Again, words were unnecessary. I merely smiled at him as well. I was getting the hang of this psychology lark.
7. Honesty
Truth can be toxic in international sport, if expressed thoughtlessly. Emotion is a potentially dangerous commodity if it is unchecked in a team meeting and criticism becomes personal. Yet, when the alternative is deception, wilful ignorance of broken relationships and collective weaknesses, the risks are worthwhile.
We did not know it at the time, but the Honesty Meeting, called immediately after we had been bowled out by the West Indies for 51 to lose by an innings and twenty-three runs in Jamaica in February 2009, marked the moment England’s ascent to being the best team in world cricket began. It was harsh, horrible at times, but cleansing in its candour.
Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss, a new head coach and captain appointed on an interim basis, had every right to be livid after a terrible performance in their first Test in charge. There could be no hiding place, no room for self-deception, since defeat exposed divisions and demanded a fundamental change in approach and attitude.
It was probably the first time I had spoken with true honesty and openness in such a situation. It could have developed into a free-for-all, because some people had been bitching about others being more interested in haircuts, cars and clothes than serious training, but I felt it was time to make a simple statement of fact and commitment.
I was very emotional, on the edge at times, but tried to be rational. I acknowledged I hadn’t been scoring enough runs for England. I’d been out for thirties and forties, and hadn’t scored a hundred in fourteen months. That wasn’t good enough. I’d been falling down on my job, as an opener, to score big runs to set up wins.
‘If I don’t start scoring runs I will be dropped,’ I told the room. ‘I don’t care what anyone else is doing, but I’m not doing my job for the team. I’m putting pressure on number three, four and five. I need to buck my ideas up and deliver the goods. Everything is in place for it, but it is down to me to bat, to front up, to stand up. We can talk all we like about achieving, blah, blah, blah, but if I do that, we’ll all be better off.’
Andy, who was chairing the meeting, seized the moment. He said it was the first time anyone in the group had admitted to vulnerability and put their contribution into a team context. That sort of honesty, he insisted, was essential if trust was to be restored, and talent was to be explored. Change is only possible when people are prepared to admit the need to change.
We left the room, after several hours, with a determination to draw a line under a difficult period during which Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores had been sacked as captain and coach, respectively. We had been all over the place. There had been too many excuses, too much distraction. We needed to be more honest in our assessment of where we were, and what we did.
Our skill levels needed to improve. We had been too casual in our debriefing. The remnants of a drinking culture needed to be tackled. There had been too much blame and bullshit. Our fitness levels and mental durability were not good enough. Our decision-making under pressure was flawed. Were we tough enough? That’s not macho posturing, but an essential asset when you are building a long innings or remaining sharp for hours on end in the field in 40-degree heat.
Our training became more physical; instead of the sanitized setting of the gym, we did weight sessions on the outfield. We started boxing, using pads. We consciously challenged ourselves. Were our minds truly open? Successful teams have greater willingness to share experience proactively and to think positively.
The farce of the second Test in Antigua, abandoned after ten deliveries because the outfield resembled a cross between quicksand and one of the island’s 365 beaches, provided almost light relief, and marked a turning point of sorts. I proved something to myself by scoring an unbeaten 139 and 94 on a very flat pitch in Bridgetown, and the West Indies showed admirable resilience in saving two Tests with one and two wickets in hand.
There was something salvageable from what remained a naturally talented group that needed direction. At a post-tour meeting at Loughborough we set the collective goal of being the world’s best. We needed the certainty of that target. A home Ashes series beckoned that summer, and beyond that, in the winter of 2010–11, lay the acid test of a series Down Under. It was a relief to concentrate on cricket, knowing that Flower and Strauss had the authority to take things forward.
The group had been fractured during the preceding tour of India by the magnitude of events and the misplaced force of personality. Dressing rooms inevitably breed alpha males, and friction had become wearing. KP’s relationship with Freddie Flintoff was extremely difficult; the tension between KP and Moores was equally marked.
Comfort is an alien concept in elite sport, which cannot be allowed to become too relaxed because it is by nature intense and all-consuming. Our issues had been complicated immeasurably by the fallout from the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. We had suffered a fifth consecutive defeat to India in a scheduled seven-match one-day series when news filtered through.
I had been recalled to the team and opened with my county teammate Ravi Bopara. Since we had never done so for Essex, let alone England, it typified a squad searching, with increasing urgency, for balance and impetus. It was a quiet, hour-long journey back to the team hotel; like many, I dozed fitfully. Mobile phone coverage was intermittent, at best, but I suddenly received a text from a friend: ‘Are you OK?’
Others were obviously getting the same sort of messages, because people were whispering, ‘Oh my God, have you heard?’ without being entirely sure what was going on. All became clear a couple of minutes later when, as the bus pulled to a halt, our security guy, Reg Dickason, stood up and announced the attacks. A group of us, including Jimmy, Swanny and Freddie, headed for the communal TV and spent the next four hours or so watching events unfold.
We could barely have been further away from the incidents while being in the same country, since we were staying in the satellite city of Bhubaneswar near Cuttack on the east coast, some 1,000 miles from Mumbai on the west coast, but watching the Taj Mahal Hotel, one of our tour bases, burn was eerie and disturbing. The Middlesex team had been due to arrive the following day; it was all too close to home.
Coverage was graphic: you saw people dead and dying in the streets. The ramifications were horrifying. Indian TV anchors were blaming Pakistan for the terrorist outrage, which killed 170. Breaking news is the same the world over: it feeds off itself. What was going to happen next? There was talk of war and retaliation. It didn’t seem right to be sitting there; we all had anxious conversations, reassuring loved ones back home.
We still had gear in the Taj Mahal, and pressure increased when reports emerged that terrorists originally planned their attack for earlier in the month, when we were staying there. They apparently abandoned a recce due to the intensity of the security. Understandably, we were ordered not to leave the surreal setting of our palm-fringed resort.
I felt for KP. His first tour as captain had been far from easy, even before he was subjected to the strains of an international incident that had political and diplomatic dimensions. Like most of the players, I wanted to take the common-sense option of leaving the country and allowing things to settle before deciding whether to resume the tour.
I was still relatively inexperienced, a little naïve in the ways of international sport. With the hindsight of my experience of captaining England, I can now appreciate the consideration given to the financial implications of cancellation by the respective cricket bodies in India and England. TV income was in jeopardy, and a Test tour was under threat. As a figurehead, KP would have been under pressure to take the party line.
KP addressed a team meeting and insisted we should stay. He argued that he wanted to do so because, as a fierce competitor and a proud captain, he hated the thought of being unable to stem a losing run. To be frank, in such a frenzied atmosphere, a lot of people didn’t believe that. They wondered ab
out a potentially ulterior motive, of maintaining popularity in India at a time in which the magnitude of the IPL was inescapable.
That competition could have been created for someone of KP’s charisma and technical brilliance. He can be a compelling performer and knows how to play to a crowd. But, privately, he was struggling to sustain his authority. There was no overt hostility, but cricketers, like all athletes, are sensitive to mood. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but Freddie called a team meeting from which the captain was excluded. He was insistent we should leave.
We departed after a two-day hiatus and spent four days at home before flying to Abu Dhabi while Reg assessed proposed Test venues in Chennai and Mohali. He was joined at a pivotal team meeting in the UAE by Hugh Morris, managing director of England Cricket, and Sean Morris, chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association.
Reg insisted it was safe to return and promised blanket security. I had been digging around, researching the situation as best I could. Indian newspapers were talking about us being protected by a phalanx of 300 commandos and 5,000 other security personnel. A thousand police were assigned to enforcing a lockdown at the team hotel – superficially reassuring, but hardly likely to encourage a settled state of mind. Knowing Reg as I do now, a decade on, I should have trusted him. His responsibility, his priority, has manifestly been our safety. Yet, at the time, I was cynical about the influence of the Indian cricket authorities on the world game. They were certainly not short of financial muscle.
Cricket had been in the crosshairs before. Three New Zealand teams had been caught up in terrorist suicide attacks, twice in Sri Lanka, in 1987 and 1993, and again in Pakistan in 2002. As things turned out, we were little more than three months away from the attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore, which sadly succeeded in its primary political aim of isolating Pakistan from the rest of the world.
Something didn’t feel right. Freddie and Steve Harmison were dubious about returning. Jimmy and I were the last to agree to do so. It was a hugely sensitive situation; Graeme Swann spoke of waiting for ten years for a chance to make his Test debut and was determined to fight for the opportunity. He told us: ‘This could be my only chance to play Test cricket, so I’m going.’ Such passion swayed many of the team because they identified with the force of his ambition.
I’m so glad we did so, because we saw at first hand the healing power of sport. On arrival in Chennai each of us was presented with a garland of flowers and marked with a tilaka, the traditional Hindu red spot placed on the forehead to signify health and prosperity. The sense of respect and gratitude from the Indian public was almost overpowering.
Cricket seemed an indulgence, and character had a different connotation, but Straussy showed his substance by trying to carry us over the line in Chennai with scores of 123 and 108, supported by Paul Collingwood’s second-innings 108. Swanny made his debut and featured in a footnote of cricket history when India chased down 387 to win by six wickets on the final day.
Fate kindly placed him in the company of Sachin Tendulkar, who had been promoted as a symbol of national unity and resistance in the wake of the attacks. His call for the nation to come together had been replayed endlessly on TV. An impassioned address ended with the words: ‘I play for India. Now more than ever.’ On 99 and needing four to win, he steered Swanny’s delivery to the long leg boundary. The place went nuts.
We drew the second Test in cold and foggy conditions in the north of the country and flew home for Christmas Eve. It was not entirely the season of goodwill to all men. The personality clash between KP and Moores required a solution, though the captain was not the only player to doubt the coach. I had known Peter from his Academy days, loved his enthusiasm and responded to his intensity. Several others, including Straussy, felt his approach masked certain shortcomings.
Things were coming to a head as the New Year approached. I parked up near my home at the time, in the village of East Hanningfield in Essex, to take a call from Hugh Morris. With very little preamble he asked: ‘Who should go, KP or Moores?’ His tone suggested it was not his first conversation along those lines. It seemed a deceptively simple summary of a complicated situation.
Culture change in sport is rarely straightforward. This transition had to be placed in the perspective of Duncan Fletcher’s eight-year spell as England head coach, from 1999 to 2007. He was hugely influential, extremely successful, very dour. A hands-off coach, whom some believed gave senior players too much power, he was, in emotional terms, the antithesis of Moores.
I told Hugh that Peter was a very good coach who would respond to the lessons of his retention. I didn’t think KP had the temperament to remain as captain, though I stressed the importance of his playing presence. As it turned out, the fate of both men was sealed. Moores readjusted in county cricket and KP returned to the international ranks.
It had not been a tight ship. There was no common, overarching goal. Individual agendas led to inconsistency. As we approached the 2009 Ashes series, we craved an anchor point, something to hold on to. Andy Flower used statistics to back up his argument that we had fallen below the standards demanded and delivered by the Australians.
The group contained strong characters, very talented cricketers, once-in-a-generation players. Freddie was approaching the end of his career, but a powerful team could, and would, be built around Strauss, KP, Paul Collingwood, Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Swann, Broad and Anderson. Jonathan Trott was waiting in the wings to make an indelible mark by scoring a maiden century at the Oval to set up the series win.
The skill of leadership is to respect the stridency and experience of senior players while nurturing younger members of the group who might not have the confidence to be vocal. There is no Utopian solution, but when it came to team building, we set great store by actions rather than words. We had the honesty to concede we were nowhere near our capacity.
We split into groups of four or five, with the task of returning to the group with our vision of what we wanted to be. The seeds had already been planted, subtly, by the management group, but the players felt empowered. When shortcomings were pointed out, they were couched not as accusations but as evidence-based reflections.
It was a democratically led dictatorship, a contradiction in terms that felt perfectly normal from the moment Andy and Straussy, in conjunction with team psychologist Mark Bawden and statistician Nathan Leamon, put things in black and white. They provided the parameters for our professed ambition, of becoming number one.
Our bowlers were performing close to the capacity required of a world-leading team. As a side we were conceding 2.9 runs an over; the target was just under 2.7. Our batsmen collectively averaged 37; we had a bigger gap to bridge, since that would need to be improved to around 45 if we were to fulfil our objective.
Nathan, known as ‘Numbers’ to all and sundry, loved this sort of stuff. He wasn’t, and isn’t, your average geek. A former maths teacher with eight, largely self-taught A levels, he played rugby league for Cambridge University, wrote poetry and had a novel, which centred on a dysfunctional Test dressing room, published in 2017. Hmmm …
As vice-captain, I had been able to play a minor role in challenging him during the formation of the strategy. I played devil’s advocate, insisting he was merely stating the obvious in numerical form. His response was swift and effective: he produced a series of potentially positive outcomes in the forthcoming Ashes series, ranging from a 5–0 whitewash to a narrow 2–1 victory, and extrapolated the consequences.
He calculated it would take between two and three years to become world number one, if results went the way he expected, and we delivered our promised levels of commitment and performance. This, remember, was at a time when analytics in cricket was in relative infancy. By the time of the 2017 Ashes, ‘Numbers’ was breaking down the pitch into twenty blocks, each 100×15 cm, to illustrate the optimal block for each bowler to target against individual batsmen.
Modern players devour the video
footage sent to their online Dropboxes. Coaching staff utilize a match-specific dossier, combining video and statistical analysis. Computer simulations factor in weather forecasts and analysis of the pitch surface. Though our game still lags behind Major League Baseball in this area, since MLB’s 162-game regular season is a more comprehensive sample size and their sport has fewer variables, it is catching up fast.
A mathematical equation still can’t be framed to include the influence of mutual trust and respect. Human factors require greater sensitivity, more subtle consideration. The Ashes series in 2009 was the first time I had been in an England team with a truly common purpose. We needed only to look around the room to realize our aspirations were realistic.
Most of the group had been through the initial cycle of international cricket, which features success, failure, survival and revival. That process is vital, because anyone who emerges with his game intact and his mind fresh has a good chance of longevity and substantial success. The principle applies across sport; England rugby union coach Eddie Jones points out that the profile of a World Cup-winning team features players who have won a total of between 750 and 800 caps.
In my first Test, against India in 2006, Michael Vaughan had made fifteen Test hundreds, and Andrew Strauss seven. Ian Bell and KP had two apiece. Paul Collingwood, like myself, made his maiden hundred in Nagpur. The core of the Indian team had scored between ten and thirty centuries each. Not quite men against boys, but maturity offers an obvious advantage.
It took less than half an hour to appreciate the logic of the next phase of team development, focusing on the notion of our so-called super-strengths. This had its greatest impact once we had reclaimed the Ashes, following a warm-up series at home against the West Indies, where I played myself into a modicum of form by scoring 160 in the second Test at Chester-le-Street.
The Autobiography Page 10
