Driving Ambition - My Autobiography Page 6

  ‘This is it,’ I tell myself. ‘This is what you have been waiting your whole life for.’

  Marcus, adopting the role of the senior player, takes the lead down the stairs and into the Long Room. I am amazed by how little space there is. In county games, this area is usually sparsely populated – there may be ten or fifteen members on chairs, with copies of the Daily Telegraph open, settling in for a long day of snoozing and polite applause. Today it is different. I can’t even see the seats. The room is packed with MCC members, all eager to see how England respond to New Zealand’s first innings of 386. There is only a very narrow corridor for us to make our way towards the outfield. As we navigate through this walkway, I am acutely conscious of faces very close to mine, looking at me with a mixture of interest and passion.

  ‘Come on England,’ someone shouts on my left. ‘Go for it, Strauss. You can do it,’ comes another anonymous voice from somewhere behind me. I feel my emotions coming to the surface. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up like rigid soldiers. This feels too intense. I have to keep calm.

  We go through the pavilion door and down the steps. Now, for the first time, I feel the full force of the atmosphere of a packed Lord’s cricket ground. A huge roar erupts as we walk onto the playing surface. The place feels electric.

  I glance around at the stands. During a Middlesex game they are bleak and soulless – great big white elephants that can be intimidating. Now, though, they are alive. There are colours everywhere. There are sounds, chants, smells. Although I have played here all my career, this is a different cricket ground.

  We are halfway to the wicket now and gradually I am beginning to calm down. This part of the ground is no different. The New Zealanders have just completed their pre-session huddle and are making their way to their fielding positions. Stephen Fleming, their inspirational captain, is in conversation with Daryl Tuffey, their barrel-chested opening bowler, who is about to send down the first over.

  ‘Go well, mate,’ Trescothick murmurs to me as he heads to the far end, where he is due to face the first ball. ‘You too,’ I mumble in reply.

  Before I know it, the first ball has been bowled. Trescothick lets it go through to the keeper. Five balls later, the over is finished. It is a maiden. Now it is my turn.

  ‘Two, please,’ I call out to the umpire, with my bat held upright in front of middle and leg stump. I try to say it in as confident a way as possible.

  ‘That’s it,’ returns the voice of Rudi Koertzen, the South African umpire.

  I look around at the field that Fleming has set for me. Three slips, a gully, backward point, mid off, mid on, square leg and fine leg. I count each fielder to make sure that I haven’t missed anyone. The field is regulation. There are no surprises, even though Fleming knows my game pretty well after a spell for Middlesex in 2002.

  I look down at the ground and tap my bat on the crease. I am solely concentrating on the process now. There are no more thoughts. I bring my eyes up to see Chris Martin, a tall, gangly swing bowler who can get them down there quite quickly, starting his run-up.

  ‘Watch the ball,’ I whisper to myself. ‘Watch the ------- ball.’

  Martin accelerates as he nears the crease. He jumps and lets go of the ball.

  It is 21 May 2004 and it is my first ball in Test cricket.

  Anyone who says that luck doesn’t play any part in sport clearly has not played at the highest level. Professional sport is littered with people who chose the wrong moment to have an off day or got injured just as they were about to hit the big time.

  What about the boxer who is on the receiving end of a one-off knockout punch from a far inferior opponent? What about the footballer who hits an excellent penalty, only to see the goalkeeper guess the right way and tip it against the goalpost? What about the Olympic athlete who wakes up with food poisoning on the morning of the biggest day of their career? The list could go on and on. Everywhere lie tales of misfortune that prevented sportsmen and sportswomen from reaching their potential.

  I know the old sporting maxim ‘you make your own luck’ contradicts this argument, but that maxim is there because both coaches and players know that you can’t control luck and so it is futile to worry about it. Far better to concentrate on getting your training right or making sure you are in the best frame of mind to deliver your skill. All that we can really control is the percentages. If you have talent, train hard and are as prepared as you possibly can be, then the percentages shift in your favour. If you are not, then they drift away from you. Luck is still around there in the background, so that players and spectators can never be sure of a result until the final wicket, whistle or bell. That is part of the attraction of sport.

  The England cricket team analyst, Nathan Leamon, who unsurprisingly loves to look at numbers, came up with the remarkable statistic that if an England cricketer makes his debut in England, he is 40 per cent more likely to have a long and successful career than someone who makes his debut away from home. I suppose there is some logic to this. If you start at home, you are more comfortable with the surroundings and you know the conditions. Moreover, the team is more likely to be successful and thus there is less pressure on your shoulders. Conversely, away from home everything becomes more difficult. Unfamiliar foreign conditions, combined with lonely hours in hotel rooms with team-mates you don’t know, make the chances of instant success much less likely. Unfortunately, cricketers have no control over when they make their debut. If a spot becomes available on an overseas tour, your chances of a long and successful career are immediately shortened.

  The reason I mention all this now is that I feel incredibly lucky that I made my Test debut when I did, in May 2004. Five days before the start of the Test match, I had no idea that a Test debut was even a possibility. The England cricket team were riding high after giving the West Indies a walloping in their own backyard, mainly on the back of some outstanding bowling from Steve Harmison. They had a settled batting line-up, with experienced campaigners like Mark Butcher and Nasser Hussain being counterbalanced by younger, more exciting talents. Marcus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff were all making waves on the international circuit. It certainly didn’t look as if a gap was going to open up any time soon, especially at the top of the order, with Trescothick and Vaughan complementing each other so well.

  Fate, however, intervened. During the nets before the first Test against New Zealand, Vaughan slipped awkwardly while attempting a sweep shot and twisted his knee. As he was writhing around in agony, it was apparent to everyone present that he was unlikely to be fit to play the Test match.

  It must be stated that I wasn’t suddenly picked from complete obscurity to make my debut on the game’s greatest stage. I had been part of the England set-up, but only in the one-day format. During the previous winter, I had been selected to tour Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, and although much of my time was spent on the obligatory drinks-carrying duties, I had impressed enough in the nets to be selected for five games. My results had been patchy, with a couple of fifties in the last two games against the West Indies just about proving that I was better than my returns of 3, 29 and 10 had suggested up to that point. Also, over the two months away from home, I had got to know many of the players in the team and felt a little more comfortable in their presence.

  On the back of those performances in the Caribbean, I was next in line for an opener’s spot. Ironically, if the injury had been to anyone but an opener, it was likely that Paul Collingwood, who had been part of the set-up for far longer than me, would have got the nod. Thankfully, I felt in the form of my life. I had come back from the ODI tour feeling extremely confident and had taken it onto the pitch for Middlesex. A couple of hundreds in my last two innings meant that I was in prime touch with the bat.

  The other piece of the jigsaw was that I was playing at Lord’s, my home ground. Obviously, I knew the ground and the wicket very well, having played hundreds of innings there, but Lord’s in the early
2000s was also a batsman’s paradise. If you could just get through the new ball, there were generally no demons to unsettle you, from either seam or spin.

  All in all, it was the perfect situation for a debut. The gods had smiled upon me.

  The ball leaves his hand. I pick it up early. It is on a good length, with a touch of gentle swing away from me. I play a little outside the line of the ball with my defensive shot, knowing that the Lord’s slope is likely to deflect the ball a little from its intended path. The ball hits the middle of the bat and dribbles back towards the bowler.

  ‘Good start, Straussy,’ I murmur to myself.

  The second ball is similar to the first. This time, though, it is a little straighter. The bowler has committed the cardinal sin of drifting onto the new batsman’s pads. If I were Stephen Fleming, I would be cursing under my breath. I close the face of the bat on the ball, feel the solid thump of willow on leather and look up to see where the ball has gone. The square-leg fielder sets off to retrieve it. I call ‘Yes’ to my partner and set off for what would be an easy two. I am up and running.

  There is no doubt that there is a distinct feel to Test cricket. It is the big league. From the moment that I arrived at the team hotel, two days before the Test, I could tell that the atmosphere was very different from my recent ODI experiences.

  My first duty as a prospective England Test player was to sit, as if in court, at a substantial round table while journalists from all the major newspapers and cricketing magazines fired questions at me and then furiously scribbled down my replies in a series of squiggles that bore no relation to written English. I think they call it shorthand, but I still have no idea how they decipher it when they get home.

  ‘It looks as if you are likely to play. How does that make you feel?’ one of the journalists asked.

  I patted back the question as if it was a gentle half-volley, knowing all the time that our media relations officer, Andrew Walpole, was hovering in the background, ready to pounce if I wandered into any dangerous territory.

  ‘Well, if I am selected, I would be incredibly excited. It’s everyone’s dream to play for England, and if you do get the chance, you want to make a success of it.’ I tried my hardest not to sound too robotic, as if my answers were written down in front of me.

  ‘Do you think your introduction into the team will put some pressure on Nasser Hussain and Mark Butcher?’ one of the tabloid journalists asked, trying to lure me into an obvious trap.

  ‘I haven’t been selected yet,’ I answered, wary of saying anything further.

  Over the years, I have come to realise that press conferences are a game in their own right. Print journalists, in particular, are keen to get you to say something even a tiny bit controversial. They have articles to write and readers to entertain. The odd juicy quote here and there definitely helps them.

  Back then, I could sense that they were dying for me to say something about Hussain or Butcher that might be construed as disrespectful or imply that their best days were behind them. It would have been a good story. I could imagine the headlines: ‘Debutant slams ageing stars.’

  Later in my career, I came to enjoy those verbal jousts with the journalists. We all knew the rules of the game and their probing questions were usually met with a wry smile and a stubbornness to stick to my prearranged script. The journalists, in turn, seemed to be as interested in how I managed to wriggle my way out of saying the wrong thing as they were in writing down what I said.

  Before my debut, however, I didn’t know the journalists all that well, so I was guarded and careful. That attitude resulted in the sort of bland quotes that you hear from most sportsmen: clichéd waffle that impresses neither the journalists nor the public. It all comes from having to watch what you say too carefully.

  If my first press conference was a step into the unknown, the preparation time before a Test match was almost equally surprising for me. I was coming from a system where volume was the name of the game. In county cricket, if you weren’t playing, you were travelling. The time for practice was in preseason and the odd morning session the day before a game. The prevailing wisdom was, and still is, that you are employed to play and so you must play. Comments such as ‘We used to play twenty-eight matches in 1963 and it never did us any harm’ seemed to sum up the attitudes of county chief executives.

  There were, of course, some benefits to this system. We were never short of opportunities to play, and if you got in a good run of form, the volume of cricket meant that you were usually able to make the most of it, either in four-day or one-day cricket. Bowlers, as is often the case, got the short end of the stick, having to operate at about 85 per cent for most of the season in order to avoid overuse injuries.

  What was either completely missing or simply paid lip service to was high-quality, deliberate practice, in which the aim of the game is to challenge, push, experiment and improve your game. Practice in county cricket wasn’t practice, it was warming up. In the nets or at fielding practice players went through the motions, knowing that conserving energy was the priority.

  In the England set-up, that notion was turned on its head. Fielding practices were high-intensity affairs, where one mistake was frowned upon and two mistakes were almost unforgivable. There was a whole host of cones, balls, stumps and routines, as well as plenty of support staff to run the sessions. The players knew that this was their opportunity to push themselves and impress, and so they bought into the idea, for the most part. The result was that standards increased, and did so quickly. I had always prided myself on being one of the best fielders at Middlesex. In the England set-up, I was average at most.

  The same attitude prevailed in the nets. Gone were the county bowlers trundling in off short runs, bowling at 50 per cent. In their place were England’s finest steaming in with new balls, determined to win the battle with the batsman down the other end. It was a genuine challenge, and from the point of view of someone who had to face Flintoff and Harmison most of the time, not always a pleasant one.

  Duncan Fletcher was constantly surveying the scenery from behind his sunglasses, making mental notes about players’ strengths and weaknesses. He had an incredible eye for cricketing detail and would as a matter of course notice small things that were picked up by no one else.

  Although there was no place for cruising in this new practice regime, it was surprisingly empowering. To be able to focus on improving your game, to be challenged by a number of different coaches, to feel as though you were being stretched, to finish a session feeling genuinely exhausted – all this was especially motivating. I could feel myself improving by the minute, and it all left me wondering why the county system could not replicate that sort of preparation.

  Duncan Fletcher always used to complain that ‘I should just be putting the roof on the house, but I find myself having to build the foundations as well,’ and I could see how frustrating it must have been for him to deal with players either not ready for Test cricket or too steeped in the traditions of county cricket to buy into his philosophy.

  His answer to this frustration was largely to turn his back on county cricket. He identified some talented players who he thought had the temperament to thrive in Test cricket, picked them consistently and then worked to turn them into the genuine article. Batsmen like Vaughan, Trescothick, Collingwood and myself definitely benefited from this approach, but even Fletcher himself would admit that it was far from ideal. The county system – the system that was meant to be producing England players, which millions of pounds of ECB money was propping up every year – was largely being disregarded by the England set-up, on the basis that it wasn’t doing its job.

  ‘That’s lunch, gentlemen,’ announces Rudi Koertzen.

  I turn and head towards the dressing room. The previous thirty-five minutes have passed in a blur. Never before have I concentrated so hard on batting. I have been out of my comfort zone, but my temperament has not let me down. The attention, the crowd and the chirps from the oppositio
n have all combined to make me focus more, not less. I have made it through to the lunch interval on 15 not out, and the relief as I unstrap my pads is palpable. Most importantly, however, I feel as though I am playing just another game now. I know that I can handle the bowling, I feel comfortable with the conditions and my focus is turning towards getting a decent score, rather than dealing with the distractions of Test cricket.

  I give the magnificent three-course meal at Lord’s a miss and instead opt for a couple of ham and cheese rolls. I never feel hungry during an innings, but recognise that it is important to get some fuel on board. Trescothick and I make our way out of the dressing room just as the weary bowlers are stumbling out of the dining room with bellies full of rack of lamb and treacle sponge. Players love playing at Lord’s more for the lunches than anything else.

  The post-lunch session starts with a few more nudges and nurdles, then, bang, I middle an overpitched ball from Oram to the midwicket boundary. I have reached 30. Daniel Vettori, regarded by most as the best left-arm orthodox spinner in world cricket, comes into the attack. Surprisingly, he bowls from the Pavilion End, where his natural spin is negated to a certain extent by the Lord’s slope.

  ‘Be careful not to play at balls wide of off stump,’ I tell myself as he comes in to bowl.

  New Zealand are forced to set a reasonably defensive field after our positive start, so there are plenty of gaps to work the ball into. A few sweeps and back-foot pushes and I have got myself to 44. Martin returns to bowl. Wide of off stump, I middle it through extra cover off the front foot. Two balls later, short and wide, I throw the bat at it and it whistles away to the boundary for another four. I have scored my first Test fifty.

  I raise my bat to the pavilion and acknowledge the applause from the crowd. This is where playing in front of a full house is brilliant. Gone is the concern about making a fool of myself in front of thousands; now my mind is focused on getting a big score, and having a large number of people supporting you, as well as the honour of playing for your country, helps concentrate the mind.