Naturally I was anxious to gain the approval of such a great figure in the game. Although I was being talked about as an up-and-coming player, I didn’t know if I was good enough to go any further in the game. A lot of people didn’t like Boycs but, with time, I grew to like him, respect him and appreciated that he was upfront in his views. It was his honesty and forthright opinions that later made him such a good commentator. He wasn’t always right but he was usually interesting. But you couldn’t be sensitive about what he might say about you or you’d really struggle.
Some of Boycott’s advice was easier to ignore than others. When we were bowled out by the West Indies for 46 in Trinidad in 1994, Boycott, who was commentating, urged us to get forward to Curtly Ambrose. It was the only way to keep him out, he was saying, especially after I was bowled by a shooter from Ambrose after a lot of hard graft for three measly runs. Well, yes, perhaps. But Curtly was about 6ft 7in tall and landing it just on a length, on an up-and-down wicket. Was I really going to lunge forward at someone bowling 90mph? I don’t think so! I decided to keep taking my chances on the back foot.
Once a seed of doubt is planted in your mind it can be bloody hard killing it off. I wasn’t good at it at first and got pretty intense about the whole thing. Stewie was a big help. He’d been in the England team a few years before I arrived. He was the most solid professional I ever met, and his attitude was that if you’d had a bad day you still had to get up the next morning and go through the same routine. ‘Don’t allow yourself to go down too far,’ he’d say. ‘Don’t get too up or down.’ Graham Gooch, my first England captain, was the same. ‘You’ve just got to keep working hard at your game,’ he’d say.
I think I started looking only at the good newspaper comments after reading Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, say that he never read the press after a bad day. Much later, after I’d had my private life dragged through the papers, I was better at reading the bad stuff about my cricket. I was wise to the fact that some of the stuff written about you was plain rubbish. When I gave an interview, I would read the piece to see how it came out and would instinctively categorize it as good or bad.
It wasn’t just criticism you had to deal with but advice, with pundits and ex-players telling you how to succeed at Test level, how to remove those little flaws that everyone was so quick to pick up on. You wanted to learn, so it was hard not to listen, but so much stuff was thrown at you it could finish you if you didn’t quickly sift what to listen to and what to reject. You only had to take in a well-meant few words from one of the TV boys out on the field before the start, and you could find your fears multiplying when you walked out to bat. Robin Smith went through a bad time with his problems against spin, and Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash would probably have loved to turn round and tell a few people where to go. I viewed batting for England as a box into which I could fit only a few pieces of advice that suited my game. Boycott’s mantra that you can’t score runs unless you occupy the crease was one of them. And I also worked out for myself that you had to take some risks to score runs, which built confidence.
Things changed quite a bit during my career. By the time I retired, players could call up a video of themselves within moments of walking off the field. For some, this was a big help because it gave them a better chance to sort out their problems themselves, rather than searching for advice from anyone who happened to be around. I tended not to overdo that side of things. I just kept a few tapes of myself playing well. My attitude was that you could guarantee seeing your dismissals plenty of times when you got back to the dressing-room, and I was more interested in positive thoughts than negative ones. If you were out to a crap shot, admit it and move on. Besides, I didn’t know how to work the laptop!
An interview I gave in The Cricketer magazine in 1994 reflected my attitude towards playing international cricket. ‘You need certain mental qualities,’ I said. ‘At this level everyone has to have ability, so what separates them is the extent to which they apply it to pressured situations. The more you play, the more you learn and the more people try to talk to you. But if you can enjoy it and keep it as simple as possible by playing on instinct, then you’re halfway there: it’s not an easy game, but at the same time you can’t afford to make it too complicated.’
In the end, it all came down to the individual. You had to be strong. No one could hold your hand when you were batting. Once you crossed the rope, you were on your own. You just had to look into your soul and see what you could produce.
IF I THOUGHT the step up to first-class county cricket was big, then the jump to Test cricket was no less of a culture shock. The cricket was so much more intense, more a searching examination of your game than anything I’d dealt with before. Of course, those going into the England side in those days were less well prepared than the likes of Andrew Strauss and Geraint Jones were when they made their Test debuts in 2004. Nowadays, the management go to so much more effort to tutor you about what to expect. And it also helps if the England side you join is in the winning habit, a luxury I certainly didn’t enjoy.
When I made my debut, against Australia at Trent Bridge in July 1993, we were already two-down in the series. England were in quite a bit of disarray, and before the series finished Graham Gooch resigned as captain and Ted Dexter as chairman of selectors. I was one of five players brought in for the match in Nottingham, and four of us were making our debuts; me, and Mark Lathwell, Mark Ilott and Martin McCague who’d win only 10 Test caps between them. Nasser was brought back after a long spell in the wilderness.
The press had been doing their stuff on the selectors, piling on pressure for change, and the response had been sweeping. It was a huge gamble but, with the likes of David Gower, Mike Gatting, Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash unfit or out of favour, there seemed to be a general feeling that it was time for some fresh batting. It was a pretty typical state of affairs, being in the middle of an Ashes series.
I knew by then that, if there were changes, I was in the frame because I’d played in the three one-day internationals before the Tests. By now, Keith Fletcher had been promoted to England coach. After our three A-tours together, perhaps he had put in a word that it was time to give me a go. Fletch didn’t survive long in the job — less than two years — and to me he always seemed under pressure.
Although I was slightly overawed in the one-day series, it was a good place to get a taste of international cricket and I was fairly satisfied with how I performed. I made twenties or thirties each time, and shared a big stand at Edgbaston with Robin Smith who did most of the scoring on the way to a record one-day score for England of 167 not out. However, I got out a couple of times to poor shots when we were in sight of victory, and we ended up losing all three games. I thought I should have gone on and won the match at Old Trafford, but I played like the inexperienced kid I was. I thought, ‘Wow, I’m playing against Steve Waugh and Craig McDermott. I’ve seen them on TV.’ It was the first time I’d played on the big stage and boy did I recognize it.
So, when the Test call came, I felt excited and nervous at the same time. And very proud. I was a bit anxious that I wasn’t in better form, as I was only averaging around 25 for Surrey that season. My fee was £2,300, which I viewed as a fortune — as did my parents, who told me I must save it!
Things were so different then to how they are now. There was no great analysis of the opposition beforehand, no studying of videos. I can’t even remember a team chat. We just had dinner the night before the game at the hotel, a three-course meal, with the seniors having a glass of wine and the juniors like me sitting there trying hard to hide our nervousness. This strange ritual survived for a few more years. We might be joined by the chairman of selectors and the chief executive and committee-men of the club hosting the game, who’d inflict a lot of small-talk on you when all you wanted to do was think about the game ahead. Everything was so much more formal then. I remember there was even a rest day during the game because the Sunday was the day of the