‘I’m coming, Banger.’ he called out to me. ‘I’m coming out to bat.’
No one was quite sure if this was supposed to be some kind of gag. But Andy, his hand wrapped in bandages and hanging limply from his side, kept on coming, the match was still on and we needed 17 to win.
‘Right, Banger,’ Andy breathed all over me. ‘You get the runs and I’ll just run.’ And that is what we did, up to 604 with just eight to get, when I turned a ball from Edmond behind square on the leg-side and Andy called out ‘YEESSS …!!.’
The problem was Andy’s judgement was still somewhat impaired, so much so, in fact, that he hadn’t noticed the fielder coming round to try and restrict us to the single that would mean he must face the bowling.
‘Run two!’ I shouted as we crossed, knowing I had to protect Andy from the bowling at all costs. I nearly made it too, but a direct hit from Mike Powell beat me by a foot, run out for 322, my highest-ever score in any form of cricket, made from 417 balls, with 53 fours and three sixes.
As a result I was soon back in the 1st XI and the club decided to persevere with me for a couple more seasons at least, and set about finding ways to help me over the hurdles I kept bumping into.
It took another season at home and two winters away for me to finally crack it.
Their first idea was to send me to Australia to get fit and, playing for Melville in Perth alongside Andre Van Troost and Jason Kerr, I did, swimming in the sea, playing golf with my mates and good standard grade cricket against players like Justin Langer and Damien Martyn. The whole experience of fending for myself definitely helped me grow up fast, even though I suffered occasional moments of homesickness and realized I was missing Hayley a lot, especially as the house we all shared in Cottesloe was worse than my first lodgings in Taunton. The thought of sleeping under the stars might appeal to romantics but this was different. I was gazing up at the stars through the holes in my bedroom ceiling and any piece of food that wasn’t nailed down was pinched by rats the size of bears.
But I was determined to get through it and the regime instigated by a coach called Peter Wishart made sure we were kept busy. Up at 7 a.m. to do yoga and stretches, breakfast at 8 a.m., then either play or train in the morning, have lunch, train some more in the afternoon and finish off with a race against the great whites in the evening. The day we arrived in Perth we read reports of a shark attack so that kept you on your fins.
While I had some success with the bat, it was only when I returned to Perth the following year to work with Peter Carlstein, the world-renowned batting coach from South Africa whom English counties enlisted every winter to help out their young players, that I was finally able to make the breakthrough.
Peter took a thorough look at my game and confirmed what we already knew, that my strength outside off-stump was also my biggest weakness. The fact was when bowlers put the ball in that area, I never knew when to leave well alone and ended up chasing everything.
Of course, with the power and eye and timing I possessed, if it was my day I would still be able to score plenty. But when it wasn’t, or the ball deviated slightly off the seam I was dead in the water. For three years, any one of a number of seasoned county and sometimes Test bowlers would line up to bowl just around or outside off stump with a full array of slips and gulley and just wait for me to play one shot too many. My worst and most humiliating experience came when I batted against the canny Indian pace bowler Javagal Srinath in a Benson & Hedges match. He bowled at me for about six overs and I reckon on average I must have played and missed about four times an over. And by now my feeling of win some/lose some had been replaced by the horrible fear that if I didn’t come up with an answer soon I would be finished for good.
Peter and I discussed the issue and he devised a new plan. Instead of saying that’s my game, that’s what got me this far and if it’s risky, so be it, we set about overcoming my instincts and retraining my brain.
Instead of playing the game the bowlers wanted me to play I would say to them: ‘No. If you want to bowl out there, that’s fine by me. Bowl there as long as you want to but I’m not playing your game anymore.’
One aspect of Peter’s training was utterly ruthless, and its roots lay on the beaches of the Caribbean. They say that one of the reasons the great West Indies batsmen of the past were not only fantastic, exuberant strokeplayers but also able to occupy the crease for long periods, was the first law of beach cricket; when you’re out, you’re out. In those days most of these guys learned their cricket playing on sand flattened and hardened by the sea and when it was your turn to bat you made sure you made the most of it because when you were out you wouldn’t get another go until it came round to being your turn again, and with so many kids wanting to play, that might be days.
Peter employed the same principle with the group of us he was coaching now. He would set a maximum time for you to bat in your session, with the bowling machine cranked up to speeds in excess of 90mph, but no minimum. It wasn’t ‘half an hour each, lads – enjoy yourself’ net practice. As soon as you were out against the bowling machine, whether it was first ball or the 1,000th, that was that. Any loose or flabby off-side shot and I would be sitting on my backside waiting for as long as it took for all the other guys in the group to get out as well and for my turn to bat to come round again, and that could take ages. It didn’t half concentrate the mind.
A golfer will tell you it takes about 3,000 reps to change a golf swing. It took me about 3,000 balls from bowlers and bowling machines to get me to the point where I could actually make my own conscious decision about whether to play at the ball or not, rather than just see it and try and hit it.
And then, finally, one bright clear, hot Perth day, in the middle of making 180 for Melville against Gosnell, one ball in particular told me I was going to be all right.
I saw it leave the bowler’s hand, and I recall watching it so closely that the rest of what followed happened in super slow-motion, even though the ball was travelling around mid-80s mph. I saw it pitch about two yards in front of me and slightly to my off-side and realized I had all the time in the world to make a clear choice whether to play it or not. And in the instant I made my decision to leave it, a small happy bomb went off inside my head. I’d got it. By George, I’d got it.
* * *
In 1999, cricket in England was at a pretty low ebb. England’s 1998–99 Ashes trip had ended in a 3–1 defeat. David Lloyd, the coach, had been on a final warning from Lord’s after his comments about the bowling action of Muttiah Muralitharan the summer before and, soon after returning from Australia, ‘Bumble’ announced he would be stepping down at the end of England’s involvement in the forthcoming World Cup. The main contenders for his job were Bob Woolmer, the former England Test batsman currently coaching South Africa, Dav Whatmore, Sri Lanka’s coach and Duncan Fletcher, the Zimbabwean who had gained a big reputation for his work with Western Province in South Africa and later Glamorgan, but not big enough for Simon Pack, the ECB official interviewing him for the job, who greeted him with the words: ‘Hello, Dav.’
It was England’s turn to stage the World Cup that summer, and that gave me the chance to face Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne for the first time, though I’m fairly certain that, for them, the event did not go down as one to tell the grandchildren. Australia, with Glenn, Shane, Mark and Steve Waugh, Michael Bevan and Shane Lee far and away the best team in the world, came to Taunton for a warm-up match, the highlight of which was when I pulled the best pace bowler of his generation for four. ‘Not bad,’ I thought to myself. ‘Not bad at all.’ I looked towards him to see if I might have earned a reaction, a ‘good shot, mate’, a wink, a growl, anything would have done. Nothing. Not a glimmer.
From the host nation’s point of view, the great global celebration of world one-day cricket was a complete cock-up from start to finish. The ICC marketing department decided to hire Dave Stewart from the pop band