Driving Ambition - My Autobiography Page 7

  Oram sends a couple of full balls down the leg side, which I get down to the fine-leg boundary. Easy runs. Vettori is proving more difficult, bowling from the other end. He seems to have settled on a line which makes it difficult to score singles, and the presence of two fielders around the bat unnerves me.

  I have a decision to make. Either I suck up the pressure and play out a couple of maidens, or I take the game to him, hit one over the top and hopefully open up more options if Fleming changes his field. A well-known cricketing cliché is ‘If your heart and your head say to go for a big shot, then do it. If your heart says yes, but your head no, then refrain.’ I size up the situation. We are 160–0. Marcus Trescothick is on 72 and I am on 76. We don’t want to lose a wicket now, but it is important to keep the momentum going. I know that I only have to get half a bat on the ball and it should go over midwicket for four. I decide to take on Vettori.

  The ball is well flighted. I skip down the wicket, get to the pitch and middle it over midwicket for a one-bounce four. Adrenalin surges through my body. I have taken the risk and it has paid off. Fleming hastily positions a man at deep midwicket and takes out one of the men around the bat.

  Scoring is starting to prove more difficult now. The fields are defensive and the ball is getting softer. It takes me ten overs to get from 80 to 90 and I am getting edgy. I am frustrated about scoring slowly and the thought of getting a hundred on debut is starting to consume me. I am thinking too much about the final result, getting a hundred, and not enough about the process, getting ten runs. I resolve to play every ball on its merits, but the adrenalin is flowing.

  Martin bowls a length ball wide of off stump. I should leave it, but it seems like the first wide ball I have received in days. I flash at it, only to hear the snick as it catches the inside edge of the bat. There is another sound. I look back to see the ball travelling down to the fine-leg boundary and my stumps intact. ‘What was that noise?’ I think to myself, but decide to forget about it and concentrate on the next ball. Television replays later show that the ball clipped off stump but did not dislodge the bails.

  Three balls later, I think that I see a bit of width on a short ball from Martin. I prepare to cut it. There is no width after all and I end up having to steer it through gully, where Oram dives low but cannot hold on to the catch. I run through for a single, but berate myself for trying to invent scoring shots.

  I am now on 96. It has taken an age to get the last six runs and I can feel the anticipation in the crowd. Everyone seems to know that I am going through a difficult patch and is willing me to get through it. I, on the other hand, am hating the pressure. The emphasis has changed from he could get a hundred to he should get a hundred, and that makes things much more difficult. It is now a battle with myself and my emotions. The bowlers have been trying to get me out in vain for hours and are now resigned to waiting for me to do something to get myself out. All I have to do is wait patiently and score off the bad deliveries, but I am finding it difficult to keep concentrating. I have an almost uncontrollable urge to hit a boundary. Scoring a four is going to relieve all the pressure and take me to a hundred, but I have to wait for the right ball.

  Tuffey bowls me one short of a length. I see it early and play my favourite pull shot. I feel the ball come off the middle of the bat and look up, expecting to see the ball whistling to the square-leg boundary. I have got it a little fine, though, and the fine-leg fielder moves swiftly to his right to cut it off. I am now on 98. Martin starts another over.

  ‘Surely,’ I think to myself, ‘it has got to happen this over.’

  I let a couple of length balls go through to the keeper, but now adrenalin is really coursing through my veins. I am so close. Another length ball. This time I try to take a risk by hitting through the line, but the ball bounces more than I anticipate and I am fortunate that it finds the splice of the bat rather than the edge.

  Mark Butcher casually walks down the wicket. He has seen this all before. ‘Keep watching the ball, Straussy. In a minute he is going to bowl you a wide one, and you are going to smack it through the covers for four. Be patient.’

  I nod in reply. Martin runs in again and lets go. The ball is full and wide, just as Butcher said. I slash at the ball and feel solid contact. The ball has gone between the two cover fielders, and as I look up, I realise that I have just brought up my hundred. I sprint to the other end, knowing that the ball is going for four, but I’m not sure how to react. I punch the air and wave my bat with so much force that I nearly fall over.

  In one moment, all the tension, adrenalin, fear and nerves leave my body, to be replaced by pure unadulterated joy. I raise my bat to my team-mates, all of whom are on the balcony cheering me on. I look around the ground. Everyone is on their feet cheering. The giant scoreboard displays a message: ‘Congratulations Andrew Strauss on scoring 100 on debut.’ I cannot believe this is happening to me.

  It didn’t matter how bland I was in the post-play press conference because the expression on my face said it all. I had just achieved the boyhood dream. How many times have aspiring young cricketers found themselves in their back gardens, or on a quiet residential street, with a bat in hand, pretending that the next ball they are about to face is going to bring up a hundred at Lord’s on debut. I know that I did it many times.

  People sometimes say that achieving your dreams can be anticlimactic, as though the realisation is like reaching the end of a book. You want more but know that it is impossible – the journey is finished. Well, in my experience, that certainly wasn’t the case. Maybe it was because I knew that my journey had not finished. In fact, it had just started. The warm glow in my stomach told me that I had achieved something fantastic. I had graduated to the next level in the most emphatic style. I had proved to myself that I could handle the pressure of the occasion. I had made my friends and family proud. I was part of a new ‘Test cricket centurions’ club, whose members included all the greatest players. And I had done it all on one glorious Friday afternoon in May.

  New Zealand in England 2004

  1st Test. Lord’s, London. 20–24 May 2004

  New Zealand 386 (M.H. Richardson 93, C.L. Cairns 82;

  S.J. Harmison 4–126) and 336 (M.H. Richardson 101, B.B. McCullum 96; S.J. Harmison 4–76)

  England 441 (A.J. Strauss 112, M.E. Trescothick 86) and 282–3

  (A.J. Strauss 83, N. Hussain 103*)

  England won by 7 wickets.

  2nd Test. Headingley, Leeds. 3–7 June 2004

  New Zealand 409 (S.P. Fleming 97, M.H.W. Papps 86; S.J. Harmison 4–74)

  and 161 (M.H. Richardson 40; M.J. Hoggard 4–75)

  England 526 (M.E. Trescothick 132, G.O. Jones 100, A. Flintoff 94,

  A.J. Strauss 62) and 45–1 (A.J. Strauss 10)

  England won by 9 wickets.

  3rd Test. Trent Bridge, Nottingham. 10–13 June 2004

  New Zealand 384 (S.P. Fleming 117, S.B. Styris 108) and 218 (A.F. Giles 4–46)

  England 319 (M.E. Trescothick 63, M.P. Vaughan 61, A.J. Strauss 0;

  C.L. Cairns 5–79, J.E.C. Franklin 4–104) and 284–6 (G.P. Thorpe 104*, M.A. Butcher 59, A.J. Strauss 6; C.L. Cairns 4–108)

  England won by 4 wickets.

  England won the series 3–0.

  5

  TOURING

  To me there has always been something wildly exciting about the word ‘touring’. At school, I somehow missed the opportunity to go on one of those overseas adventures organised by the teachers and followed, with great enthusiasm, by the parents. I think I was just plain unlucky.

  In fact, the closest I ever came to going on a fully fledged tour while at school was with my prep-school rugby team and the destination was Scotland. A week of freezing weather ensued and although we played against the cream of the crop as far as Scottish schoolboy rugby was concerned, I arrived back in the safety of the Home Counties a little underwhelmed by the experience. I was younger than most of the other boys, I had not established myself in the team and
supporting from the touchline for most of the games was not a pleasant pastime by any means. If I learnt anything from that particular tour, it was that going on tour and being a bit-part player is certainly not all it is cracked up to be.

  In truth, I longed to be able to go on a cricket tour as a schoolboy. Radley College had made the journey to Barbados a couple of years before I had made my way into the XI, and the combination of warm winter sun, exotic beaches and good competitive cricket in alien conditions sounded like bliss. Alas, it was never to be, but the thought stayed with me.

  Once I graduated to the professional ranks, touring became an even more intriguing proposition. Sitting in the bar, listening to Angus Fraser or Phil Tufnell talking about the ‘1994 tour to Australia’ or the ‘1998 tour to West Indies’ got the juices flowing very quickly. Some of the stories were hilarious, filled with details of incredible highs and lows on the field, but also intriguing behind-the-scenes information. Anecdotes over a beer about celebrations, partying with the rich and famous and nightmare journeys on the subcontinent were far more interesting than anything that happened in the middle.

  What really made me envious, though, was the way they could casually switch from one tour to another. A typical conversation would go along the lines of:

  ‘Gus, remember that night in Jamaica in 19-- after we won the Test match. What a night that was!’

  ‘Tuffers, you muppet, we didn’t win the Test match in Jamaica that year. You are obviously talking about the tour before in 19--. Either that, or you went out celebrating after we lost by an innings and plenty.’

  ‘Oh yeah … I always get confused about tours to the West Indies. Can’t think why!’

  The room would then fall about in laughter.

  Cricketers around the country would have given an arm and a leg to get on each and every one of those tours. (Well, maybe a couple of those West Indies tours in the early 1990s might not have had such a long list of volunteers. Walsh and Ambrose still carried a venomous reputation.) By talking about them, they were, probably unknowingly, showing everyone just how good they were. They had been part of the inner sanctum, the holy of holies of English cricket, so often that they couldn’t remember which series they were talking about. That made me both full of admiration and jealous at the same time.

  What also intrigued me about touring was just how hard the cricket seemed to be. During my formative years, throughout the 1990s, I would religiously turn on Test Match Special during the overseas tours and hear the difficulties the English team were having dealing with the pace of the West Indian quicks in Antigua, or the guile of Mushtaq Ahmed on a turner in Karachi, or for that matter the canniness of Eddo Brandes, the chicken farmer, in Zimbabwe. In truth, we were just like Guinness. We didn’t travel well. The odd victory raised hope that perhaps this tour might be different, but by and large we got beaten up by the top teams. South Africa, the West Indies, India, Pakistan and, of course, the impregnable Australia all sent us home with our tails between our legs. Oh, I should probably also add Sri Lanka and New Zealand to that list.

  I couldn’t work it out. We were usually competitive at home, but as soon as we took on opposition teams in their own backyards, the cream of English batting disintegrated under a barrage of bouncers, googlies, reverse swing and dodgy umpiring. Clearly something mysterious went on in those faraway lands.

  It goes without saying, therefore, that there was more than a little trepidation in my mind as I packed my bags for my first ever Test tour with England, in 2004–05. The destination was to be South Africa, with a little stop-off in Zimbabwe for four highly contentious ODIs. I was particularly excited about going to South Africa. Clearly, it was a country that I knew extremely well, and although there was bound to be a bit of stick directed at me for my South African roots, I had a sneaky suspicion that one of my new ODI team-mates, Kevin Pietersen, complete with his blue hair, strong Durban accent and three lions tattooed on his arm, would most likely act as a lightning rod as far as the South African public were concerned.

  I knew, though, that South Africa were a particularly tough proposition at home. The last tour had started in the most pitiful of fashions, as a new-look England side, under the guidance of Duncan Fletcher, had subsided to two runs for four wickets on the opening day of the first Test, en route to a series defeat. This time, however, things were different. We had won our previous seven Test matches in a row, had a genuinely hostile bowling attack for the first time in decades and had left English shores with bucketloads of the most precious and elusive ingredient of success, confidence.

  First, however, we had a difficult tightrope to walk in Zimbabwe. For those in the side who had been part of the 2003 World Cup debacle, when the England team eventually decided against going to Zimbabwe and in doing so lost the opportunity to win the World Cup, the situation seemed all too familiar. Whether cricketers liked it or not, politics and sport did mix. There were far too many examples from the past, such as the sporting boycotts of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s or the decisions by the USA and Russia not to compete at the Olympics in 1980 and 1984 respectively, to see that the two were inseparable.

  The political issue for the UK government was a tricky one. Clearly, things had gone horribly wrong in Zimbabwe. In what was once dubbed the breadbasket of Africa, the population was struggling to sustain itself as forced farm seizures and mismanagement had rendered the agricultural industry ineffective. Inflation was running into the realms of fantasy, as the Zimbabwe dollar became completely worthless. The historic close ties between Zimbabwe and the UK meant that our government was under pressure to do or say something to show that what was going on over there was unacceptable. Unfortunately, the government knew that heavy sanctions, or sporting boycotts, would add fuel to Robert Mugabe’s assertion that Zimbabwe’s tribulations were the result of an imperial conspiracy.

  The result was that the UK government on the one hand said that the cricket team should not go to Zimbabwe, but on the other hand were unwilling to step in to give the order not to go. The England Cricket Board, in turn, ran the risk of financial disaster if it chose not to undertake a tour without express objection from the government. The outcome was that the cricketers were unwitting pawns in a great big game of politics and they were the ones who had to answer the difficult questions.

  Eventually, we all trudged our way into Zimbabwe for a ten-day period. It was one of the bleaker experiences of my life. The games of cricket were largely meaningless. Zimbabwe were shorn of most of their best players, who had left the country to follow their careers elsewhere. The result of the series was never in doubt, but seeing a country being brought to its knees, with looks of complete hopelessness on everyone’s faces, white and black, gave me a far better perspective of the situation in the country.

  Looking back, the fact that British journalists were allowed into the country for the first time in many years, and also reported back on some of the harrowing scenes, just about made the trip worthwhile in my opinion. We didn’t change anything that was going on out there, but perhaps it added a little attention to the proceedings.

  As we arrived in Johannesburg from Harare, much of the angst that had accompanied us in Zimbabwe abated. Now we could appreciate and enjoy touring with England as it was supposed to be. There is no doubt that when you are travelling as the England cricket team, you are noticed. Thirty-odd people wearing the same uniform, accompanied by vast amounts of sporting baggage, always causes a stir among the holidaymakers or business travellers at an airport.

  Also, being such a large group gives you certain privileges. There is offsite checking-in, usually in an airport hotel, so a lot of the hassle of travelling is taken out of your hands. Certainly in the subcontinent, where cricketers have a far higher profile, special VIP rooms are prepared for the team and the obligatory passport checks take place in a far-off space, while the players are sampling a cup of tea and being waited on hand and foot. On one occasion, travelling in Pakistan, we were sitting on the
top deck of a Pakistan Airways Boeing 747 when we were asked if anybody wanted to come to the cockpit and watch as the plane landed in Islamabad Airport. Most of the guys were either asleep or listening to their iPods, so I thought I might as well take them up on the offer.

  I was shepherded to the door of the cockpit by the flight attendant. She then knocked on the door, which was unlocked by a particularly unimpressed co-pilot. This was in 2006, five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers, and it was clear that passengers coming into the cockpit of a commercial airliner was against protocol. The co-pilot, who was in his thirties, was no doubt concerned that this was likely to lead to some sort of career-threatening disciplinary matter. The pilot, on the other hand, in his fifties and obviously a cricket nut, was like a giddy schoolboy.

  ‘Mr Strauss, thank you so much for coming. I love the way you play the game. Very good cut shot. Shoaib Akhtar is very quick, no? What about Inzamam, he is the best, I think. Freddie Flintoff is a great player too. How do you like our country? It is an honour to have you in my aeroplane.’

  His monologue came thick and fast and I barely had a chance to think of a reply to one question before another barrage of cricket-related probing headed in my direction.

  ‘I loved the Ashes 2005. What about that catch against Gilchrist? Kevin Pietersen very good player. Which is your favourite city in Pakistan? Do you think we are better than India? I think we will beat you 2–1 in the series. English players cannot play leg-spin bowling.’

  As this line of questioning continued, I looked through the windscreen and could plainly see the lights of the runway in the distance. We were less than five minutes away from landing. In fact, it was clear that the co-pilot was getting more than a little agitated by the lack of attention being paid by his more experienced colleague. As he was talking into his headset, no doubt communicating with air traffic control, he threw a withering look in the direction of the pilot, who finally got the message.