Most of Nasser’s preparations these days are to do with going somewhere for free, or at an hour which will allow him to be in bed before dark. He might have earned a reputation as a rabble-rouser as a cricketer, but he is fairly chilled in his everyday life. We wind him up something rotten about being tight, and he lives up to the reputation, but I hate to admit he can be quite generous at times. That’s not to say that if he sees something for nothing, the eyes do not light up. He always enjoys things more when he’s on the cadge. One of the first questions he asks when we get up to anything on days off is ‘How much will it cost?’ And it never ceases to amaze me how the best golf courses Nasser has ever played always seem to be the ones that offered a complimentary round or were paid for by the sponsors or hosts. If you are out for dinner with him, he will often disappear as soon as the main course is done, which means he lopes off without paying. It makes it look as if he’s a blagger but, in the interests of truth and to collapse a myth, I can confirm that the settling up is done the next day. It is not the fight with the moths he is concerned about in opening his wallet at the table, he just has a habit of hitting the hay by nine o’clock.
There are rumours that he sleeps in his cap, because off screen you rarely see him without it. Indoors or out, he perpetually has that sports casual thing going on. He was wearing it one day as we drove on the freeway in South Africa, on the way back from a round of golf, when we got pulled over at a compulsory road block. Men who wear caps for the hell of it always arouse suspicion, and so when he produced his driving documents in the Afrikaaner heartland, I warned him: ‘I think we’re going to be here for some f—–ing time, what with your name an’ all.’ Neither of us was quite sure what was going on, but this burly policewoman was chuntering away completely in Afrikaans. She was not in the upper percentiles of the country’s intelligentsia, shall we say, and with communication at breakdown, and the process seemingly interminable, I started ordering my breakfast. ‘I’ll have double egg, bacon, sausage and tomato,’ I began. She had waved us on before mention of the fried bread, so the distraction tactics clearly worked.
We didn’t want her sifting through her records for too long, because Nasser could easily have been a feature on there. He had already crashed two vehicles on the trip – those Hertz hire jobbies which are the size of a mobile home – to earn the tour nickname Mr Magoo. One day, in Port Elizabeth, we set off from the hotel, with a little lad running alongside us, dodging through the traffic. Nothing too unusual in that: you often get cricket-mad lads who will do anything in their desperation for the signature of a former England captain. But it was not a pen he was holding up, it was part of our charabanc that had fallen off. Nasser had scraped the side of the car, and this lad was saying, ‘Your trim, sir.’
As it happened, his signature was not required at the time, adding insult to injury, but it was needed later in the piece as he had to fill in a form for the car hire company to register what had happened. So imagine his surprise when we got to Durban and he discovered an even bigger motor to handle. Unperturbed by the challenge, Nasser was intent on taming the beast, only to run it straight into the garage wall of the hotel.
There are some lovely drives on a tour of South Africa, and Nasser, bless him, had volunteered to be chauffeur. It was a call of duty, in fact, that led him to turn down the privilege of playing golf at the picturesque Fancourt, a course on the Garden Route, designed by Gary Player. He took a call from Paul Collingwood, inquiring whether he would like to make up an eight, as they were one short, but to his eternal credit he did the decent thing and turned them down. That was touching, as before the £300 fee for the privilege of a private flight and eighteen holes was mentioned, he had seemed keen. ‘I’m sorry, I really can’t let my mates down. I’m needed to ferry them around as designated driver.’ Once a team man, always a team man, I guess.
David Gower – the Lord of Cool?
Nasser has always had a reputation for having a feisty side, but it may come as a surprise to some that Lord Gower also has something of a volatile temper. He is an extremely good presenter, a very clever bloke who does everything in a typically laconic manner, and never appears to be flustered. Truth is, he never is when it comes to being on air, but off screen, boy can he blow a fuse. Beneath that chilled exterior – his style as a presenter is so reminiscent of the way he batted – there is some fire. From nothing he will erupt, then as quick as a flash the lava is cooling, and he has calmed back down again.
He has always been that way, but you remember him as a player for being a wonderfully relaxed batsman. I played against him a fair bit, and cricket for him was all about having fun. He played for sheer enjoyment, and if anything went wrong he would simply say ‘sorry’. He would not be bothered, there would be an apology by way of recognition if he nicked off in a pressure situation, but he would not be overly concerned. Within seconds he would be more interested in the whereabouts of the book he’d been reading before he went out into the middle.
I recall one County Championship match in which I was officiating at Grace Road when he played absolutely magnificently, as only he could. It was a pleasure to stand and watch as he caressed, eased and touched the ball here, there and everywhere. Overnight he was 70-odd not out, and his innings was the kind that made you look forward to play resuming. Next morning, in the very first over, he had an unbelievable hack at this nondescript delivery, the ball went straight up in the air and, as he trudged off from whence he came moments earlier, all he could say was: ‘Oh dear, the lights seem to have gone out.’
Things naturally came very easily to him, he was a touch player and has always been good at whatever he has put his mind to. Holding things together in that presenting role is a real knack and not something I could ever do. Some can, some can’t, and I am in the latter category. What David has got – and Ian Ward also has this, by the way – is an ability to flit from being instructed to instructing with natural ease. When you sit watching them on screen, you may not realise that while they are talking, bringing people like myself into a wider debate with their questions, they also have directors and producers rabbiting in their ears.
The biggest compliment I can pay him is that he always makes me feel calm, and that is exactly what you want in my position. With him I always know where I’m going, what he wants us to talk about, why he wants to talk about it and that we will get there in a smooth ride. With the way international cricket is screened around the globe these days, you can often be working for other networks or sharing resources, and my experience of other presenters can be quite the opposite. At times you are sitting in a studio thinking, ‘Crikey, where are we going now?’ But Lord Gower makes me feel at ease, which is an essential part of his job.
He has made that presenting role his niche, so I don’t have much interaction with him in the commentary box. Neither do I see a great deal of him outside work. While I play golf, he could think of nothing more boring. He is much more likely to set off for historical sites such as battlefields, no doubt in search of his ancestors, rather than do something as mundane as hit a golf ball around for four and a half hours. He would class that as absolute purgatory. And just as he would not engage me in conversation about a 1996 Château Margaux, I wouldn’t try to persuade him to join me for a pint of Chiswick in the Lord’s Tavern, among the Barmy Army. That’s just not him.