For example, a big turning point for me was an early four-day second-team game against Warwickshire, with shortened boundaries. I was in decent nick, and 97 not out at lunch, with Swampy also unbeaten in an opening partnership of 160. Goochy, who had made a point of postponing his first-team duties for our match, sat us down, and said, ‘Get yourself back in, don’t give it away, and you’ve got a really big score.’
You’re probably ahead of me here, but, sure enough, I had an airy drive at the second ball of the afternoon session, nicked it and was out. I was expecting a massive bollocking that never arrived, and had to watch, stewing in my own juices, as Swampy got 200. When he was dismissed, Goochy tapped me on the leg, whispered, ‘He’s just got your runs there,’ and walked off.
Enough said.
Graham was old school. Hit the boundary, take a single off the next ball, and get off strike. You’ve got five in two balls. It’s your partner’s turn to take the strain. Simple enough advice to absorb, you’d think, but young players are prone to brain fades and rushes of blood. They unerringly take the wrong option. Though he didn’t show it, it must have driven him mad.
I was sitting next to him, as twelfth man, during a T20 quarter-final at Leicester. Graham Napier, our pinch hitter, was batting at three. When he hit his second ball for six Goochy murmured, ‘Great shot, great shot. Now get a single. You’ve done your job, Napes. Don’t do anything stupid.’ Needless to say, he got out to a huge slog at the next delivery.
Goochy looked in a world of pain. ‘Wanker!’ he exclaimed, in that reedy voice, which seemed to echo across the wilderness. I was desperate to laugh, because the emotion expressed in that single word was hilarious, but had enough common sense to keep schtum. When your coach is suffering for his art, and your foolishness, silence is a shield.
It’s a jarring expression, but you need someone to live the journey with you. A little luck doesn’t come amiss. I was fortunate that Goochy was brought in by Andy Flower as England’s batting coach, initially as a consultant in 2009, so that the relationship we had established at county level could be strengthened and sustained. Trust and respect were mutual. He was prepared to put the hours into me.
International sport can play out frantically, because of the exposure it commands. My mentor continued to deal in quiet certainties. Some days you get out, some days you don’t. Take the long-term view. When I got a low score, he would seek to reassure rather than accuse. ‘We’ll work hard tomorrow,’ he’d say. ‘Don’t look back.’
There were other, better, technical coaches, but no one could rival his understanding of the mechanics of building an innings, the subtleties of game management. Sport is cyclical; he was passing on the formative lessons he’d learned under Ken Barrington and developed in partnership with Geoffrey Boycott.
He used to talk about ‘The Knowledge’. This encompassed the power of concentration, the importance of building a firm base before becoming too expansive. He taught me to study the weather as well as the wicket, and to make sure I was mentally secure in what I was seeking to achieve.
His priority was to make me play positively. He liked it when I was ambitious, looking to score runs rather than merely survive. His logic was, as usual, easy to follow: if you seek the initiative, you are transferring the pressure to the bowler. Don’t give him the respite of shuffling about, soaking up thirty or forty balls for the odd run.
Work hard. Earn the right to play. Trust in your talent and preparation. Groove your movements. Pick up the line. Hit the ball back where it came from. Send the message to the bowler that you know what you are doing. One dog-stick drill summarized the simplicity of the process: I had to do one of three things, drive the ball, leave the ball or execute a forward defensive shot.
Perhaps he had worked out that I was uncomfortable with lavish praise. When I did well, scoring a century or putting into practice something on which we had worked, he knew all I needed was a nod, the odd word. When we made technical changes, I usually made the first move after a lot of contemplation.
It is a dangerous period – you have only to look at the number of golfers whose fortunes have nosedived after making a fundamental swing change. Habits are deeply ingrained and resistant to anything more than gentle evolution over time. In my case, I looked a lot taller at the crease, more natural, when I was with the Under-19s.
The catalyst for change was an average of 28, across two Ashes series. These are the definitive examinations of temperament and technique. I was averaging between 45 and 50 against other nations but falling short against the best team in the world, in the most exposed environment the international game offers.
I rejigged things, revising my technique entirely so that I could hit the ball straighter. It was initially successful, since I had an immediate run of three Test centuries, but I eventually became too rigid. My game had self-imposed restrictions, and it set me up to fail. Goochy’s principles were sound: they had to be reasserted.
Batting is a manifestation of the mind. There were times, on the Ashes tour of 2010–11 and in India in 2012, when I wasn’t exactly in the zone, that Zen-like state snooker players speak of, when everything slows down and doubts are dispelled, but I just found the rhythm. I wasn’t seeing the ball better or quicker, but I had a sense of flow. When I got to the crease it just happened for me, without the battle.
A particular session in Adelaide before the second Test in December 2010 is imprinted on my memory. It was one of those occasions when Flower consciously put us under pressure in the nets. This was the antithesis of cosy, confidence-building training. He told the coaches to discomfort us by flinging the ball aggressively, trying to find the edge or shatter the stumps. If you got in the way of one, tough. It was a reassertion of the old principle of training hard to play easy.
Goochy was hurling the ball down with the dog-stick, the pet training aid which had come into fashion as a perverse aid to practice around 2007. It was a flat wicket, so it wasn’t too tough in terms of an examination of technique, but he was trying to knock my head off, or hurry me into a mistake. Confrontation makes the adrenaline flow.
I left anything that wasn’t hitting the stumps. I was driving, cutting, clipping, pulling anything that was slightly wide or short. I was surprised by the intensity of the feeling of being at ease. I wasn’t forcing myself to score the runs or find the shot. If it wasn’t there to drive, it remained undriven. Everything just happened. After forty minutes or so, when I was error free, Goochy came down to me and said, ‘You’re in good nick. Make it count.’
Some golfers become almost mystical when they talk about that unconscious excellence. I never allow myself to ignore the danger of getting out, but that effortlessness is seductive to any professional sportsman. I don’t experience things in slow motion, like others. If anything, time goes too quickly for me. Occasionally, though, the game becomes metronomic.
The best personal example of that was in Abu Dhabi, playing Pakistan in October 2015. I batted for 836 minutes, after being in the field for two days, in temperatures that rose to 40 degrees. A weird physiological anomaly, known as anhidrosis, means I don’t sweat, but the air was very hot and still. Conditions were simply unpleasant.
Somehow, I entered another dimension. It was surreal, a 528-ball vigil in a near-deserted stadium. I got to my hundred relatively quickly, but after that was as regular as clockwork, scoring thirty runs a session, until I got out, gently top-edging off-spinner Shoaib Malik to short fine leg for 263 just before the close on the fourth day.
It couldn’t be that straightforward, of course. Replays confirmed it was a no-ball. It was a strange sensation: the body, in the end, succumbed to understandable fatigue but the mind remained rock solid. If I am being honest, I surprised myself. I usually refresh myself after every ball by walking towards square leg to clear the mind, but this felt different.
Mental strength, to use widely applied shorthand to the virtues of sustained self-containment, fascinates across sport. It is a very hard
thing to define, but its functionality underpinned a mutually educational visit by the Essex team to Saracens, a rugby club that prides itself on the development of an innovative, performance culture.
These visits are sometimes superficial. The only thing we really took from a similar visit to Ipswich Town FC was an appreciation of how hard the pros kick the ball. Football, I suppose, exists in its own bubble. I’m generalizing a little, but the players weren’t that interested in impressing a bunch of cricketers or sharing insight.
The rugby guys were different. We warmed up with them, playing four-goal football with two balls. It required sharpness, peripheral vision and rapid decision-making, and was hugely enjoyable. We played a bit of touch rugby, shared a fitness session and watched their skill-specific training. They had fun but knew when to work.
They then invited us into their team meeting, where we swapped ideas and examined common experiences. Theirs is a harsh, physically demanding sport, but the best need mental discipline to cope with the relentlessness of the challenge. Their survival gene is also deeply ingrained; they know careers are getting shorter and more intense.
Like it or not, sport at the highest level is not a friendly environment. During my twelve years with England I began to get a sense of who would thrive and who would fall away relatively quickly. It wouldn’t be fair to name him, but one guy, a younger player who had excelled in county cricket, came to me soon after his call-up. ‘This is very intense, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect that.’ I knew he was lost. That’s what it is. Hard. Pitiless. Unforgiving.
The weeding out process begins early. That fifteen-strong England Under-19 squad, judged in hindsight, was probably above par, since seven of us, Samit Patel, Ravi Bopara, Steven Davies, Luke Wright, Tim Bresnan, Liam Plunkett and I, progressed to play senior international cricket.
James Hildreth, who has scored in excess of 16,000 first-class runs for Somerset, can count himself unlucky not to have been given an opportunity in England’s middle order. James is one of the finest county players of my generation. We go way back; his father used to pick me up from Newport Pagnell services on the M1 and ferry us to and from our training sessions at Loughborough University. We were roommates and partners on Tiger Woods golf, during the Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh in 2004. His one taste of the big time was an appearance as substitute fielder in the 2005 Ashes series, when he caught Ricky Ponting off Matthew Hoggard in the first Test at Lord’s.
The fate of others reflects the uncertainty, misfortune and disappointment of professional sport. David Stiff, a fast bowler who took 4–7 against Uganda in one of the group games in Bangladesh, was courted by a dozen counties when he opted to leave Yorkshire. He played twenty first-class matches for Kent, Leicestershire and Somerset, who released him after the 2010 season.
Wicketkeeper-batsman Tom New settled for the role of long-term understudy to Paul Nixon at Leicestershire until 2011. Mark Turner, a medium-fast right-arm bowler, played for three counties over nine years until 2014. Leg-spinner Mark Lawson moved into developmental coaching. Dan Broadbent, a left-handed batsman, didn’t make a first-class appearance. Adam Harrison was forced to retire in 2007 due to a persistent ankle injury.
It is sobering to see a career, the destiny of someone’s dream, summed up in a single sentence. But that is the way of things. Judgement is harsh, often final. Coaches and chief executives wonder what you have done for them lately. Sometimes we all forget we are in a people business. We are dealing with sensitive individuals whose feelings are occasionally compromised by their faults, or their familiarity.
One of my enduring regrets is the way I handled my role in the decision to part company with Graham Gooch as England’s batting coach after the Ashes whitewash in Australia in 2014. We were dealing with a legend of the game, a good man. Without his dedication and selflessness, I would never have become the player I did.
The logic, that we needed to wipe the slate clean after the departure of Andy Flower and the bitterness of Kevin Pietersen’s exit, was cold but understandable. The thought processes involved were pretty straightforward. It was an easy decision. When you get blown away so badly, someone has to take the rap.
Goochy was so close to Andy that I didn’t think we could move forward with the same messages being delivered. We needed a fresh start, the momentum of new personnel. I should have refused when Peter Moores, the new head coach, asked me to communicate our decision. We were, after all, rationalizing his support staff. I had no influence in Peter’s appointment, but a cricket captain’s job description includes the passing on of bad news.
Not only should I probably not have been given the responsibility of doing so in this instance, but also the manner in which I did so was wrong. I should have just climbed into the car and informed him face-to-face. I owed him that. I rang him three times to arrange a meeting, but we kept missing one another, and eventually I told him over the phone. He knew what was coming. ‘Just tell me,’ he said. It was distant and impersonal, unworthy.
This was different from our mutually agreed decision to scale back my personal coaching sessions with him. Goochy had implanted that idea in my brain by asking whether, after ten years working closely together, I needed to listen to another voice. I went to work with Gary Palmer, whose input was purely technical, in the way a swing coach informs a golfer.
But, with England, I blame myself. Faced with the same decision today, I would have done it differently. There was an understandable distance between us for a couple of years, but Goochy is not one to hold grudges and our relationship has repaired. Scars heal, but we should never forget the pain we can inflict, knowingly or unknowingly.
People like him deserve better.
4. Collateral Damage
We need 561 runs to win the first Test at the Gabba, with more than two days to play. Deep down, I know the game has long gone. But I go through my mental checklist, promise myself I will sell my wicket dearly. I will not let them grind me down. Then, just as I am about to walk out into the cauldron, I see something so personal, so painful and so profound that I’m shaken to the core.
Jonathan Trott, due to bat at number three, is putting his pads on across the dressing room. He has welled up until he is unable to stem the flood of tears. In any other environment I would retrace my steps and attempt to console a friend in distress. This is not the moment, nor the place, for instinctive compassion. Millions are waiting, unaware and ultimately uncaring.
There is a job to be done. This may appear heartless, when taken out of context, but I’m on autopilot. ‘Sort that out, just sort it out,’ I tell Andy Flower, our head coach. ‘I’ve got to go out and bat. I don’t care if he doesn’t bat. You make that decision.’ With that I go out with Michael Carberry, who is making his Ashes debut. I owe it to him to normalize abnormality.
Eighteen minutes later he is bowled by Ryan Harris, from the fourteenth ball he has faced: 560 runs to win, with nine wickets left. I look back and see Trotty walking towards me. It is only later that I will truly appreciate the poignancy of the moment, the moral courage it took for him to attempt an innings that bordered on self-sacrifice.
He played compulsively, with a terrible desperation, attempting his trademark clipped shot at almost every delivery. He somehow made all nine runs in our fifteen-ball partnership before he directed a Mitchell Johnson bouncer to Nathan Lyon at deepish backward square leg. The gloom was deepening, literally and metaphorically.
It must have been horrendous for him. It is unthinkable that a game you love so much represents such a threat that you don’t want to expose yourself to the battle. I know the analogy may grate in such sensitive circumstances, but that is what Test cricket is, a battle. For someone of his talent to shy away from the challenge he had confronted so well, so often, asked questions of us all.
We all balance competitive intensity and personal welfare. We all understand the parameters of professionalism. We all admit to ourselves that we occasionally exceed sensible levels
of commitment. We all knew, instinctively, that Trotty was in a bad way. For that trip, at least, there was no way back. We lost by 381 runs on the fourth day, an ominous defeat. In retrospect the tour started to fall apart before it had barely begun.
Some people, who should have known better, said things that should have remained unsaid. Though, to his credit, he subsequently apologized for describing Trotty’s second-innings dismissal as ‘pretty poor and weak’, the Aussie opener, David Warner, was utterly out of order in suggesting he typified a team playing with ‘scared eyes’. He was rightly taken to task by Flower for such disparaging nonsense.
Andy told us in the dressing room that Trotty was flying home. His emotional response underlined the gravity of the situation. Here was a tough coach, an honourable man, who had demanded everything from the group for four or five years. The hard-edged persona he had adopted softened to reveal a sensitive soul who cared deeply for the well-being of the players under his control.
He spoke passionately, emotively and tenderly about events, and the nature of what we do. Trotty was not there and left without a formal farewell. The media were told it was due to a ‘stress-related illness’. A captain in such a terrible situation is torn between his responsibility to the group and his duty of care to the individual. The squad is the rock, the stricken player is in a hard place.
I was obliged to sift through the wreckage of that Test match, in November 2013, for clues or slithers of encouragement. Australia weren’t infallible; we had them at 132–6 in the first innings, before Johnson and Brad Haddin put on 114. Would Johnson, who took nine wickets in the match, be able to keep blowing us away? Would Harris revert to type and struggle to sustain himself physically over a series?
The Autobiography Page 5
