I didn’t respond, I just kept my mouth shut and hid behind my helmet. I was dropped in the gully before I scored my first run but held up an end in both innings, scraping 15 runs in the first and 16 in the second. But I got a couple of wickets, and good ones too: David Gower, one of England’s greatest left-handers who the previous week had helped England save the Trent Bridge Test against West Indies, and Peter Willey. I was lucky with Gower: he was given out lbw off a big inside edge, something both he and I remember to this day. I made the papers for the first time, my local one writing up my first appearance as a momentous occasion. It felt good.
After my century against the undergraduates, I not only kept my place in the side to play Derbyshire but was moved up to No 3. It proved an over-promotion because I didn’t get many runs. Michael Holding, who was in his mid-thirties but still brisk, was Derbyshire’s spearhead, but it was another West Indian who gave me most trouble. Allan Warner, who had a dangerously quick bouncer, hit me on the helmet twice. Facing Holding was a huge thrill. If anything had got me interested in cricket it was watching the West Indians tour during that long, hot summer of 1976 when I was seven. The sight of Viv Richards with the bat and Holding and Andy Roberts bowling was awesome.
With Alec Stewart fit again for the first team after breaking a thumb, I spent the rest of that 1988 season — one unsuccessful Sunday league appearance aside — back in the second XI. But those two championship games told me I could expect a lot more quick bowling around my head in first-team cricket, and that this was something I’d have to work on. In truth, I was then a limited, orthodox player. I was too static in my stance, really just bouncing up and down on my feet without taking my hands back, but I did present the full face of the bat, was a good fielder and was prepared to work hard at my game. With the help of Micky Stewart, I corrected a tendency to fall to the off side. My footballing single-mindedness and competitiveness was a big help.
I’d cast my eye down the first XI and thought it would take a big effort to break in, but during the winter Monte Lynch broke his leg playing football and was ruled out for most of the 1989 season. I wasn’t called into the championship side for about a month as Jonathan Robinson and Paul Atkins, who like me had made their debuts the previous year but had been on the staff longer, were tried without success.
After that, I didn’t look back. I scored an unbeaten half-century in my first championship innings and, two matches later at Basingstoke, batted all day for my maiden championship hundred. This was a huge stride forward because Hampshire’s attack was led by Malcolm Marshall, who was still playing for the West Indies and was still one of the best bowlers in the world. It helped that I’d played on the ground before in youth cricket, and the wicket was slowish, but Marshall was frighteningly quick and good. I made a horribly nervous start. I had still not got many when Marshall smashed me, via the glove, on the helmet. The ball ballooned up for a catch but, as I began to trudge off, I saw the umpire signalling no-ball and wave me back. Great. So I got to face him some more!
Being small, Marshall’s trajectory was different from most other fast bowlers and he could do everything with the ball, though one of the hardest things for me was coming to terms with the fact I was playing against a guy I’d seen on TV so many times. He was like a god. I’d even pretended to be him in my back garden, for heaven’s sake! That innings made a lot of people sit up and take notice. It showed I was mentally resilient which, I’d later learn, was quite rare for a young player. I’d booked myself in as Surrey’s No 4 and my medium-paced dibbly-dobblers took a back seat for good.
Although I was coping pretty well on the pitch, I found life in the dressing-room difficult. I didn’t have a great relationship with Ian Greig, the captain. I think he was trying to impose a bit of discipline on a side that had seen a few changes in personnel, but he behaved like a headmaster and had a lot of rules which brought out the worst in me. The most intimidating thing was that the dressing-room at the Oval had a wall down the middle, one side for those who had been awarded their first-team caps, the other for those — like me — who hadn’t. You had to knock on the door if you wanted to go in to speak to the senior players. They’d say stuff like, ‘Oi, remember, I was capped in ‘85 …’ or ‘Just watch what you say’ and ‘Remember who you’re talking to …’ Sometimes it was done in a jokey fashion but it felt like I’d joined the army. I definitely felt some senior players didn’t want to give out much advice in case you’d take their place. This regime survived a few more years, and contributed to our continued lack of success.
Greig called me in for words many times. I’d drive in to the Oval, which was two hours from home, grab a sandwich, sit on the balcony eating it and he’d walk in and say, ‘What have we said about eating food here?’ I might have been a bit lippy and sulky at that stage — I was very much still learning about myself — but I had this bloke breathing down my neck from first thing in the morning. It was like he was saying, ‘This kid’s a bit precocious, maybe if we give him a kick now and then he might learn a thing or two.’ But my view was that, if anything, speaking to us like kids made us behave like kids, and it certainly didn’t bring out the best in me.
But there were some decent people like David Smith, who had a fearsome reputation for pinning people against the wall but was actually a good guy, Grahame Clinton who seemed to have seen everything on the county circuit, including every local casualty department, and Monte Lynch, my benefactor, who was a wonderful guy. They gave me a lot of advice. Then there was the young Keith Medlycott, our future coach but then a left-arm spinner who’d been in the first team a few seasons and had seen enough to know he didn’t like what was going on with the dressing-room hierarchy. He’d say to me, ‘This is a load of bollocks.’ I naturally became a Medders supporter. He wasn’t in awe of anyone and just wanted to get the job done, which I liked.
This was perhaps the start of my lengthy tussles with authority. Players are Very different people and yet I didn’t often see much flexibility in the way they were handled. It shouldn’t have been that difficult for someone to tap you on the shoulder and suggest you did something in a particular way, while offering some quiet words of encouragement. But more often I simply saw — and felt — whacks on the head which made me think, ‘Fuck you.’ Especially Ian Greig.
Despite all that, I had a very good first full season with the bat. I scored 1,132 runs at an average of 45, and found myself being written up as one of the up-and-coming England stars. What had made the situation even more exciting was that, for the first time, England were sending an A-team on tour that winter. I knew next to nothing about it but hit decent form at the right time, taking fifties off Lancashire and Essex in the build-up to the announcement. It came during Surrey’s second-last match, over the tannoy at the Oval. First, the full England side to go to the West Indies: Stewie and Medders were in that one, chosen for their first tours. Then the A-tour to Zimbabwe: Darren Bicknell was going, so too Martin Bicknell. And so was I. Brilliant!
I couldn’t believe it. It was a dream to be playing for the Surrey first XI but this was something else. This was major. I must have been on a high and celebrated by playing my biggest innings so far against Kent, scoring 154 and sharing a big stand with Monte, who’d finally returned to the side after his long lay-off.
I had a good tour. The pitches in Zimbabwe were slow and the attacks not very menacing, and I scored runs most times I batted. Scoring is hard work on slow pitches, but I refused to be shackled. I was even on the verge of a century in the final A Test when I was stumped via the wicket-keeper’s pads. Right at the end, news came through that Graham Gooch had broken his hand in Trinidad, and there was a buzz that one of us might be sent to the Caribbean as replacement. In the end, none of us went, but it seemed bizarre that not long before I’d thought breaking into the Surrey team would be hard, and now people were talking about me joining the England squad.
My cricketing horizons broadened in other ways on that tour. I was coached by Keith Fletcher, a former England captain, and played alongside guys like Atherton and Derek Pringle who’d