Visiting cricketers tend to be a reliable source of free help on the farm. Ryan ten Doeschate, my captain at Essex, was the latest cricketer to spend a day worming the sheep. I began by doing odd jobs and now feel as if I know what I’m doing around the farm. Alice still does a lot of work with the sheep, and I help through brute strength and gradually declining ignorance. Without wishing to sound sexist, I’ve got the muscle to catch a sheep and turn it over, to inspect its feet or check its teeth. It’s easier for a bloke to do more of the physical element of the work.
I’ve always had a love of dogs, despite not having one as a child, and chose my boarding house at Bedford because it had one that I could walk before and after school. Farm work gives me a different element of identity, I suppose. In the early days, I played cricket, went to the gym, had a coffee and killed time. We all go through certain stages of life, don’t we? There have been times when I’ve craved the release of going back to the farm. It has always given me a sense of peace.
Occasionally, the formalities of cricket get you down. My pet hate as England captain was the group press conference. It was part and parcel of the job, a couple of times a week, before and after matches. I felt sorry for the journalists, to be honest. There were fifty or sixty of them in the room, and they knew you didn’t really want to be there. You knew the topic they wanted to pursue, and the phrases or thoughts that would produce the headlines they required.
In that situation, usually near the end of the allotted time, questions tended to run into each other or, at best, be variations on a theme. It wasn’t intimidating. It was more boring than anything. Of course, the game needs the media, which provides a platform from which to engage the public, but the process helps no one. My shield went up; from behind it I tossed out anodyne comments and plastic answers. One-to-one interviews, though rarer, were more satisfying since I was able to provide context and insight.
I relished the sanctuary of the farm, the absence of pressure to respond to specific agendas, but that sometimes involved an element of bluff and self-deception.
Alice and I both live a life of contrasts. Alice could, for example, spend a day in the lambing shed, wearing old clothes covered with all manner of muck, then be transformed into a dinner guest, in all her finery, at London’s Landmark or Langham Hotel. We would laugh at the contrast and enjoy the variety of our lives.
I loved the fact that I wasn’t consumed by cricket. I was obsessed with its mechanics and mental challenges, but it didn’t completely define me. Though you don’t reach the highest levels as an athlete without having the drive to run before dawn, or practise until your head and hands hurt, it helps to be able to forget your sport.
It is tempting to check the app, or even try to listen to Test Match Special on headphones when you’re on the tractor, but switching off is not a sin. There were times when, not having been selected for a limited-overs international, I would spend a day in the fields not knowing how England were progressing. I was simply experiencing a different life.
I don’t do that much tractor work due to the obvious summer months constraints, but I do enjoy the odd day driving carting grain if I get the chance. After cricket I’m sure I will spend a lot more time on the tractor, certainly volunteering for the work when TMS is on. I look after the sheep more because I’m usually available when they need looking after most, just before the domestic cricket season begins.
I understand what some folk mean when they talk about the timelessness of the land, and its link to our forebears. Rural communities are closer to that old cycle of birth, marriage and death in a small geographical area. They’re more deeply rooted. I appreciate country traditions, and I’ve fully bought into the romanticism of the landscape and lifestyle. It can be really hard work, but there’s something almost poetic in spending the day with the dogs, erecting electric fences in the pouring rain.
What it can give, however, is balance and solitude. I enjoy my own company, having that day on my own, working through a list of jobs. I don’t have to think too deeply and would certainly never have the cheek to believe I had the experience to make critical decisions on the farm. There’s a difference between knowing how to look after a thousand sheep on your own and running a business.
Ultimately, that’s what a farm is, a business. I appreciate the reality will upset some people, and hope they will take my honesty into consideration, but, as a meat eater, I am quite comfortable with the contradiction of doing everything possible to keep an animal alive for five months in the knowledge that it will eventually end up as someone’s dinner.
Farmers are not uncaring people at all. In fact, most are the total opposite, going above and beyond to care for their livestock. I relish their company, appreciate their outlook and feel privileged to have been introduced to their world. I understand the timeless logic of waiting for lambs to grow, before they are sold. We breed commercial rather than pedigree sheep, so most of our lambs will be sold for meat.
I would love to run my own farm. It will be difficult as cricket demands a similar time commitment, but it’s not an impossible balance to strike. The week leading up to one of my milestone achievements, the 294 against India at Edgbaston in 2011, involved several successive sixteen-hour days, preparing for the Thame sheep fair, one of our most important sales of the year.
Since I had averaged 7.5 in the first two Tests, who needed nets? I worked in an open-air gym, sorting and handling animals rather than lifting dumbbells. I also associate farm duties with my becoming the youngest player to reach 10,000 Test runs, at the age of thirty-one years, five months and five days, on the fourth day of the second Test against Sri Lanka at Chester-le-Street in 2016.
I overhauled Sachin Tendulkar’s record with a leg-side clip for four off Nuwan Pradeep, and had a good night after seeing England to a nine-wicket win with an unbeaten 47, because it was something special ticked off my bucket list. Alice’s parents were there to see me, and we left early the following morning, with work to do.
When we got home, after a four-hour drive, it was absolutely banging down with rain. The lambs needed to be weighed because there was a lorry booked in to take the lambs that made the desired weight to the abattoir the next day. Chris, Alice’s dad, quite rightly didn’t fancy going out, so it was left to me and the dog. The weather was horrendous; even the dog was nestling her nose beneath my coat as we took off, on a quad bike, to round up the 150 or so animals destined for market.
Once they were caught, we had to weigh them and load them on to the lorry. The process is automatic because of its familiarity, but I did wonder what the previous day’s crowd, and the people watching on television, would have made of me there, soaked to the skin and caked in mud. So much for the halos and hurrahs reserved for the so-called cricket star.
Again, I respect the sensitivities involved, and trust my good faith will be recognized, but my love of both the countryside and the principles of its management has been deepened by my hobby – shooting. It has involved the development of a challenging new skill and is a pursuit that encourages the same sort of friendships and memories that can be found in more mainstream sports.
I am no George Digweed, who is Britain’s best shot, having won, at the last count, a ridiculous 26 World Championships, 18 European Championships, 116 International Championships, 16 World Cups, 10 European Cups and 11 English and British Championships. Wisden also informs us he took eight wickets without conceding a run in five overs in a Sussex League Cup match. I promise I am not making this up, but he was playing for – who else? – Shooters Hill CC.
Shooting is rather like batting: the younger you begin, the better chance you have of mastering its technicalities. It is not strictly dependent on hand–eye co-ordination; one of the most accurate shots I know is aged eighty-one. He’s blind in his dominant eye, which forces him to lean over in the act of pulling the trigger. He struggles to walk. He has honed his skill since the age of fifteen.
I have been lucky over the last few years to spend some time with
Beefy Botham, sharing our love for countryside sports near his home in North Yorkshire.
Similar interests, and shared experiences, can span the generations. I wasn’t born when Beefy became a national hero during the 1981 Ashes, but, growing up, I became intrigued by his legend. He seemed such a compelling, devil-may-care character. My first real memory of him is from the 1992 World Cup, where he was a pinch-hitting opening bat as England lost to Pakistan in the final.
I know him as a very proud man, with a strong but thoughtful personality. He invited me to join him on a shoot about four years ago. We’ve had dinner together each summer and get on well socially. It is an extension of the dressing-room experience, where contrasting characters who might never have met without their sporting talent become unlikely friends.
He has mellowed slightly, but you can still see glimpses of the cricketer who transcended the game with his antics and achievements. We are bonded by our love of the countryside, but to make the connection with him I had to lose the insularity I’d developed as a player. I’ve learned that if you spread your wings, open yourself to new friendships and experiences, you can surprise yourself.
I don’t have Beefy’s aptitude for fishing, but I value his cricketing insight and admire his philosophy towards life. He’s interested in farming, and we discuss the changing nature of the countryside. Traffic is increasing, water tables are shifting. I look at a field differently from how I looked at one ten years ago.
I don’t know as much about the arable side of farming, but I’m intrigued by what might be happening beneath the surface. I’ll glance momentarily over hedges as I am driving, working out what the farmer is doing, and how he is managing the land. There is so much to see, so much to interpret; fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have had the slightest interest.
The farming community is extraordinary. It has its traditions, but it doesn’t stand on ceremony. When I was growing up in Essex, our house received a thorough cleaning whenever a visitor was expected. Here, people just knock on the unlocked door unannounced and wander into my in-laws’ farmhouse kitchen, where they will always be greeted with a cup of tea.
I would love to become a full-time farmer, but I also want to stay involved in cricket. I’m lucky that my options include commentary, corporate leadership work and even coaching, though to do that well in a team role requires an inordinate amount of time to be spent away from home and family. Since the countryside is such a draw, and I want to see my children grow up, I’m not sure how practical that would be.
I’ve been told that the key to a successful retirement is to focus on things you enjoy, and I’ve yet to work out what those will be. A part-time consultancy role in cricket might appeal. Performance sport and successful farming are hard, time-consuming occupations. Could I erect electric fences for sixty days straight? No, I couldn’t. Could I do thirty days straight? Probably. Could I do thirty out of sixty? That might be the perfect compromise.
As I have spent more time in the local farming community, I have formed genuine friendships. I am a proud member of the Bastards, the Bedford Agricultural Study, Travel and Rural Development Society.
They made me chairman of the society’s cricket club and put me in charge of organizing the Christmas dinner when I was sacked as England’s one-day captain, because they reasoned that I had more time on my hands. There is also the Bedfordshire Farmers cricket team, which Tom Turner, a great friend from school and a neighbouring farmer in Great Brickhill, set up. We net on a Tuesday night in Tom’s grain shed during the winter and play about fifteen fixtures a season. There is the obvious mid-season break for harvest, and most of the players ‘seem’ to be sponsored by Gray-Nicolls as my old kit gets a new home! My first game after my last Test match at the Oval was for the Farmers, and unbelievably I got my first ever hat-trick!
When you are done, you’re done, aren’t you? When I retire from the professional game, I think I’ll only retrieve the bats from the attic to play for the Bedfordshire Farmers with my mates. Playing competitive club cricket won’t interest me, though I hope to maintain close links with three cricket clubs: Maldon cricket club, where I grew up playing in Essex, Great Brickhill and Eversholt. Through them I have come to understand the role the game can play in strengthening the bonds of a community. Eversholt’s setting is a combination of country and cricketing clichés. There is a small church, St John the Baptist, on the hill, dating back to Norman times. It was extended in 1230 and 1330; the first recorded baptism was in 1628. The village pub is opposite the graveyard, which has a memorial cross recording the sacrifice of two world wars.
The club operates from a small wooden pavilion and plays in a natural amphitheatre. Villagers watch from grassed banks while children play in an open-air swimming pool, built by a former duke of Bedford, apparently in return for the erection of a surrounding wall that enabled him to bathe naked in a nearby lake.
The first team is of a high standard and reached the final of the National Village Cup at Lord’s in 2000. It has a thriving junior section; the outfield is full of youngsters on weekend mornings and weekday evenings.
It is imperative to try to help clubs and the values they can still represent. It is becoming harder to raise adult teams because family life isn’t conducive to playing cricket all weekend. Children have greater opportunity, and modern life involves being here, there and everywhere.
It’s a difficult dilemma to resolve. Cricket has given me everything. It has given me my life, really. I’ve travelled the world and had a vast range of experiences. Obviously, not everyone can go on to become an international, but the highs and lows of sport are educational. I wouldn’t want our game to wither and die, because it would rob future generations of that type of opportunity.
It can still be a game of miracles and wonders. I sometimes think back fondly to the plastic sports radio Dad bought me when I was at St Paul’s. I would listen to cricket in bed, through fragile headphones, under the covers. Test matches were broadcast on crackly Radio Four 198 long wave. You could vaguely hear Jonathan Agnew through the static; the rest was down to your imagination. It took you through time and space; games in New Zealand were being played tomorrow when it was still today.
How many of this generation of schoolboys will be lucky enough to be able to relate to my first cricket tour, to play in the Sir Garry Sobers forty-over tournament in Barbados? I was sixteen and accustomed to well-tended pitches. Here the wickets were rolled mud. Outfields were bare, dry and bumpy. I had an unprecedented duty to entertain.
The locals sat there, watching the world go by, and knew what they were looking for. ‘Get on with it, Cook,’ ordered one disembodied voice, with an unmistakable lilting accent, when I began studiously. ‘Play some shots, man.’ They loved Ramnaresh Sarwan, a Guyanese of Indian descent who would go on to captain the West Indies during a distinguished sixteen-year international career.
He scored a big hundred, but on the rare occasion he played a false shot the old boys on the boundary would be quick to give him strong advice. ‘What are you doing, man?’ they’d shout. ‘You got to defend, you got to attack.’ We were all too aware the final would be played at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, spiritual home of Sobers, Weekes, Hall, Griffith, Garner, Haynes and the rest.
Cricket is suffering in an impatient, time-poor society, but it still straddles boundaries of class and culture. It remains capable of surprising and engaging me, after all these years. Once, on holiday in the Maldives, I was persuaded to play by the hotel staff, who mainly hailed from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The game was their release, on a solitary day off. They were fanatical about it and recognized me the instant I checked in with Alice. Of course I didn’t deserve special treatment, but the waiters ensured speciality sushi was waiting on the lunch table each day. They were soon talking enthusiastically about the match they had planned. It proved to be the favourite day of our break.
It was serious stuff, island against island, played in shorts and bare
feet. We took a boat to a nearby atoll, which was no more than fifty yards wide. It had two or three houses at one end, and as we set up the wicket, someone walked across the scrubby outfield with a freshly killed chicken, which was destined to be lunch.
I was worried about hitting the ball into the sea, so theatrically blocked my first few deliveries. The next bloke in just whacked it into the water; fielders dived in to retrieve the ball. It was a day of joy, laughter and perspective. I can’t honestly remember the result of the match, but that’s part of the attraction.
For once, I didn’t have to win.
14. Spirit of Cricket
When things were getting tricky on that Ashes tour from hell in 2014, I went for a walk in one of Melbourne’s central parks with Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson. We weren’t logo-ed up, and wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible. To be honest, we didn’t have much to shout about in any case.
We were sitting on a bench, minding our own business, when a guy wearing a ‘Stuart Broad is a shit bloke’ T-shirt headed purposefully in our direction. We exchanged glances. ‘Here we go,’ we thought. ‘Cheating Poms, blah, blah, blah.’ Broady’s refusal to walk at Trent Bridge the previous summer had pursued him, and us, across the world.
‘Mate,’ the stranger said, addressing Australia’s supposed public enemy number one. ‘Any idea where the nearest coffee shop is?’ When Broady confessed we weren’t from around those parts, the guy said, ‘No worries,’ and walked on. He clearly hadn’t recognized us. We fell about, but the ‘shit bloke’ didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The incident just goes to show how impersonal and random criticism can be. It also raises deeper questions about the nature of the game. At the highest level it is played hard. Fairness is a relative term. Seeking an advantage is not a challenge to the conscience. Doing the right thing means different things to different people at different times.
The Autobiography Page 20
