I was nowhere near my peak and failed to make another century that summer (the next would come on Boxing Day, in Durban). However, without making any assumptions of selection, I felt secure within the group. It had the usual loud characters, like Swanny and Matty Prior, though they were capable of sober reflection. We drew on the emotional energy of Freddie Flintoff as he played through the pain of a chronic knee problem after announcing his impending retirement before the second Test, at Lord’s.
There was a point of difference, though. Intriguingly, and perhaps decisively, the group that went on to become number one consisted mainly of introverted characters. That is extremely unusual in an elite male sports team. Strauss set a measured tone as captain. Senior players, key achievers like Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, myself and, latterly, Jonathan Trott were inclined to withdraw into ourselves.
Critically, we were alive to the challenges of character. We each knew our default mechanism under pressure was to keep our own counsel and concentrate on making the very best of ourselves. If those instincts were unchecked, we would hesitate to contribute in team meetings, preferring to internalize information rather than share deeper thoughts. When things were tough, we consciously forced ourselves to speak up, because that was what the side needed.
This was where the paradox of Kevin Pietersen became apparent. He applied himself superbly, following his demotion, before being forced to withdraw from the second Test, and the series, after surgery on his right Achilles tendon. He had put himself on the line when the injury flared up in the spring, but a regime of rest and pain-killing injections had only short-term success.
He came across to me as a fusion of two different personalities. The introvert – let’s call him Kevin – is driven, a deep thinker about the technicalities of his batting and the intricacies of the game. The extrovert – the alter ego we will refer to as KP – is a colourful, compelling character, thrilling in his intensity and creativity.
I’m no psychologist, but any captain learns to read people. My hunch is his insecurity flicked the switch and made him extroverted almost to command. If he felt under threat, he would be the peacock strutting around, showing his multicoloured tail feathers. He probably needed that exhibitionist streak in order to bat at his best.
That’s no criticism, by the way. We should celebrate our differences, since in psychological terms we are all colours of the rainbow. I’ve already mentioned I was defined a cool blue, fond of structure, discipline and organization. Greens were earthy people who cared deeply about personal relationships. Swanny was an obvious yellow, brash and insistent.
In current terms, Ben Stokes is a classic red, fiery and emotional, but personality colours can bleed between boundaries. We learned over time to accept Andy Flower as a blend of blue and red. His attention to detail underpinned his coaching style, but he responded aggressively if he felt standards were slipping.
He made a pivotal intervention in that Ashes series, after we surrendered the initiative, and the series lead, in the fourth Test at Headingley. We failed to live up to our promises to ourselves. It was an ugly defeat, by an innings and eighty runs, that threatened to undo all our previous application and adventure.
The tone of our work had been set in the initial Test at Cardiff. Once Colly’s admirable resistance, in scoring 74 runs with soft hands and hard-headed defiance, had been broken, Jimmy and Monty Panesar batted memorably for sixty-nine excruciatingly tense deliveries to save the day. That unbroken last-wicket stand was like a buddy movie – part comedy, part drama.
We built upon that reprieve in the second Test, our first Ashes victory at Lord’s since 1934. I was trapped leg before by Mitchell Johnson for 95 after an opening stand of 196 with Straussy. His monumental 161, combined with Freddie’s five-wicket farewell to HQ as an international cricketer in Australia’s second innings, set up a 115-run win that augured well.
The loss at Headingley represented everything we wished to exclude from our game. We were sloppy and submissive. We didn’t have an immediate ‘naughty boys’ meeting’ in the dressing room, but Flower had his say later, back at the hotel, before he threw the floor open. As in the Caribbean, he enabled us to speak openly, honestly and harshly. It cleared the air and renewed our focus. We admitted to the collective mistake of envisaging the outcome, winning the Ashes, instead of focusing on the process. It didn’t go unnoticed that outsiders couldn’t wait to write us off.
I didn’t mind the occasional bite and bark. I never regarded Andy as particularly fierce, because I had the advantage of having played with him at Essex. I saw the softer, more collaborative aspect of his nature as a youngster coming through, but had also witnessed the fiery side of a man who could snap and have an argument.
There were times when he consciously placed us under pressure in training. Boxing was one of his ideas. He liked to see us sweat, and deal with a little adversity. The group respected that, and dealt with the highly organized aspects of his approach. Team meetings can be a pain, and repetitive work is usually boring, but they breed an understanding of what is expected.
Rewards, when they arrive, are all the sweeter. We had a ten-day break to digest the lessons of Leeds before we took to the field at the Oval, that traditional stage for the last boys of summer. Broady made initial inroads with a trademark, consistently hostile five-wicket spell. Trotty became the eighteenth England player to make a century on his debut, and Australia needed 546 to win in little more than two days.
Freddie, writing his own script to the last, was responsible for the turning point. He broke a troublesome fourth-wicket stand of 127 by running out Ricky Ponting with a direct hit from mid-on. As we closed in on victory, I was sent to Boot Hill, short leg to the uninitiated. It is not a place for the slow-witted or the faint hearted.
You are taught to stay low and to stay alert. My first experience of being hit on the head in Test-match cricket came against the Australians in 2006. It was nearly my last. Adam Gilchrist, a brilliant sweeper of the ball, splintered my protective helmet, which went flying. It gave me every incentive to learn from my mistake, in turning my back instead of having the presence of mind to duck.
The key is not to tense up, and to anticipate the shot the batsmen intends to play. You try to read body shape in a split second, but occasionally make yourself look silly in unnecessarily taking evasive action. That’s when everyone laughs at you and why, when you’ve done your time, you tend to look for safer pastures.
Slower bowlers who are harder to sweep, like Swanny and Monty Panesar, are appreciated. The thrill of the chase, when they are attacking, with victory in sight, compensates for the occasional perilous drag down. Swanny secured the Ashes in trademark style, forcing Mike Hussey to nick one to me at short leg after a 328-minute vigil for 121.
I still smile when I see the photograph that captures the moment. We are running madly, indiscriminately, in triumph, arms aloft and screaming with joy. What the image doesn’t reveal is my animal cunning, in putting the ball straight into my pocket. I had not forgotten the enduring regret of my old schoolmaster, Derek Randall, in throwing the ball away in similar circumstances.
Swanny spent the next hour pleading for the ball, promising undying love or never-ending enmity. He was wasting his breath. I made great play of offering him a ball, and he chased me around the changing room when he discovered it was a random practice ball. I’m not one for memorabilia, but I instantly formed plans for it to be mounted and given pride of place in my house. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was prey to the power of posterity.
I couldn’t refuse when I was asked to donate it to the Lord’s Museum (on Swanny’s suggestion, inevitably). On reflection, it was one of the few times that a player sees the bigger picture. Normally, you envisage little beyond the next training drill, the next catch, the next innings or the next gym session. Flower tried to get us to appreciate we were engaged in something bigger than ourselves.
He tried to accelerate cult
ure change by connecting us with British history, and the bloodline of the England cricket team. England rugby players under Stuart Lancaster did similarly before their disappointing home World Cup in 2015. We went on a field trip to the trenches in Ypres. Celebrated former England cricketers began to do the honours, in giving caps to debutants.
Most contentiously of all, players and management teams were packed away to a five-day hardship camp in Germany, run in the hills outside Munich by Australian special-forces personnel, the morning after the Professional Cricketers’ Association dinner. Phones were banned, and people answered only to their surname. An abbreviated version of their internal training programme, it was designed to break us down and build us back up again.
When I arrived late, after being granted leave of absence for my elder brother Adrian’s wedding, the players looked as if they had been brutalized. They spoke with a strange mixture of horror and amusement, of regimented press-up sessions, wearing hiking boots, in the middle of the night. An hour-long exercise involving a chariot race, with teams of four carrying a teammate up a hill on an improvised platform, had obviously left its mark. I wasn’t there at the time, but the lads told me that KP was ordered by the organizers to be the passenger after he complained of an Achilles problem. He was mortified by the burden he suddenly represented, but was not allowed to change his role.
Other exercises tested leadership skills. Sleep-deprivation techniques were used as a training tool. The link between playing cricket for your country and being woken at 2 a.m. to do hard, physical work, carrying bricks across a forest, may be tenuous but it has a scientific basis, in the response of the brain to shared experiences.
The programme built upon the collective experience of visiting the concentration camp at Dachau before the 2009 Ashes. That had reinforced the power of perspective. No one emerges untouched from such a profound occurrence. It preys on the mind and challenges the conscience. I began to understand the team-building theory, that trust is enhanced when you see those close to you being pushed to the edge, physically and psychologically.
It was enriching in hindsight. Hardship bred a renewed sense of what could be achieved together. People reminisced fondly about carrying out menial tasks in the pouring rain at three in the morning. Jimmy Anderson’s broken rib, sustained in a boxing match, entered dressing-room legend. We were ready for the relative sanity of an Ashes tour in Australia …
8. Baggy Green
Picture the scene. Manuka Oval, in Canberra, is an old-fashioned ground, ringed with cypress, poplar, oak and elm trees planted nearly a century ago. Also used for prominent Aussie Rules matches, it is the venue for the tour’s traditional one-day fixture against the Prime Minister’s XI. Not quite cream tea and cucumber sandwich territory, but pretty civilized, right?
Wrong.
Willing pupils in the dark arts of mental degradation, some straight from primary school, wait to ambush an unthinking, unsuspecting England player. If their victim is as naïve as I was, on my first Ashes tour, he is an easy mark, and ridiculed as a cross between Mr Bean and the Upper Class Twit of the Year.
Older tormentors gather in small groups of twenty or so, to sledge in unison when England are in the field. They think they’re big and brave, and they’re certainly brutal. The abuse is crude, rude, relentless and acutely personal. It’s not even leavened by humour, acidic or otherwise. International sportsmen are no one’s idea of blushing innocents, but the invective is genuinely shocking.
When I first experienced it, in 2006, my first thought was that I was going to hate Ashes cricket. My second, on getting out for 4, caught behind by Tim Paine off Ben Hilfenhaus, was to long for the release of the local airport, ten minutes down the road. I didn’t have time for a third thought, because the other delight of the day was upon me.
The lad was in my line of vision, waiting with a pen and a piece of paper in familiar fashion. As I approached, the trap was sprung. ‘I don’t want your stupid autograph,’ he said, pulling the paper away with a flourish as I stood there, looking silly. Oh, how they laughed. Suddenly, another boy appeared, as if out of nowhere.
He, too, was waving a piece of paper. ‘Go on, sign it for the kid,’ the adults in the crowd crowed, relishing my dilemma. I knew what was coming and kept walking, to general derision. It was the ultimate no-win situation. You can’t have a go back, because it is pointless and unbecoming. Why expose yourself to further ridicule simply because you play for a certain team or country?
Australians are big on theatrical patriotism. I admire the intensity with which the nation identifies with its athletes, and, to be fair, Andy Flower’s broader strategy as we set out to climb the world rankings sought to connect the England team with the aspirations of supporters, and our traditions as fellow citizens.
I’ve felt the emotional pull of those bonds, and can understand the veneration of the Baggy Green. It has captured the imagination of the Australian public and seeped into the global consciousness. Various sweat-stained incarnations, worn by such bona-fide legends as Steve Waugh, are presented in museums as if they are holy relics. But part of me agrees with Jimmy Anderson when he observes: ‘It’s just a fucking hat.’
It’s a brand, built on imagination and history. Its timeline can be traced back to the Don and the other greats. I’m proud that my England cap links me to Hutton in the way Waugh’s is supposed to link him to Bradman, but we haven’t made a point of embracing the wider significance of what is, after all, a piece of kit.
That doesn’t mean the 161 times I walked out to play for England in a Test match weren’t very special, acutely personal occasions. I know where my caps are, apart from one, which appears to have been spirited away by the Borrowers on the farm. They are associated with my debut and other milestones, since they were presented in twenty-five-Test blocks. My mum has one. They carry my England number, 630.
They are important, but they are not intrinsic to my pride as an England player. I recognize the yearning for meaning that leads to all the talk about symbolism, but could honestly give away all my kit, because it is just a representation of relationships. The real emotional power lies in memory, flashbacks to those winning dressing rooms, celebrating with my mates.
That idea, of satisfaction gained through the knowledge you have given everything to the group, offers a clue to why we do what we do. An appreciation of playing your part, understanding what the achievement means to others, creates an amazing high. Some might see the 2010–11 Ashes tour as a personal statement, enshrined in the record books, but it wasn’t undertaken alone.
International sport stimulates the senses, not least your hearing. Two contrasting moments, against Australia at home and away, are a private soundtrack, playing in my head. The first explains why one of the items on my post-retirement bucket list was to spend the first day of the Lord’s Test watching from the Long Room.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to recreate the tension and pressure of personal expectation but wanted to be able to experience it from an alternative angle. You never lose the sense of privilege, playing there, but when there is a job to be done you have tunnel vision. You simply don’t notice the portraits and the chandeliered splendour.
Walking out to bat at HQ carries the same mystique for a cricketer as driving off at St Andrews has for a golfer. You’re surrounded by ghosts, touched by history. The difference is that players do not access the first tee from the R&A clubhouse. No walk to the wicket has greater resonance than that which takes you right, out of the first-floor dressing room, down two flights of the mahogany staircase, left through the Long Room, then right through the double doors and into the daylight.
I still get goose bumps when I close my eyes and recall that experience in the first innings, against Australia in 2009. The noise the MCC members made, packed together in the Long Room like a strangely colourful army awaiting inspection, was extraordinary. It was the sound of posh people cheering. You may laugh, but that’s the only way I can describe it.
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sp; There’s a moment’s peace as you walk to the middle with your mate. On that morning, Andrew Strauss and I looked at each other, awestruck. ‘What was that?’ he asked, aghast. ‘Jesus, that was special, wasn’t it?’ To be honest, I felt like babbling, but knew we had to recalibrate. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘How good was that? Come on. It’ll mean nothing if we don’t score runs.’
Those are often moments of truth. Michael Atherton tells a similar story, of walking out with Mark Lathwell for his second, and final, Test appearance, at Headingley in 1993. Lathwell was known on the circuit as ‘The Natural’, a Somerset batsman touched by genius. ‘Good luck,’ said Atherton. ‘The crowd are rooting for you.’ Lathwell shot back: ‘They won’t be in a minute when I’m on my way back.’
Sure enough, he was dismissed third ball. He loathed the fanfare, loved nothing more than a game of darts in the pub. He retired prematurely and is still spoken of as one of the great wasted talents. Alec Stewart, a consistently shrewd judge of character, believes that, of his generation of England cricketers, Lathwell was the only player who ‘just didn’t want to be there’.
Being alone, when your opening partner has been dismissed three balls into an Ashes Test match, is a disconcerting experience. When that happened to me at Brisbane at the start of the 2010 tour, it triggered another tidal wave of noise, with an entirely different tone. Straussy held his head in his hands after being caught in the gully by Mike Hussey off Ben Hilfenhaus.
I could see him thinking, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ He carried the responsibility of captaincy like a concrete overcoat. It was a nothing ball, delivered in an area that Ricky Ponting acknowledged played to Straussy’s strengths, but was fractionally too close to his body to safely attempt the cut shot.
No words were necessary, though they would have been impossible to hear, in any case. The Gabbatoir was living up to its reputation. There was something primeval about the tribal howl that accompanied him back to the pavilion. I turned and looked at the mob scene of Australian players at the other end of the pitch and felt like the loneliest man alive.
The Autobiography Page 11
