Because of the glowing report from the A tour, there was some support for the Essex man. Unfortunately, it was not coming from the Essex corner. Sitting on the England Management Advisory Committee were two fellows from Chelmsford, Doug Insole and David Acfield and when the time came to discuss the subject of Atherton’s successor at a specially convened meeting chaired by Bob Bennett, they were unequivocal in their conclusion. ‘Under no circumstances should you consider our chap as captain of England,’ they insisted. ‘He would be absolutely awful. He is far too volatile a character.’
However, Nasser was showing distinct signs of maturing at that time, and those lingering doubts about his temperament did not prevent his elevation a little over twelve months later, following Ashes defeat and an early exit from the World Cup, which coincided with my resignation as England coach. What I would say is that it was on the 1998–9 Ashes tour that Nasser really came of age both as a Test match batsman and as an individual. It was there that you began to appreciate his awareness of the team ethos – to the extent that there was no longer any reason to doubt his captaincy credentials. Yet, even upon his appointment, I am not sure Duncan Fletcher wanted him as his leader. But whatever his initial thoughts, no one can argue about how good a partnership they made. Arguably, people soon began to appreciate that behaviour which may on the one hand be seen as insular or selfish can equally be viewed as a sign of determination and ambition.
Thankfully, for the purposes of this chapter, the position of responsibility did not completely rid him of the petulance and fiery temper for which he was renowned in his youth. As strops go, Nasser’s were of a seriously high standard. We can all think back to our junior and club days and recall some great dressing-room ranters, I am sure, but this guy was an Olympic qualifier. And his best-ever barney is still available to the rest of us in the Sky Sports commentary box now. It came during the opening Ashes Test in Brisbane in 2002–3. Naturally, the first match in any series against Australia is always going to be a humdinger – you throw everything at them and they return it with interest – so Nasser was probably regretting asking the Aussies to bat first, particularly after Simon Jones’s horrific injury in the field left him a bowler light.
In fact, it was Jones’s knee damage that accounted for the presence of two crutches in the England dressing-room. They came into view as a cameraman panned around the Gabba’s stands following Nasser’s dismissal. His camera then fixed on the balcony of the dressing-room, a place of relative serenity, it appeared, with coach Duncan Fletcher gazing up at the television screen, presumably awaiting the replay of the dismissal. Duncan did not move a muscle as Nasser walked in and therefore appeared on screen, directly behind him – there was no ‘Unlucky’ or ‘What’s happened there, then?’ Nothing. He just kept his eyes fixed on the monitor overhead.
Neither was Fletch moved as this bat flew across the room; he just kept staring up at that telly. Never once did he look at his captain. Nasser was remonstrating, arms akimbo, to his team-mates, pointing at the replays. Fletch did not flinch. He probably anticipated what was coming. Unfortunately, poor Simon Jones clearly didn’t, and was not in a position to do anything about it anyway. To release his frustration, Nasser made a grab for the crutches and attacked them with gusto – standing on them, bending them, kicking them. Poor old Simon was just sitting with his leg up, helpless. Goodness knows what he must have thought as he contemplated a serious setback to his international career. We play that episode to Nasser every now and again to cheer him up. It is absolutely priceless television.
Nowadays he takes the rise out of everybody and has a real cutting sense of humour. He is the kind of guy you need to know in order to understand what is going on inside his head sometimes. He loves a piss-take, with a bit of niggle for good measure, and enjoys getting some stick too. But I am not sure how flattering he found physical comparisons to a certain famous Russian when the alert Jonathan Agnew spotted the likeness. Aggers’s photo of Nasser interviewing Graham Onions, with the caption ‘Vladimir Putin talks to President Ahmadinejad’, is the funniest thing I have ever seen posted on Twitter. A cracking lookalike double.
Nasser didn’t often see the funny side of things when he was playing the game, probably because he was so unfortunate when he batted. As a cricketer, he was just Unlucky Alf, so often the recipient of deliveries that nobody else got and nobody on the planet would have played. Miracle delivery, grubber, snorter – Nasser attracted them. Add to that the fact that he was never out – it was either that the pitch was wrong, it was a shit decision or the wind was blowing the wrong way – and you get the full picture. He was just ‘one of them’.
His most unfortunate dismissal came in Trinidad during the 1998–9 tour of the Caribbean, when a delivery from Carl Hooper did for him good and proper. The ball literally rolled along the floor after pitching and hit him on the shoe plumb in front of off-stump. It was a stonewall lbw decision and made him look a bit of a twit. But how on earth are you meant to play a ball like that? I am sure that is what was going through his mind as he trudged off muttering, kicking at everything in his path, his bat bouncing off the floor. When he got to the dressing-room, he found Atherton, his sympathetic captain, killing himself with laughter. What else can you do when a team-mate gets one of the unplayables? We sometimes run the footage back now, during rain delays, if our discussions have taken in batting on tricky pitches, and someone will inevitably ask Nasser: ‘How do you play that? What would you recommend? Commentators have always said you’ve got to get forward. You don’t appear to have …’
‘Forward? Forward? How do you get forward when it’s rolled along the floor like a marble?’ he flames. On some matters time has not been a great healer with Nasser.
Generally he has mellowed with age. At the time of that match at Port-of-Spain, however, his tendency to ire was at its career height, and with that in mind, his team-mates would prepare and protect themselves against the Mount Vesuvius moment. My youngest lad Ben was with us on that tour and was employed as a look-out by big Angus Fraser, who fancied a kip in the dressing-room but was only too aware of Nasser’s appetite for destruction when dismissed.
‘Listen, if that Hussain bloke gets out, you come and wake me up straight away. No messing,’ Gus warned our lad. Now to this day I am not sure whether it was the comic nature of the demise that threw him off guard, a sense of adventure or genuine absent-mindedness, but Ben failed to carry out his task. Poor old Gus was fast asleep as the cricket equipment in Hussain’s path was redistributed around the place. He awoke with a judder, an action which only served to increase the velocity of the rant. ‘So, you don’t want to watch me bat, huh?’ Nasser raged. ‘You would rather go to sleep when I’m batting. Not worth watching, aren’t I?’
So, with one of his mates beside himself with laughter and another snoring as he entered the room, Nasser completely lost his cool and thrust his fist through the front of a wooden locker, an action which brought a premature close to his strop, as he could not pull his hand back out without incurring some serious damage. With splintered pieces pointing this way and that, doing so could have severed his hand, so here he was, his fury not sated but forced to contemplate one of international cricket’s great injustices from a stationary position. Fraser was anything but stationary, as he hot-footed after Lloyd junior, whose ability as a nightwatchman was in keeping with others’ efforts on the tour. ‘Why didn’t you come and wake me up, you little swine?’ Gus bellowed, as he chased our Ben round the back of the stand.
I am not sure Nasser wanted to dwell on his dismissal after freeing his mitt from the hurt locker, or whether there was much mileage in doing so. Had he wanted to analyse the freakery of his downfall, it would have involved a process which seems incredibly antiquated now. Those were the days when cricket