Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain 1992
Copyright © David Gower Promotions Ltd 1992
David Gower and Martin Johnson assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
Tabular statistics supplied by Bill Frindall
Photographs supplied by Patrick Eagar, David Gower, Graham Morris, Adrian Murrell/Allsport and Syndication International
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Source ISBN: 9780006379645
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008235468
Version: 2017-01-13
Contents
ONE: Fun, style and excellence
TWO: Laid back – and think of England
THREE: A millionaire? That’s rich
FOUR: On the piste and on safari
SIX: ‘Bloody hell, Gower. Have you just come in?’
TEN: A new board game: spot the England captain
ELEVEN: Steward Micky, Malcolm Devon and sacked again
TWELVE: On thin ice, and pressed into service
THIRTEEN: Baron von Gower’s low-flying circus
FIFTEEN: You must be ****ing joking
THIS book was conceived in the autumn of 1991, following a somewhat disappointing season of below par achievement, and with the problems of the 1990-91 tour of Australia still very much in mind. It was a time when the fortunes of my personal career were at a low ebb, and I was not at the peak of my form either in terms of performance or mental outlook.
There were several questions in my mind, which no doubt were also being asked elsewhere, largely along the lines of how I was going to approach the rest of my career, and whether or not I was going to be able to regain the sort of form that would allow me the chance to pass Geoff Boycott’s all-time England run scoring record, a target that had been there for the taking in Australia.
My subsequent omission from the Test side and ensuing poor form, with my perfectly logical further exclusion from that winter’s touring party, meant I had already begun to accept that number two in the list might be as far as I would ever get. This in itself was no problem as I could quite easily convince myself that what I had already achieved was not an overall disaster – and besides there are always other challenges in life.
However, a positive attitude was what I needed to begin the 1992 season in good shape, especially in view of the other potential problem lurking in the back of my mind. I knew that if this season did not bring success, I would be thinking very seriously about retiring from the game. My spirits were definitely at a low ebb!
Happily, I returned to Hampshire in April in the right frame of mind, and started the season in good enough form to realize those targets. My most important task was to try and convince people that my intention to play cricket for England for some years to come was entirely genuine. There were those, even in positions of power, who suspected that the Boycott record was my only motivation, a suspicion that I resented and strongly wished to dispel. Whenever a potential milestone has loomed on the horizon, I have always regarded it as incidental to the main course of events and taken the stance that if the job is done properly in the first place and often enough, then milestones will come and go automatically.
On the other hand, there is no point