I already had a place at University College, London, but between my mother and the headmaster at King’s it was deemed to be a good idea to stay on at school and try for two more A levels. This is where I lost enthusiasm. In the summer of 1974 I had played a few games for Leicestershire 2nds and their under-25 team in the previous school holidays, and had rubbed shoulders with the likes of Micky Norman, Maurice Hallam, and Terry Spencer, scored a few runs, and had an offer to join the county the following season. This also had an extra bearing on a distinct lack of application concerning these two extra A’s. So I went to the headmaster, told him I’d had enough, and he more or less agreed that I was wasting my time. My mother was upset, of course, but off I went to Leicestershire and said, ‘Here I am, I’m yours for the summer.’ Mike Turner said, ‘How much do you want?’ I replied, ‘How about £20 a week?’ He said, ‘I’ll give you £25,’ and we shook hands on it. This to me was bliss, though the wages and my attitude to the game have both changed somewhat since.
I’d enjoyed my previous summer’s cricket, and Leicestershire represented the next beginning in my life. I’d arrived at Marlborough House at the age of eight which was a bit intimidating, starting again at King’s was much the same, and believe it or not, so was turning up at Lutterworth for Leicestershire 2nds versus Middlesex 2nds. Even though a certain amount of natural eye and ability got me through okay, the one thing I remember most from those first senior games was how much I struggled against the turning ball. Good spinners take a long time to develop, and I had hardly any previous experience against this type of quality bowling. Still, here I was back for a full summer, living at home with no overheads and no commitments, and getting paid what for me at the time was a handsome amount of pocket money. I knew I would be taking up my university place in London come October (Mike Turner was the first to advise me not to abandon the academic option), and although to a certain extent I was playing as the carefree amateur, deep down I think I was already two thirds of the way towards full time cricket. The summer of 1975 did nothing to alter that view. Leicestershire won the championship for the first time in their history, in which I featured in about three games, and I also played in half a dozen Sunday League matches.
I was never that committed to university, where the only thing we really had in common was the fact that the place was situated in Gower Street. I was supposed to be studying law, but in the six months I was there I learned a good bit more about kebab houses in Charlotte Street. The best way to put it is that we parted company by mutual consent the following summer, and almost before I knew it I was playing in a Benson and Hedges quarter-final at Worcester. I forget who was missing from our side, but I opened the innings and got thirty-odd, which was satisfying enough at the time, even if we did lose a high-scoring match.
‘Bloody hell, Gower. Have you just come in?’
THE first game I played for Leicestershire was a Sunday League match. I’d been in The Hague for an under-19 youth tournament, playing for England North against sides from Holland, Belgium and Canada. I got a stack of runs there, and won a bat as batsman of the tournament, so I was in a pretty good frame of mind when the team caught the ferry back across the channel to Harwich. I got a train to Liverpool Street Station, tube to St Pancras, train up to Leicester, and phoned my mother from the station to tell her that I was just about to get the connection to Loughborough and would she be so kind as to come and collect me? She said, ‘Oh no, darling, I think you had better stay in Leicester and get a taxi to Grace Road. They want you to play this afternoon.’ She was right. John Steele was injured and I opened the innings with Barry Dudleston. It was very sudden and I was too tired to be nervous, but I do remember thinking that the Surrey attack was a little more tricky than Belgium under-19’s. Caught Skinner bowled Intikhab 11. ‘Gower played one or two pleasant shots before falling to a careless stroke,’ according to the Leicester Mercury. Doesn’t sound like me, does it? He must have been mixing me up with someone else.
My next match was also in the Sunday League at Grace Road, against Sussex, and I appear to have made 21 before getting out to another spinner, John Barclay. The Mercury man must have spotted something, though, as he wrote: ‘Gower, slung in at the deep end at 28 for 2 from nine overs, showed a great temperament and is clearly a man with a big future.’ I got a couple of fifties later on, and I made my championship debut that year against Lancashire at Blackpool. The match was drawn, and I made 32, batting at No 7, before being caught Reidy bowled Shuttleworth. I don’t remember how, but the one thing I do recall from that match was dear old Raymond Illingworth, ‘Illy’, blowing a gasket in bizarre circumstances. During the course of an unmemorable century from David Lloyd, our wicketkeeper, Roger Tolchard, had missed stumping him off Illy because he was standing too far back. Tolly then got injured, Barry Dudleston took the gloves, and soon afterwards he whipped off the bails with Lloyd about a yard out. Unfortunately, the bails fell back into the grooves on top of the stumps, at which point Raymond exploded. He booted his chewing gum up in the air, and frothed: ‘Well, bugger me. One useless (expletive deleted) can’t reach t’bloody stumps, and t’other useless (expletive deleted) hasn’t got strength to knock t’bloody bails off.’
I didn’t play the next game – possibly because of lily’s tantrum at Blackpool, we played two wicketkeepers, or at least David Humphries made his debut as wicketkeeper and Tolly played as a batsman. I then played against Northamptonshire (0 and 21) and my only other championship match that summer came in fairly unusual circumstances against Kent at Tunbridge Wells. I was actually 12th man, but Brian Davison went home to Leicester when news came through that his father-in-law had died. The game had already started, but Mike Denness gave permission for me to step in, and although I didn’t contribute much (1 and 11) it was a vital match in the championship, and we sneaked home by 18 runs. It was an average start to put it mildly, but it was marvellous just to be involved that year. We not only won the championship for the first time, but also the Benson and Hedges Cup.
I was a bit wet behind the ears to begin with, and had turned up for pre-season training in a suit. I had no idea of how I should be dressed for my first day at the office, as it were, but it appeared to cause a fair amount of mirth. I was very shy and retiring to begin with, but the atmosphere at the club under Illy was so good that the little boy lost feeling didn’t last very long. All in all, this was to be a good summer and a turning point in my life. The attractions of a career playing cricket meant that from now on the idea of pouring over books in the law library was never likely to be a serious rival.
I might never have gone on to become a full time professional cricketer had it not been for the death of my father in 1973. When the various crises came at school, only my mother was around to deal with them, and knowing my father’s determination for me to pursue an academic career, things might have turned out very differently had he still been alive. I was 16 when he died. He had been ill for two years – a combination of Hodgkin’s disease and Motor Neurone disease, which by and large comes under the umbrella of Multiple Sclerosis. He had not been working, and was gradually fading away. The brain remains very sharp, but the body just gives up. Eventually he got too weak to do anything at all, and went into hospital and died. It left a big gap.
Because I was away at school so much it probably helped me cope better than I otherwise might have done, and it was harder for my mother than it was for me despite her own independent and strong character. I’m sure he would have tried to be a bit sterner on school matters, but he was very supportive