Allan Border had been Australia captain a long time and, in his drive to make them the best side in the world, encouraged them to be pretty uncompromising in the field. They had a few roughnecks and they were a pretty abusive bunch, although sledging never greatly bothered me. I don’t remember the slip cordon saying anything as I took guard, but they’d given me a fair bit of unprintable abuse in the one-dayers so there was every chance that they did. Maybe I was too nervous to hear them. But Merv Hughes, who could dish it out better than anyone, was soon right in there working me over with the ball. His first delivery had no sooner flown past my nose than he said he was planning to kill me.
I think Merv was carrying an injury that game, but he was still snorting and huffing, puffing and staring. In a way, it was like those Saturday afternoons I’d known on the football field, in which the game was played amid undercurrents of fear that someone would do you serious physical harm. Merv gave me a couple more bouncers which I got out of the way of nicely, but then he really let one go which tucked me up and all I could do was fend it off my glove to gully. Shit! What an awful way to get out! That’s not good at any stage but in your first Test … ‘Thorpe, you know what he’s got? A weakness against quick bowling, that’s what.’ I knew what I’d get in my second innings. I couldn’t have advertised it better if I’d painted a big red ‘X’ on my forehead.
Things didn’t get any better. I dropped a chance from Michael Slater that was flying straight over my head as Australia built a small lead of 52 and, by the time we’d lost our top four, second time around, with me about to bat again we were only just ahead. Fortunately, the third day was drawing to a close and Gooch decided to send out a nightwatchman instead of me. To my relief, Andrew Caddick survived until stumps, and I was able to contemplate the second Test innings of my life over a family barbecue at home on the rest day.
Caddick frustrated Australia a while longer on the Monday morning and, by the time I walked out, the Australians were pretty eager to get stuck into me. They were very chirpy and one of the umpires, Roy Palmer, soon intervened to ask if I wanted him to stop all the swearing. I just said, ‘No, I’m enjoying it. Just stop them if they spit at me!’
Steve Waugh and David Boon, both fielding close to the bat, certainly had a lot to say. When I pulled a ball past Boon, crouched at silly point and looking like a Viking with his droopy moustache, he threatened to kill me if I did it again. I kept my mouth shut and got on with the job. As I’d said to Palmer, their words didn’t intimidate me but made me all the more determined to give it my best shot. It was just what I needed.
Predictably enough, they tested me out with more short stuff but, by now, the pitch was flat and I dealt with it okay and, eventually, Big Merv tried so hard to get rid of Gooch and myself he picked up a strain and hobbled out of the attack. My main memory is of Shane Warne and Tim May’s bowling. They were an exceptional partnership, and I look back with immense pride at managing to bat against them for what turned out to be almost a whole day. I owed a lot to Keith Fletcher that I played spin as well as I did in those days. He’d given me a lot of advice with England A, and I always put a lot of value on what he said. This was certainly bowling on another level compared with anything I’d faced before, and I found it difficult to dominate in the way I had in county matches.
I actually found May the harder of the two. My technique against off-spin hadn’t developed by that stage. Previously, my only plan was to run down the wicket and hit it over the bowler’s head but that was unrealistic at this level, against someone with such good control of flight, and who varied his line of attack to an extent I’d never experienced. English off-spinners were very stereotyped by comparison.
Like me, Warne was in his early twenties and hadn’t played a lot of Test cricket but he’d already played a big part in the first two Tests and, one reason I’d been picked, was that left-handers were reckoned better able to cope with leg-spin. I think it did give me an advantage, particularly once I’d got used to how far he was turning the ball into me. Often, he simply turned it too much and I was able to let it go through, and his googly was not that great. But he was incredibly accurate with his leg-breaks, and I’ve never seen anyone drift the ball as much as he did in his early days.
He also had a great flipper although, with time, I learned to pick it from the daylight that would show between ball and hand when his arm was at the top of its delivery. Even at this stage, it wasn’t hard to work out that this fiery character, with his blond locks, white zinc cream on his face and confrontational attitude, was going to enjoy the celebrity side of the game more than me. Once you had played against him a reasonable amount, you knew what tricks he’d got but the first few times were difficult. He hadn’t played in the one-day internationals and I’d only faced him once before, briefly during Australia’s warm-up match against Surrey. I had tried to cut him and missed badly as the ball spun back miles, and he soon had me caught down the leg side.
Now, on a slow pitch, I used my pads to kick him away a lot. Otherwise, I swept him or went back to try tucking him away on the leg side. Once, I attempted a drive through extra cover but the ball spun straight back past me and I decided against a repeat. In my early encounters with Warne, I found I could stay in but not really dominate. At Edgbaston, later in the same series, and at Brisbane, the following year, I batted around four hours for 60s. In the first innings at the Gabba, I’d tried to take the initiative by going down the wicket but he did me in the flight, I checked the shot and ended up chipping back a return catch for 67, and it was not until much later in the series that I felt confident enough to take more risks against him.
In that second innings at Trent Bridge, it was made easier for me that Gooch was batting so well at the other end. He was the senior man and I just tried to stay with him. I didn’t really know Gooch then. I’d only occasionally played against him in county cricket. He was constantly practising and couldn’t understand why others weren’t like him. When it came to training he was ahead of his time.
He carried a set of dumb-bells in his bag and, if he didn’t get any runs, he’d go off for a run or to lift weights. We put on 150 together and he just kept encouraging me. ‘Keep going,’ he’d say. ‘Keep going. Don’t give it away.’ A good partnership is often just about careful encouragement to keep going, battle hard and never throwing in negative thoughts.
We went a long way towards making England safe and, when Gooch was finally out, Nasser took over and kept me company for the rest of the day. At stumps I was 88 not out. On the last morning, Gooch told Nasser and I to score runs as quickly as we could before he declared. We were too cautious and ended up setting Australia 371 in 77 overs but, having spent the series being battered into the ground, it was natural, I suppose.
I got off to a good start by hitting a couple of boundaries. Then, on 97,1 had a real swat at a bouncer from Brendon Julian, a future Surrey team-mate. I looked up and thought,’… Oh, shit!’ as the ball sailed high in the air and I saw Slater running towards it. Fortunately, Slater dived but couldn’t quite make the catch, and the ball bounced just in front of him and over his head for four. Though it didn’t set up the win we wanted, scoring a hundred in my first Test was thrilling. For the first but certainly not last time, Nasser and I found ourselves together at a special moment in one of our careers, but what I remember most clearly was the congratulation of Border. Despite having been totally uncompromising throughout he shook my hand and said well played. Typical bloody Aussie!
This performance, of course, pushed me firmly into the public spotlight. I was the first England player to score a century in his first Test for 20 years. I felt like a shy school kid and cringe when I remember the TV and press interviews I gave after the game. As Peter Roebuck wrote about my post-match interviews, ‘Here was a man out of his depth.’ In the following days, I received lots of letters of congratulations, and gave a few more interviews, but thankfully didn’t delude myself into thinking I’d made it