‘That’s the new overseas player,’ Spoons said.
‘It can’t be,’ I said. ‘He’s fat.’
But one look at Darren Lehmann with a bat in his hand and we knew immediately what a class act we had on our hands. This is someone who makes the game look ridonculously easy. He could have walked into other any Test team in our era and he should have played much more for Australia. His confidence, his personality and his competitive steeliness worked wonders in the Yorkshire dressing-room.
As captain we had David Byas, who was strict, straightforward and basically had the attitude: ‘I’m the captain, you’re not and I don’t really care if you like me, you’ll do as I say.’
Boof, as senior pro and vice captain, was a good foil. He was one of the lads, but if a bollocking needed to be given he wouldn’t hesitate to hand it out. He’s a laid-back guy, but knows exactly when to flick the switch to go into his match mode. That is a difficult balance for a player to strike; few people can do it successfully, but then few people have been as good as Darren Lehmann.
Yes, he liked a beer or three after a game and he was a bit old-fashioned in that way, but you would never find him giving less than his all in a match. I’ll never forget playing in the game after the championship had been clinched at Scarborough in 2001. Two days afterwards, we had a Sunday League game against Nottinghamshire and, in the celebrations of the previous two nights, Boof had certainly not taken a back seat. This was evident from the fact that, before he went out to bat on the Sunday, there was still a pool of champagne left in his upturned helmet from the post-match party we had held in the dressing-room.
When the second wicket fell against Nottinghamshire and his turn had come to bat, he picked up his helmet, swigged the champagne from it, popped it on his head and announced: ‘Right, watch this, boys. This could be special.’
He was as good as his word. He proceeded to score 191 off 103 balls, which was one of the most amazing innings I’ve ever seen. He was playing some incredible shots, down on one knee, hitting it over the keeper’s head, swatting it between fielders with one hand, pretty much doing as he chose. Nobody else could have played an innings like it. It was extraordinary.
A few years later, I shared a bit of a stand with Boof against Sussex at Arundel when the ball was reverse-swinging all over the shop. James Kirtley was curving it wickedly away from me one ball, then back into me next ball, I didn’t have a clue which way it was going to go from one ball to the next. So at the non-striker’s end, Boof said: ‘I think you need a bit of help here, Hog. I’ll have a look at how the bowler’s holding the ball in his run-up. If I hold the bat in my right hand, it’s coming in to you. If I hold my bat in my left hand, it’ll go away. If my bat’s in between, I haven’t got a clue.’ And every time he went right or left, he was absolutely spot on. I had a marvellous time, suddenly started looking like a competent batsman, and there were some looks of genuine surprise on the faces of the Sussex fielders.
In that same innings, Mushtaq Ahmed was bowling at the other end from Kirtley. Boof had reached his 100 by this time and he was ready for a bit of fun, so he said: ‘Right, Hoggy, where do you want me to put Mushy’s next ball?’
I had a look around the ground and said: ‘Oh, just plonk it on top of that marquee, will you, Boof?’
The next ball was fullish in length. Boof bent down to sweep, put his bottom hand into it and duly deposited the ball on top of the marquee at mid-wicket, as requested.
‘OK, Hog, where shall I put the next one?’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go over mid-on this time.’ Sure enough, Mushy’s next ball disappeared over mid-on, and I started creasing myself as I wandered down the wicket.
‘OK, Boof, what’s next?’ I asked.
‘We’re gonna run two into the covers, OK?’
And you can guess what happened next ball. He called it perfectly. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’m not sure I’d have believed it.
And this was against Mushtaq Ahmed, not some second-rate bowler just called up from the second team. I’ve seen plenty of other people try a stunt like this and come a cropper, predicting that the next ball would be a bouncer only to have their middle stump ripped out by a yorker. I might even have been guilty of trying it myself on the odd occasion.
But Boof was different. It was a privilege to play alongside him. And a hell of a giggle.
The winter after we won the championship with Yorkshire, I underwent something of a dramatic transformation as an international bowler. Without so much as playing another game for England, I went from being a novice who had only played two Tests to become the leader of England’s attack. Compared with Jimmy Ormond (one cap), Richard Johnson and Richard Dawson (both uncapped), I was a grizzled, gnarled veteran with the grand total of six Test wickets. We were supported by a couple of all-rounders in Andrew Flintoff and Craig White, but this was hardly an attack to make Sachin Tendulkar toss and turn at night.
This was the tour that came shortly after the 9/11 terrorist atrocities in the US and Andrew Caddick and Robert Croft had opted not to tour. Alec Stewart and Darren Gough had already decided to take the winter off and Mike Atherton had just retired. As a result, we were huge underdogs, there was very little expected of us, but we scrapped and scrapped for everything, and did fairly well to restrict India to a 1-0 win in the three-Test series. Myself and Freddie both did our bit with the ball, and pride was certainly maintained.
This was also the Test series when Phil Carrick’s prediction that VVS Laxman and I, both former team-mates at Pudsey Congs all those years ago, would play each other in a Test match came true. Seven years after he had made it, I was walking onto the outfield at Mohali to warm up for the first Test and I saw Lax having a net with the rest of the Indian lads at the other side of the ground. I looked up to the sky and said: ‘Who’d have thought it, Ferg? You were right.’
Taking on the might of India with a group of spotty youths, we needed a strong and stern headmaster to guide us in the right direction. We had just the man in Mr Nasser Hussain, who did a great job in keeping order in the class. Not that I always saw eye-to-eye with him, and there were a few occasions when I thought I might end up getting the cane. At the end of that first Test in Mohali, we had a massive barney. Or rather, he had a massive barney at me.
We’d been pretty much outplayed throughout that game and our batting had collapsed fairly meekly to 235 all out in the second innings, just avoiding an innings defeat. India then needed only five runs to win, so they opened the batting with Iqbal Siddiqui, a tail-end slogger who had batted at number ten in the first innings.
Nasser didn’t like them doing this. I think he was fairly insulted. As I was opening the bowling, he told me to bounce Siddiqui and make them think twice about doing this sort of thing again. Even though they only wanted five to win, he wanted to show that we were still scrapping.
So Muggins here thought: ‘Bollocks to that, I’m going to try to get him out.’ So I pitched the ball up outside off stump. It was quite a good ball, Siddiqui had a go at it and snicked it through the slips for four. Next ball he clipped one through the leg-side and it was game over.
Back in the dressing-room, I got the biggest bollocking of my life. ‘If I tell you to bowl a f***ing bouncer, I want you to run in and bowl a f***ing bouncer!’ Nasser yelled in my face. ‘You don’t see f***ing McGrath and f***ing Ambrose coming in and bowling piddly half-volleys on leg stump.’ And so it went on. ‘F-this, F-that and F-the F***ing other.’ All of which basically amounted to me getting an almighty bollocking for failing to defend a TARGET OF FIVE.
This happened in front of everybody else in the dressing-room and it made me really upset. When we had to go back out onto the field for the presentation ceremony, I was standing on my own