If, after the likes of Roger Tolchard and Jack Birkenshaw had scuttled off to bed in mid-evening, anyone felt like giving it a bit of a late thrash Davo was definitely the man. What I took rather too long to discover was that he was better at it than me – better than most if it comes to that. Anyway, Davo was smashing it to all parts as we were looking to set up a declaration, while I was groping around in a fog attempting to make contact. I think Illy went on longer than he had wanted to so that I could make the hundred, so there was less glory attached to that innings than I might have liked. Lest anyone, by the way, get the idea that Raymond was a sentimental old fool on these occasions, I would like to point out that earlier in the season he had declared on me in the match against the West Indies at Grace Road when I was 89 not out. The Lord’s innings more than made up for that disappointment, although it was probably the first time I had gone out to bat in what could be described as less than pristine condition. If the century suggested that it was possible to spend all night on the tiles and still deliver the goods next day, there have been one or two cases along the way since that have provided strong evidence to the contrary.

Shortly after that I spent six weeks in the West Indies with a Young England side that included the likes of Mike Gatting, Chris Cowdrey, Paul Downton and Paul Allott, and that autumn, immediately after the English season ended, there was a Derrick Robins’ invitation trip to Canada. It only lasted three weeks or so, and when I came home, I went out to work for the first (and as it turned out, last) time. Mike Turner fixed me up with a job with one of Leicestershire’s bigger sponsors, Bostik, and, if you will pardon the fairly awful pun, being glued to a desk all winter did not quite fit my romantic image of the professional cricketer.

The next season was another enjoyable (and reasonably successful) one, and life at this stage seemed wonderful. I had climbed onto the rollercoaster and was going along for the ride. On the other hand, my cricket had become significantly more serious. I was earning a bit more than £25 a week by now, was sharing a flat near the ground with Roger Tolchard, and was being tutored by Illy in the art of becoming professional. ‘These pretty twenties and thirties are all very nice, Gower, but if you could possibly manage the occasional hundred we’d be obliged.’ Raymond was inclined towards the belief that cricket was a fairly serious business, and cricketers who smiled a lot were to be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. Needless to say, I caused him the odd moment of aggravation, not least on one occasion while he was bowling during a Sunday League match against Derbyshire. We’d been down to Westcliff to play Essex the week before, put down every catch imaginable, and I’d dropped Kenny McEwan – who got a hundred – at least once if not twice. The result was that we’d spent most of the following week doing extra catching practice. Anyway, Ashley Harvey-Walker was batting well when Raymond came on, and I was despatched to patrol the leg-side boundary (these were the days when I had a decent throwing arm). Sure enough, he slogged one straight up in the air, and after swallowing hard at the thought of lily’s reaction should I happen to drop it, managed to cling on. Elation then took over, and as I was tossing the ball up several times and bowing to the crowd, I suddenly heard this apoplectic Pudsey voice bellowing, ‘Get t’bloody thing back, Gower. It’s a bloody no-ball!’ Having already allowed them to run two instead of one, I then hurled the ball in, and it ricocheted away off the stumps for another single. Raymond was now giving a passable imitation of Vesuvius, and Graham Cross has collapsed with laughter at short mid-wicket. I thought about inquiring as to how the captain of England and Leicestershire, not to mention one of the most miserly purveyors of off-spin bowling in cricket history happened to be bowling no-balls, but thought better of it.

If I had mentioned it to him, he would more than likely have claimed that the groundsman had painted the line in the wrong place, because if anyone were to hold a world excuses championship, Raymond would have won it with something to spare. Brian Davison used to keep a list of them, and believe me there were some absolute jewels. Illy once got caught at slip shortly after lunch to a ball that he claimed had seamed away on what was basically a flat pitch. He came steaming through the dressing room door claiming that a plantain had sprung up on a length during the interval. ‘T’umpire must have given me t’wrong guard,’ was another classic, and in one match when we were supposed to be defending, he was bowled having a wild slog at Allan Jones, whose trademark was a Jimmy Connors’ style grunt (only louder) when he let go of the ball. It was such a horrid shot that none of us in the dressing room thought he could possibly explain that one away, but sure enough, Raymond was more than up to the task. He came through the door, lobbed his bat in the direction of his chair and sat down. The tension was unbelievable, when he spluttered, ‘Would you credit it? That bloody Jonah and his grunting … I thought t’umpire had called no-ball.’ At which point the dressing room fell apart.

Raymond was, nevertheless, a fabulous captain to play under, and while he came in for his fair share of the inevitable dressing-room micky-taking, he had this amazing knack of being able to switch us all on to serious business at a moment’s notice. We’d be having a laugh and a joke, sometimes at his expense, and then the five minute bell would go. Illy would clap his hands, the place would fall silent and he would unveil some masterly tactical plan for the next session. Unfortunately, not every member of his team possessed his attention to detail, and there was one occasion at Taunton when one of Raymond’s brainwaves did not quite go according to the script. Viv Richards was in his pomp at that time, and having faced just one delivery before the lunch break, inevitably walked off 4 not out. He looked, we thought, ominously in the mood. However, Illy had worked out that he was not entirely in control of the hook shot early in an innings, and that the ball occasionally went in the air to what would roughly have been just backward of square. Raymond sat plotting over his lunch, and decided that Paddy Clift should field at fine leg, but move surreptitiously to backward square for Les Taylor’s fourth ball after lunch. This, of course, would be a bouncer. Unfortunately, Les slipped in a no-ball, Paddy’s mathematics got a bit confused, and when Viv did precisely what Illy had thought he might, there was no Paddy Clift. And Viv went on to get his hundred.

Illy was also a highly canny bowler. For instance, if Jack Birkenshaw was bowling you knew it was a totally flat wicket, whereas if Illy was on you knew it was either turning square or it was the last over before lunch. The latter case backfired on him quite badly in a match against Sussex, when he duly appeared for his ritual 1-1-0-0 but came off the field, wearing a slightly bewildered expression, with something closer to 1-0-22-0. The batsman in question was Javed Miandad with whom, it later transpired, Raymond had had an altercation a year or so previously, and called him something fairly unpleasant. Raymond had long since forgotten this, but Javed had not, so we spent a rib-clutching five minutes before lunch watching Javed charging down the pitch, and Illy peering – with a completely bemused expression – at one ball after another vanishing over the sightscreen. Getting hit for six did not amuse Illy at the best of times, and whenever teams came to Leicester in those days, they generally required a pair of binoculars to make out the boundary rope – except, that is, for the bigger games, when the sponsors (this is pre-executive box era) would pitch tents on the outfield, hence, shorter boundaries. Raymond used to play hell about this, and in one Sunday League match the sight of two consecutive deliveries dropping into the coleslaw in the Bostik guests’ tent proved too much for him. For the next couple of minutes spectators were treated to the fairly unusual sight of the Leicestershire captain waving his fist at the committee balcony and giving them a fearful haranguing. Even so, I think he managed to drag himself into the tent for a sponsored Pimms or two afterwards.

I think it’s fair to say that when misfortune struck, Raymond was not so quick to see the funny side of it, but the old boy was not without a sharp turn of repartee on occasions. Leicestershire did not have a strict dress code for players in those days, but they worked roughly on the basis of smart casuals. No tie and jacket required, but a reasonable appearance was demanded. I slightly tarnished my record one day at Trent Bridge when I woke up in my customary bleary-eyed state in the flat at Leicester and groped around in semi-darkness for a pair of shoes. What I had put on was one black shoe, and one brown. This didn’t go un-noticed by the captain, and there then followed a longish lecture on the standards of dress expected from young professionals. I can’t remember the exact words, but ‘smarten up you scruffy sod’ was the basic message.

I fancied there might be some mileage in this lecture, so, having recently acquired a dark blue dinner suit, I took it with me to our next match in Taunton. In the relaxed atmosphere of breakfast before a Sunday League game I strode into the dining room. Suit, bow-tie, polished shoes (both black), the works. Raymond glanced up from his plate, gave me the once over, and said: ‘Bloody hell, Gower. Have you just come in?’ Whether he meant this as a joke, or whether he was being serious, I’m not totally sure. You rarely could tell with Raymond. We got on very well, and he did try to nurture me through, as did most of the senior players, the likes of Davison, Dudleston, Tolchard, Steele and Micky Norman. They were a good crew to be with, and we also happened to be a very good side, and all this worked in my favour in those early days.

Those first three or four years under Illy were as good a grounding as a young player could have, and I made the transition from an averagely talented player to a slightly better than average player with a decent idea of what professional cricket is all about. It was certainly different than what I had imagined it would be like, and there were one or two instances of the talented but wet-behind-the-ears-public-schoolboy running into a bit of hostility from the hardened pro trying to make a living on a demanding circuit. I remember opening the innings in a championship game against Surrey at the Oval and timing a few cover drives early on against the new ball, which appeared to draw a fair amount of steam from Robin Jackman’s ears. He has always been a bit volatile, and the sight of this angelic looking youngster creaming him around the Oval with no apparent effort did not do a lot for his sense of humour. He wanted to know, in fairly blunt terms, whether I was interested in playing the game properly. This did enough to unsettle me and I was lbw not long afterwards. It’s the sort of thing a batsman eventually comes to terms with, and occasionally learns to enjoy, but it was all rather new to me at that time and I didn’t quite know how to keep my concentration in the face of it. In a nutshell, I was beginning to learn that county cricket was a job as opposed to a recreation.

There were also, contrary to popular opinion, one or two recorded cases of nerves. Before scoring that 89 not out against the West Indies, I remember downing a scotch in the pub next to the ground in the company of the landlady – Roberts and Daniel were sharing the new ball, so it seemed appropriate to try and settle the stomach. Hazel was her name, loved by all, and the place was never quite the same when the brewery moved her on. I did a certain amount of hopping around during that knock. The old duck-hook came out several times – the sort you play when you start going for the hook and end up having to bail out in a hurry when you realize that the ball is homing in on the eyebrows rather more rapidly than anticipated. Chris Balderstone got 125 and 98, which got him into the Test side. As for myself, I was starting to get a few honourable mentions in more influential organs than the Loughborough Echo (proud though I was of earlier cuttings snipped from that paper), although mention of me in connection with the England side did not really begin to build up until the following year, 1977.

I overheard Illy voicing his opinion around the dressing room that I would be playing for England within the next couple of years, and coming from him I thought that was as good a recommendation as you could get. In subsequent years, when he appeared to be recommending sons-in-law and prospective sons-in-law for the captaincy of Yorkshire, England, and the Universe, I would have questioned his judgement a touch more than I did then, but at the time it was a pretty impressive reference. By the end of that summer, there had been enough speculation from other quarters to make me wonder, anxious even, about that winter’s tour to Pakistan and New Zealand. Ian Botham was now in the side and it seemed to be a question of whether someone like Mike Gatting or myself might make the squad as a young batsman, taken along to gain some experience. As it turned out, Gatt made it and I didn’t. I was disappointed because I had actually become quite excited about the speculation, but it soon wore off and I was happy to make yet another Derrick Robins’ tour, this time to the Far East. I developed my friendship with Chris Cowdrey out there, behaved pretty poorly, but also got in some decent cricket in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sri Lanka. From there it was a short hop to Perth where I played club cricket for the remainder of the winter, with a fair amount of success, and did well enough in the early summer of 1978 (one of the few years I’ve started off a season in good form) to get myself into the England side for the one-dayers against Pakistan. I scored a century in the second of the two matches, and was then selected for the first Test at Birmingham. So I had already had the settling effect of having played at international level when I made my Test debut, and although hitting your first ball for four would have to rank as a reasonable way to launch a career, the Pakistani attack at that time could hardly be equated with that of the West Indies when G. Hick arrived at the wicket in 1991.

Imran wasn’t playing, barred through Kerry Packer, and had he delivered the same ball on the same length as dear old Liaquat Ali, or Liquid as we came to know him, they might have been picking bits of me out of the fence as opposed to the ball. Mind you, I might not have been quite so keen to unveil the pull shot first ball against an Imran or an Andy Roberts. I might have been young, but I had learned a few of the facts of life by now. I did actually wonder to myself at the time whether I should have played the shot, even against Liquid. First ball, first Test, probably not the done thing, and if it had gone straight up in the air it might have caused a bit of a stir – Brian Johnston choking to death on his chocolate cake I shouldn’t wonder. But as I remember, it was just an instinctive shot to a bad ball. Eventually I did hit one straight up in the air, having made fifty-odd, relaxed a little and done something silly when a century was there for the taking. Some might say ‘So what’s new?’

Whenever I have made fifty in my career, I’ve invariably said to myself, ‘Okay, head down, let’s get fifty more.’ The trouble is, I’ve always had to work to say it. It’s a failing, simple as that. I have to fight to stave off the feeling of: ‘Oh yes, I’ve hit a few good shots today, that’ll keep me happy,’ as opposed to having the blinding determination to plough remorselessly on. Sometimes when I get a little bit too relaxed, a bad shot that I get away with might snap me back into it, but contrary to a certain amount of public opinion I am always fighting a battle with the little man up there in my head. I believe that it is all part of the character: some parts may be good, others not so good. Some people have the capacity to put a padlock on the brain and throw away the key – mine likes to go for a wander. More often than not, I don’t like it any more than an exasperated spectator, or selector, but no-one is entirely free of weaknesses, and this happens to be one of mine.

The philosophy I’ve tried to live by is to retain a sense of enjoyment in what is a sport as well as my livelihood. If you can be successful by asserting your own character rather than someone else’s, that to me is the ultimate in personal satisfaction. Sure, I’ve fouled up many times, but it would be a tedious old game if we all came out of a factory would it not? At the same time, there is a lot of satisfaction in succeeding almost against your own character – such as grinding it out when you are itching to give it a go – but it’s not something I have managed all that often. I was annoyed with myself for getting out in that first Test innings because I realized that I had missed out on the chance for a really big one. But, character failing or not, I wasn’t going to sit around all day moping about it.

What I envy any new Test player is the feeling you get before your first game. It’s an event just to walk into the dressing room for the first time, where there might be one or two players you have never even met before. Just looking at the team sheet gives you a buzz – Brearley, Wood, Radley, Gower … it’s a big thrill just to see it pinned up there. There is a special feeling about a Test match dressing room for the first time, a sense of anticipation and excitement that is beyond anything I’d had before, and corny though it sounds, the blood does start pumping a little harder through the system. And then, once you have played for your country, it gives you a billing to live up to when you return for a county match, and maybe puts a bit more pressure on you as well. As a young up and coming potential England player you are allowed to make the odd mistake, but as an actual England player you’ve got less leeway in terms of how other people see you. A lot more, for instance, was expected of someone like Mark Ramprakash after he had played relatively well in his first Test series against the West Indies.

Cricketers, by and large, are a very supportive lot, but some pros look at their colleagues and opponents with fairly critical and sometimes jaundiced eyes. This is especially true if it concerns the solid county cricketer who is never going to play for England casting his eye over the fresh-faced youngster who has just won his first cap. When Sachin Tendulkar, at seventeen, scored a century at Old Trafford to save India from defeat against England in the summer of 1990, one English player said, ‘Let’s see how he goes at the Oval when the ball will be up around his nostrils.’ It’s the traditional English reaction to someone doing well.

I averaged 51 against Pakistan and 57 against the New Zealanders later that the summer, but if a lot more was expected of myself at Leicestershire after I had made it into the Test side, the bare statistics of 1978 do not suggest that they were fulfilled to any great degree. Nine games, 15 innings, one not out, 347 runs, top score 61, average 24.78, and in the county game against Pakistan I was bowled by Liaquat for not very many. In a season like that, with six Tests and four one-day internationals, you end up by playing barely any cricket at all for your county, and given the poor scores I made when I did, it was probably fair to say that I batted for England and fielded for Leicestershire. My county average has always been significantly lower than my Test average, and as such it is hardly surprising that the odd grumble from the ranks of the county membership has come my way. The bigger the occasion the better I seem to perform. Yet overall, I was definitely on a high at that stage in my career, and my form for England at least was good enough to win me a place on my first overseas tour that winter. It was a memorable tour both for me – a century at Perth and a decent amount of runs overall – and for the team itself, although a 5-1 victory in the series had a lot to do with an Australian side seriously depleted by the absence of the rebels playing for Packer.

The 1978-79 tour to Australia was as one-sided as the final score suggests, but Australia felt the player-drain to Packer more acutely than we did. Both the Chappells, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh were signed up by World Series Cricket, and while they had some talented younger players to call upon – Kim Hughes and Rodney Hogg, for example – the key difference between the two sides was experience. To some extent, the Australian system allows their players to scale the jumps from grade to state to Test cricket a shade more easily than our own, but a good, inexperienced team will rarely beat a good experienced one and 5-1 was an accurate reflection of our dominance. Having said that, Hogg, in short spells, was as quick and mean a bowler as any I have faced, and he also had the temperament to match. When I was leaving the field with a century to my name in Perth, the fact that I had edged and missed a few against him early on had clearly been festering with him, and he came up and called me an ‘effing imposter’. It didn’t bother me though. As with most Australians it was nothing personal, merely business. Hogg was capable of some curious moods, and after bowling three or four lightening overs on a flattish track at Adelaide he suddenly ran off the field. His captain, Graham Yallop, was as confused as everyone else, and had to run off the field himself to find out what was going on. It turned out that Hogg was claiming he had been attacked by a bout of asthma, but no one really understood why he decided to vanish when he was bowling so well. His method was to bowl flat out for short spells, take a breather, then come back for another burst of the high velocity stuff. Hogg took a lot of wickets in that series, but in all other respects there was no contest. Even the captaincy – Brearley versus Yallop – was one-sided. Brears was baited by the Aussie crowds, who clearly thought he was as stuffy a Pom as Jardine, but as a skipper, he had a very hard core to him.