Driving Ambition - My Autobiography Page 4

  In 1998, an Englishman arriving at Sydney Airport with a cricket bag on a trolley was a common and amusing sight for the locals. Just as promising young actors are drawn to the bright lights of Los Angeles to find fame and fortune in Hollywood, so cricketers by the bucketload were making their way to Australia, all intent on making their mark in the toughest cricketing environment of all.

  In some ways, it was a little like being part of the gold rush that brought so many people to Australia in the nineteenth century. I was aware that most Pommie cricketers came back broken men, using excuses like ‘the wickets do too much’ or ‘you don’t play enough to get in decent nick’ to justify the embarrassment of being a professional player but not outperforming the plumber who opened the batting with them. Some, however, did manage to make their mark and the gold dust they received came in the form of either hard-earned Aussie respect or invaluable experience of what it takes to perform in Australia. Just as important, it seems to me now, and far less recognised, was the challenge of having to fend for yourself, earn some money, meet new people and deal with the abrasive Australian style.

  I was up for the challenge, though. My club side was going to be Sydney University. In some ways it was an atypical Grade club, as many of the players were students and so there was a far higher turnover of players than in most. Also, the club didn’t have much money and had no rich benefactor to attract big-name state players, so it had to rely on finding young talent and then nurturing and developing that talent.

  All in all, it sounded like the perfect place for an ambitious English first-class cricketer. The fact that I had made my first-class debut prior to arriving meant that I walked about with a little more swagger than before. I was young, but I reckoned I had already proved myself in the world of professional cricket. I was sure that my team-mates and the coaches would be duly impressed.

  Well, they were so impressed that on the first weekend I was selected for the 3rd XI. Here I was, a professional player who a couple of months earlier had been spanking a West Indian international bowler around in a first-class game, playing for a club third team in Sydney.

  The one Englishman in the club, a teacher by the name of Tim Lester, assured me that they always did this with the new players. It allowed you to find your feet, get over jet lag and ease yourself into the Aussie way of playing the game. I, however, was less than impressed and thankfully showed my displeasure by scoring a hundred on the first Saturday.

  I enjoyed the Aussie attitude to cricket. They definitely did not rate anyone in other teams, and that view was particularly pronounced when there was a Pom in the opposition ranks. Their default position was that they were better than everyone else, and every Saturday they would go out there eager to prove their superiority. They played an ego-driven form of the game, in which admitting to weakness was akin to admitting to having an affair with your brother’s wife. It just wasn’t on. That attitude allowed people to go out and play outrageous innings, whacking it from the first ball, or, in the case of one player from Bankstown, taking on Brett Lee without a helmet. The country was renowned for having the best players, the best structure and the best coaches in the world, and by God did they know it.

  All of this was in marked contrast to England, where players were always wary of saying anything that might be regarded as tempting fate. If a player in England said something about an opposition bowler being poor or slow or not being able to turn the ball, he would be shot down in flames by irate team-mates: ‘Don’t mess with the cricketing gods, mate. He’s bound to get you out tomorrow.’

  Similarly, in England there was far more respect for other teams. If you were a first-class cricketer, you had earned your stripes, you were part of a fraternity and would be accorded respect. International players were put on a pedestal, as though they were the equivalent of cricketing deities. Players would invariably scour the opposition team news on Ceefax, hoping that their star bowler was injured, otherwise the likes of Glenn McGrath or Courtney Walsh were bound to win the game for the other side. ‘Oh no, we’ve got Warney next week for Hampshire. I’d better get a few this week’ was a typical county cricketer’s comment.

  Within a few weeks of being in Australia, and throughout the three winters I spent there, it was apparent why English players tended to struggle in that environment. It was genuinely uncomfortable. If you were a Pommie professional player, you would have a bounty on your head. Fielders who had appeared semiconscious in the blazingly hot southern-hemisphere sun would suddenly spring to life as you walked out, in the same way as a lion gains enormous energy at the sight of a wounded antelope limping around. Bowlers would be desperate not only to get you out, but also to humiliate you in the process.

  I still remember one of my team-mates in my second year in Australia stopping the whole game when a young Glamorgan player arrived at the crease. He walked towards his potential prey, stood about halfway down the wicket and addressed not just the player, but everyone on the pitch.

  ‘Listen here, Pom,’ he said. ‘I know you are shit, you know you are shit and so does everyone else. Look me in the eye when I tell you that I will get you out first ball.’ He then proceeded to walk backwards back to his mark, continuously mouthing, ‘I will get you out first ball.’

  The umpires seemed more amused than anyone else about this bit of on-field theatre and were not in the least bit inclined to bring it to an end. Unfortunately, as if it had been pre-ordained, the young Glamorgan player duly obliged, getting out lbw, much to the delight of my team-mates and the umpire, who gave the decision with a smirk on his face. So the image of English players being soft, overrated and overpaid was reinforced, and it made it more and more difficult for the next piece of prey that they came across.

  I was hardly immune from all of this. My season never really got going. I was promoted to the second team for a few games, not impressing all that much, but I also knew that my route to the first team was blocked by Jimmy Ormond, the bulky Leicestershire opening bowler, who was doing moderately well for the side. With only one overseas player allowed in each team, I understood that my first season was more about watching, learning and hopefully impressing enough to be thought of as a potential first-team player for the following year.

  Everything was turned upside down, however, when I was dropped back into the third team to accommodate a player who had come back from injury. I still proudly thought of myself as a solid first-class opening batsman, and it was just too much of an affront to my ego. When insult was added to injury and my subsequent hundred was not deemed good enough to warrant an elevation back to the second team, I finally threw the toys out of the pram. I declared myself unavailable, had a huge row with the coach and walked out of the club.

  When I look back on it now, I am still embarrassed that I took that action. It made no sense. I was out there to learn about Australian cricket, and here I was declining to play. God knows what the powers that be back at Middlesex thought of it.

  At the time, though, my priorities were elsewhere. On a random Sunday night out in the run-in to Christmas, I had met a beautiful Australian actress called Ruth McDonald. She was a little older than me, much more worldly and most of all great company. In true Australian style, she called a spade a spade and I was enjoying the idea of walking along Bondi Beach with her on a Saturday far more than getting abused out in the middle. The last three months of my stay were spent almost entirely in her company.

  Being an actress, she had plenty of days when she wasn’t doing much, and although I had to do a bit of coaching now and then to supplement my meagre savings, most of my time was also free. We explored Sydney, sunbathed constantly on beaches up and down the eastern suburbs, ate loads of ice cream and watched movies and talked in the evenings. I had just about enough time left in the day to squeeze in a bit of fitness work and the odd net session with a few of the other English pros, but my focus was on Ruth, and it was probably one of my better decisions.

  I don’t think that you can overestim
ate the role that is played by the partner of a professional sportsman. In Ruth’s case, over my career she has had to deal with all sorts of emotions. Sometimes I would come back from a ground completely uncommunicative, despairing at a lost match or a low score. At other times, I would be full of the joys of spring, content with my standing in the world, deeply satisfied about my performance. Mostly, I was riding somewhere in between, giving little away about my state of mind. Ruth, therefore, always had to tread carefully around me during a game. She has been exceptional in that regard. Conscious of my feelings and mindful of my focus, she has brought up two boys mainly single-handedly and has always been there to support me. She is truly a remarkable woman.

  My relationship with Ruth also ensured that I returned to Sydney for the next two winters, plying my trade for Mosman, a rival Grade club situated in the affluent suburbs of the North Shore of Sydney. Over the course of my time there, I did manage to play and stay in the first team. I wasn’t particularly successful, and there were plenty at the club and elsewhere who thought I was just another of the stereotypical English players, but I did at least show glimpses of my potential, scoring some important runs on occasion. The Aussies also liked my pugnacious back-foot game, the one area where I really felt I could dominate most Aussie club bowlers, who loved nothing more than sending down bouncer barrages as a means of intimidation.

  My winters in Australia taught me a huge amount about the game, about different styles of play and conditions. They also taught me about the Australian people. I learnt what made them tick, what they respected and where they were potentially vulnerable. Above all, though, I met some great people, many of whom are still friends to this day.

  While I was slowly making my mark as a player, Middlesex was going through a very public and very painful transformation. When I had first stumbled through that dressing-room door in 1996, the club was still living healthily off its reputation as one of the heavyweights of the English game. The Championship had last been won in 1993, but the players still had the mindset and belief that further success was close at hand. Very soon, however, confidence, that fragile intangible that is so hard to gain but so easy to lose, had vanished, and with it went Middlesex’s chances of continuing their successful dynasty.

  What went wrong? Well, as is so often the case, it all started with a change of leadership. Don Bennett, the outstandingly successful and astute coach, retired at the end of the 1997 season. He had spent twenty-nine years as a coach and was fully deserving of his extra time on the golf course. Under his tenure the club had won seven Championships (one shared), as well as the Gillette Cup (four times), the Benson & Hedges Cup (twice) and the Sunday League.

  My only real involvement with him came towards the end of my first season with the club, in 1997. I turned up at the ground to be twelfth man for a first-team one-day game and was fully enjoying the sight of Mark Ramprakash in full flow. Suddenly my admiration was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see Don, who had a well-deserved reputation as a tough old-school coach who had dealt with everyone from Phil Edmonds to Phil Tufnell and been respected by them all.

  ‘There’s no point in you sitting there daydreaming,’ he said. ‘I’m going down to the nets. Get your gear on. I’ll send down a few throw-downs and have a look at you.’

  Eager to impress, I raced off to my black Ford Fiesta, lovingly referred to as the milk float by my team-mates, who couldn’t understand why anyone would have an automatic car with a 1.1 litre engine. I opened the boot to get out my kit, only to find it horrifyingly empty. I had left my kit by the door of my flat.

  As I arrived at the nets, Don was already looking slightly irritated by the length of time it had taken me to get there, and his irritation was about to up a notch or two.

  ‘Sorry, coach,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t have my kit here. I left it at home. I could do some bowling instead if you like,’ I added hopefully.

  ‘Bowling? You must be kidding me. You really are the useless public school ----- that Gunner said you were.’ With that he turned his back on me and headed off to the pavilion.

  Don’s retirement represented a seismic change for the club. That was matched, and probably even surpassed, by Mike Gatting’s decision to stand down as club captain. By this time he was forty years of age and had been at the helm for fourteen years, having had the unenviable job of taking over the reins from Mike Brearley. Although he had been incredibly successful, and was very much part of the furniture of the club, there was a feeling that he had done his time and that Mark Ramprakash would benefit from the extra responsibility of leading the side.

  This precipitated a depressingly unsettling period of pass-the-parcel with the twin jobs of coach and captain. From the end of the 1997 to halfway through the 2002 season we had four captains (Ramprakash, Justin Langer, Angus Fraser and myself), complemented by three coaches (John Buchanan, Mike Gatting and John Emburey). It was not the sort of stability to ensure any type of success on the pitch, and inevitably it didn’t.

  What caused this period of upheaval at the club is a moot point. Did the on-field performances fall away so far that the coach and captain had to go? Or did the lack of stability lead to the poor performances? My gut feeling was that it was a combination of both, but if the club had stuck for longer with Don’s replacement, John Buchanan, we might have avoided the downward spiral.

  Buchanan arrived at Middlesex with a reputation as an enlightened, new-age coach. He was among the first to use analysis and take lessons learnt from business to push players forward, and he had been immensely successful with Queensland in the Sheffield Shield competition. Looking back, probably even he would admit that he tried to change things too quickly and too dramatically at the club, but his efforts to break down the club hierarchy, encouraging all the players to use the same dressing room and doing away with single rooms for senior players during away matches, caused resentment straight away.

  In the same way as Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores would later never see eye to eye, Buchanan and Ramprakash never seemed to get close to singing off the same song sheet. Ramprakash had the support of several unhappy senior players, and Buchanan was bundled off back to Australia after only one unsuccessful season.

  To me, it was a missed opportunity. Here was a man who had the ability and qualifications to revolutionise the club, but instead the administrators at Middlesex, perhaps worried about unsettling the senior players, opted to stick to the old ways. Barely a year after his retirement from playing, Mike Gatting was brought back as coach, an appointment that ultimately did not succeed in either improving performances or keeping the team happy.

  As a young player, you are not really aware of the politics of the club. You are striving to make a name for yourself, and your opinion is neither warranted nor required when it comes to the weightier matters surrounding the game. I am thankful, therefore, that I never became embroiled in the agendas and manoeuvring that some of my more established colleagues had to face. Instead, I tried to learn from whoever was coaching at any given time.

  Mike Gatting was fantastic with me. He helped me transform my game, always imploring me to ‘Get back and across, and hit the ball back from where it has come from.’ I think he enjoyed my boyish enthusiasm and saw me and Ben Hutton, my best mate, as potentially the next lynchpins of the Middlesex batting line-up in future years.

  Others, who had perhaps spent too much time with Mike Gatting the player, found it hard to take orders from someone who had been a team-mate so recently. Gatt probably didn’t do himself many favours by allowing himself to be laughed at for various comedic moments. The most notable came when he conducted a meeting about one-day tactics dressed in nothing but a towel, spending the majority of the session shovelling an incredible Gatt-style portion of spaghetti bolognaise down his throat. Ultimately, though, he was just being himself, and the club should have known what type of coach he was likely to be.

  One leader that I count myself very fortunate to have worked with du
ring this time was our Australian import, Justin Langer.

  Somewhat strangely, in 1999, once I had established myself in the side to the degree that I was accorded the privilege of choosing a seat in the dressing room, I found that the only place left was next to Justin Langer, right in the corner. It was one of the marquee seats, usually only available to those who had spent years ‘doing their time’ in the first-class game. I couldn’t understand why no one wanted to sit there. Here I was, sitting next to a successful international left-hander, who was passionate, committed and eager to help out youngsters. This was like manna from heaven.

  It was only when I spent my first game in my new position that I understood my team-mates’ reluctance. As soon as Langer was dismissed just before tea, I noticed players scurrying out of the dressing room at an alarming rate. I was sitting comfortably in my seat, reading the paper, having been dismissed much earlier in the day, and saw no real need to move.

  A little tension rose inside me as I heard Langer swearing to himself on the way up the stairs that led to the dressing room, but I understood the convention by which players who had just got out had the right to vent a little anger for a minute or two, before calming down and rejoining the rest of players, who were watching the game, reading magazines or playing cards.

  As the door slammed open, I watched in bewilderment as the Aussie left-hander stormed through, looking like someone who had exceeded a safe dose of steroids. He swore loudly as he stalked around the room. On eyeing a delicious array of cakes, lovingly prepared by the kitchen staff as a special treat for the tea break, he picked up the tray and smashed it down as hard as he could into a nearby rubbish bin. ‘We don’t ------- deserve these cakes. We are ----,’ he shouted at the top of his voice while the cakes flew in all directions.

  Shortly afterwards, I displayed far better reflexes than I had earlier in the day, out in the middle, and narrowly avoided being hit by his helmet, which was flung from the other side of the dressing room, roughly in the direction of his place in the corner. It was soon joined by his bat, his pads and his thigh pad, before Langer stormed out of the dressing room, heading for the makeshift gym in the physio room to punish himself for his indiscretions.